February 7, 2010 is the next application deadline for Sparkseed, which provides seed funding, mentoring, and in-kind resources to collegiate social entrepreneurs. Sparkseed has thusfar provided support to 50 social innovators. It's 2009 class consisted of:
Capital Good Fund, Brown University
The Capital Good Fund (CGF) provides low-income Providence residents with the capital and skills needed to raise their income levels and improve their quality of life. CGF collaborates with community partners to offer personal finance classes, as well as loans that boost small businesses and help immigrants become legal residents or citizens.
INeedAPencil.com, Harvard College
INeedAPencil.com provides low-income high school students with high quality SAT prep online in order to reduce the achievement gap in college admissions.
Social Business Consulting Group, Cornell University
The Social Business Consulting Group is a student-run nonprofit organization that provides pro bono consulting services to social entrepreneurs around the world. By connecting university students with meaningful projects, SBCG enhances the impact of social ventures, facilitates the exchange of ideas, and empowers students to make a difference.
The School Fund, Brown University
The $150/year tuition fee in Tanzania is an enormous financial hurdle for many, and only about 70% of high school-aged Tanzanian youth attend school. The School Fund seeks to help solve this problem by establishing a website where the Tanzanian students learn to use the internet by posting profiles which supporters around the world can read and use to sponsor a student or a school.
Locra, Stanford University
Locra provides a platform for NGOs and ordinary people to aggregate data about the developing world with the aim of fostering better collaboration between NGOs and the communities they serve. Odewo.org also serves to publish online the work of NGOs, and functions as a direct-donation platform to serve the world’s most marginalized people, in villages, slums, and refugee camps.
Green Handicraft Initiative, Northwestern University
GHI links environmentally responsible consumers with community-based social entrepreneurship by helping impoverished villages in China launch sustainable rural enterprises and promoting the purchase of handkerchiefs and cloth bags as “green” substitutes for paper napkins and plastic bags to China's urban consumers.
Shepherd, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Shepherd is a collaborative website geared toward youth who want better food in their schools and communities. It combines data from multiple sources into a single tool that connects people to each other through technology. This enables them to learn about food issues and bring change to their communities.
Northwestern Sustainability Fund, Northwestern University
NSF is a revolving loan fund designed to green the campus through resource conservation and renewable energy projects that will reduce Northwestern’s environmental impact and decrease its operational costs. These projects will increase environmental awareness on campus and show Northwestern community members the university cares about the environment.