{"id":8329,"date":"2021-09-22T22:05:07","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T02:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=8329"},"modified":"2021-09-22T22:05:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-23T02:05:08","slug":"fast-forward-launches-a-silicon-valley-startup-accelerator-for-nonprofits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2021\/09\/22\/fast-forward-launches-a-silicon-valley-startup-accelerator-for-nonprofits\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast Forward Launches a Silicon Valley Startup Accelerator for Nonprofits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fast Forward<\/a> is a new San Francisco-based startup accelerator that launches this summer and has already accepted its first five companies. They are Medic Mobile<\/a>, which helps remote health workers communicate; Moneythink<\/a>, which mentors underserved teens on personal finance; Noora Health<\/a>, which trains families to take care of patients; One Degree<\/a>, a Yelp for social services; and SIRUM<\/a>, which helps hospitals trade the $4 billion worth of unused medicine that goes to waste each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe path for the tech nonprofit has all the challenges of a startup and all the challenges of a nonprofit,\u201d said Kevin Barenblat, co-founder of Fast Forward and previous CEO and co-founder of social media marketing company Context Optional, which Efficient Frontier bought for $50 million in 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For nonprofits, there\u2019s less risk in selling a stake to an accelerator because nonprofits have no equity to dole out. They also don\u2019t have acquisition and IPO prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Barenblat thinks there\u2019s three months worth of valuable learning to be had. \u201cThere are all kinds of innovations we see for-profit tech companies taking advantage of: Always-connected devices, nearly-free infrastructure, APIs. I\u2019m looking to see more organizations doing the same thing. At the same time, there are differences [in running a nonprofit] around things like fundraising and board development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the startup accelerator is a well-understood formula at this point, and Fast Forward won\u2019t be much different. Founders of young companies (Fast Forward\u2019s first class tends to be a bit older) apply to a three-month program where they learn from mentors and then present to investors at the end. There are more than\u00a0200 startup accelerators<\/a>, with regional specializations or focuses on things like hardware, journalism and government. There\u2019s even a\u00a0virtual incubator called Zana<\/a>\u00a0launching today that promises to divvy up nuggets of startup wisdom into short video clips for would-be entrepreneurs around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gannes, L. (2014, May 13). Fast forward launches a Silicon Valley startup accelerator for nonprofits<\/em>. Vox. Retrieved September 23, 2021, from https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2014\/5\/13\/11626772\/fast-forward-launches-a-silicon-valley-startup-accelerator-for.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was a good way to start to open my eyes to the workings of non-profits, specifically their funding and support. This company Fast-Track has grown a lot since this article and I\u2019ve been looking a bit at their listed companies as well as the \u201cplaybook\u201d they have on their site for starting tech non-profits. I\u2019ve been curious for a while questioning how sustainable certain social designs are that don’t necessarily have profit as the priority. I understand that profit and social good can work together, but also that non-profits and certain models will need donations to run. So in thinking about design, I have to think about how sustainable it is from a financial standpoint. Often it seems social issues call for more of a non-profit model, but also looking into these tech non-profits they all have different ways of running and sustaining themselves. I also did not realize tech non-profits were a specific thing, so it is keeping me informed to learn about those and how embracing technology in general could help to enhance any non-profit.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fast Forward is a new San Francisco-based startup accelerator that launches this summer and has already accepted its first five companies. They are Medic Mobile, which helps remote health workers communicate; Moneythink, which mentors underserved teens on personal finance; Noora Health, which trains families to take care of patients; One Degree, a Yelp for social services; and SIRUM, which helps hospitals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":8330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8331,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions\/8331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}