Visible, an app-based mobile phone service, chooses nine startups to participate in Visible Connect, a social good program designed to expedite growth for early-to-mid-stage nonprofit startups.
Denver, Colorado-based Visible Connect is an accelerator program centered around mobile technology, providing mentorship, coaching, increased visibility, and funding to selected entrepreneurs.
Rebecca Haugland
“Connectivity empowers today’s world; we know this, it’s why we started Visible,” said Rebecca Haugland, member engagement lead at Visible.
“We saw an opportunity to make a deeper impact across communities, so we developed Visible Connect to empower early- to mid-stage nonprofit startups at a crucial time in their development. By providing a foundation for future success, the program empowers entrepreneurs, allowing them to change their communities through mobile technology.”
In partnership with Uncharted, an accelerator that tackles social problems, Visible Connect searched nationwide for mobile technology innovators. After a rigorous review process of more than 100 applications, Visible Connect chose the following organizations to participate in the first class:
- CareerVillage: CareerVillage is a platform where underserved students receive free career advice from a volunteer corps of more than 15,000 professionals who share their time, experience, and expertise.
- Feeding Children Everywhere: Feeding Children Everywhere is disrupting the way we fight hunger in America via their mobile app, Fed40, which delivers meals and additional resources to Americans in need.
- FreeFrom: FreeFrom is on a mission to dismantle the nexus between gender-based violence and financial insecurity via their online platform that financially empowers survivors of domestic violence.
- IssueVoter: IssueVoter is an innovative, non-partisan online platform that helps voters understand new bills in plain language, communicate their opinions to their representative and track how s/he voted.
- JustFix.nyc: JustFix.nyc supports New York tenants facing harassment and poor housing conditions with a mobile app designed to build well-documented legal cases and connect with advocates.
- Onward Financial: Onward Financial helps low-to-moderate income workers build financial cushions through a mobile app, saving effortlessly directly from their paychecks and building financial literacy.
- Real Talk: Real Talk uses real stories by real teens to bring sex ed into the 21st century, while positively shaping their knowledge and behaviors around common issues surrounding adolescence.
- SIRUM: SIRUM connects organizations with surplus medications to patients in need. A patented delivery system makes medicines available to those who can’t afford them while reducing medical waste.
- TalkingPoints: TalkingPoints is a multilingual texting platform that allows teachers and schools to communicate with families via automatically translated text messages in their native languages and improves home-school connection.
Visible Connect kicks off with a bootcamp where each nonprofit startup meets with a curated group of qualified mentors, selected for that specific organization’s needs.
Mentors in the first bootcamp, held August 13-17, 2018, in Denver, Colorado, include Chris Maliwat, former product manager at Netflix and Facebook, and Kerry Suddes, partner at For Impact, a fundraising firm that’s raised over $2 billion, as well as other world-class executives.
In addition to mentorship and customized coaching, each nonprofit startup will receive $10,000 in funding from Visible.
Emily Scott
“Visible wanted to do more to impact communities via mobile technology than just provide funding to these organizations,” said Emily Scott, program director at Uncharted.
“This refreshing perspective is why we are so excited to partner with Visible to bring Visible Connect to life. Visible Connect is designed to deliver expertise and mentorship, in addition to funds, directly to the entrepreneurs addressing society’s biggest issues, and we couldn’t be more excited about the potential for impact from our inaugural cohort”
Each Visible Connect accelerator program will culminate with a two-day, in-person Funder Summit. At the summit, each participating nonprofit will have the opportunity to demonstrate the organizational improvements made throughout the nine-month Visible Connect program in a pitch to secure additional funding from relevant investors.
