Fast Forward Startup Accelerator 2025 ($25,000 Grant)

Applications are now open for the Fast Forward Startup Accelerator 2025! This innovative program is designed to empower tech non-profit entrepreneurs like you to overcome unique challenges and achieve success. You’ll gain comprehensive training and guidance to secure funding, build a strong governance structure, and attract top technical talent.

By bridging the tech and non-profit sectors, the Fast Forward Startup Accelerator provides a supportive ecosystem to help you navigate the complexities of tech non-profit entrepreneurship. Don’t miss this opportunity to take your organization to the next level! Apply now and accelerate your impact.

You’ll receive funding, mentorship, and connections to people who can help you scale. Described as “a prominent player in the tech-for-good landscape,” they have supported over 100 startups in tackling issues like poverty, healthcare inequity, and education disparities. Through the Startup Accelerator, you’ll be part of a community dedicated to using tech to make a difference.

Program Details

Fast Forward’s program is designed to address the unique needs of tech non-profits:

• Capital. Fundraising strategies (including tactics and sources of capital) are different for tech non-profits at every stage of the fundraising process as compared to their for-profit peers. There are also unique challenges and opportunities available to tech non-profits in particular, which we will help you navigate.
• Content. Their curriculum is different. Yes, tech non-profits must focus on product, scaling, and growth. However, tech non-profits also need to learn about board development, governance, leveraging volunteers, and other issues specific to non-profits. The knowledge base they have put together for tech non-profits differs substantially from what for-profits would find valuable.
• Customer. Because of their focus on impact over profit, non-profits often chase the least profitable customer, which impacts go-to-market strategy and customer life cycle in a way that’s different from for-profits.
• Cohort. Entrepreneurship is lonely. Tech non-profit entrepreneurship, even more so. Tech non-profit leaders tell them that because of their non-profit focus they don’t quite fit into for-profit accelerators, and because of their tech/product focus they don’t quite fit into non-profit fellowships. They share a set of challenges unique to this intersection, and they’re excited to go through a program with others like them as well as provide each other ongoing support as their organizations grow.
• Community. Key to their mission is building closer ties between the non-profit and for-profit tech community. The tech world has the opportunity to have a huge impact on these organizations and therefore the world. Their focus on collaborative philanthropy is quite different from for-profit accelerators, which don’t need to invest heavily in community building due to the nature of venture investing.

Benefits

• Receive a $25,000 philanthropic grant
• Learn from tech and social sector leaders
• Meet investors and like-minded founders

Eligibility

• The Accelerator is built exclusively for early-stage tech non-profits. These are organizations that look like typical tech startups—they build tech products—and have selected a non-profit structure because they are building for impact instead of profit.

Selection Criteria

• Leadership. Tech non-profits face everything that is hard in a tech startup and everything that’s hard in a non-profit. To pull it off, the leaders must have steadfast vision and incredible gumption.
• Tech talent. The tech vision should be the driving force of the organization and not an auxiliary program. To successfully execute that vision, tech talent must be in a leadership role.
• Potential for Impact. Impact is a thorny subject. To get to the heart of an organization’s potential, we ask questions like: Who is the organization primarily serving? If successful, how many lives will be positively influenced? How deeply will the organization impact those lives?
• Scalability. Software scales incredibly well. They support organizations with a vision for change that is matched only by the potential for scale.
• Lived Experience with the Problem. People solve problems in front of them. They want to empower people to solve the problems they see and experience.
• Alignment. Fast Forward is a small organization. As such, they choose organizations who they are best poised to help scale.

How to Apply

The Accelerator application will close on September 9, 2024. The program will run from late February to early June 2025. Demo Day will likely occur at the end of May and beginning of June 2025.