How reliably are those asks met? If someone needs (e.g.) a 25K uplift for childcare costs, when do they learn if that’s actually in the cards?
My understanding was that funding allocations were locked in fairly late in the program, but I could be mistaken. Even if the candidate exits prior to starting the program, they may have invested significant time, energy, and emotion into the process.
I definitely understand the realities of reliance on seed funding, and the fact that some uncertainty and opacity is unavoidable as a result. It remains unfortunate in my view.
[For reference, 25K is about what full-time childcare costs for a young child where I live. Some people are single parents, and many have more than one child, so I didn’t think it an unreasonable test case.]
About 75% of seed project proposals get funded at the amount they ask for. That part is not known until after the incubation process. The typical seed grants are between $100k-$200k. I do not expect a great proposal to be stopped by a $25k higher budget. I think entrepreneurship is a higher-risk career path, one that is probably not suited for the majority of people. CE is already extremely de-risked relative to equivalents in the for-profit and incubated nonprofit space, to the point where I think the founding step is not the highest-risk part of founding a charity (having an impact 3 years down the line is).
How reliably are those asks met? If someone needs (e.g.) a 25K uplift for childcare costs, when do they learn if that’s actually in the cards?
My understanding was that funding allocations were locked in fairly late in the program, but I could be mistaken. Even if the candidate exits prior to starting the program, they may have invested significant time, energy, and emotion into the process.
I definitely understand the realities of reliance on seed funding, and the fact that some uncertainty and opacity is unavoidable as a result. It remains unfortunate in my view.
[For reference, 25K is about what full-time childcare costs for a young child where I live. Some people are single parents, and many have more than one child, so I didn’t think it an unreasonable test case.]
About 75% of seed project proposals get funded at the amount they ask for. That part is not known until after the incubation process. The typical seed grants are between $100k-$200k. I do not expect a great proposal to be stopped by a $25k higher budget. I think entrepreneurship is a higher-risk career path, one that is probably not suited for the majority of people. CE is already extremely de-risked relative to equivalents in the for-profit and incubated nonprofit space, to the point where I think the founding step is not the highest-risk part of founding a charity (having an impact 3 years down the line is).