Conference Highlights
Pitch Application
Opportunity Fair Guidelines
IRISH IMPACT AWARDS
The Irish Impact Awards recognize an institutional or community partner, distinguished alumni, faculty, administrator and/or student who have demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit and significant social impact.
The award recipients embody the multitude of topics from this conference – from startup and incubation issues to scaling and partnerships. These social entrepreneurs have built social innovations from the ground-up, created scalable and replicable social impact, fought for financial sustainability, and acted as true transformational change agents, partnering with universities, government, businesses and/or non-governmental organizations. These practitioners are impassioned and visionary, but also down-to-earth individuals.
Award winners will be announced at the opening reception on Thursday evening, September 27, and will be included in the Irish Impact Hall of Fame.
IRISH IMPACT INVESTMENT PITCH
Every social enterprise – whether for-profit or nonprofit – requires startup funding. As a result, the Irish Impact Social Entrepreneurship Conference 2012 has assembled a panel of expert judges to hear live funding pitches from a select group of seasoned social entrepreneurs.
These social enterprise practitioners will attempt to convey specific needs as they seek to tackle a broad array of global challenges. Conversely, the judges will be asked to evaluate each presentation upon magnitude of social impact and probability of success.
The investment pitch session will provide a glimpse into the world of social venture finance, and winners for the combined prizes of $5,000 will be announced at the Taste of Michiana luncheon, just prior to the keynote talk by Rishi Jaitly, a director with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Join us to see who will jump-start their mission with Irish Impact!
IRISH IMPACT OPPORTUNITY FAIR
Remember your high school science fairs, where students stood next to their carefully constructed exhibits, eager to talk about their big idea that was going to revolutionize the world.
This first-person experience is the idea behind the Irish Impact Opportunity Fair, a “science fair” for social entrepreneurs to pitch their enterprises. More than 30 social enterprise practitioners will be on hand to discuss their “big ideas” personally with interested guests, describing their ventures and the lives they are impacting through the use of photos, videos, visual displays – and most compelling of all – the telling of their own stories. Just a small sampling of practitioner organizations include CE Solutions/SE Corps, RSF Social Finance, EOS International, Zambikes, Union Microfinanzia, Accion Chicago, and Jordan Energy/Let’s Share the Sun Foundation.
In an atmosphere of energy and lively interaction, the fair also provides social entrepreneurs with a great opportunity for networking with influential members of the Notre Dame Community, as well as for recruiting volunteers, interns and/or full-time employees interested in social enterprise organizations.