Washington University and YouthBridge Association launch inaugural competition that benefits charities.

St. Louis , September 08, 2005 -Washington University’s Skandalaris Center teamed up with YouthBridge Association to announce the first-ever St. Louis Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC). This competition is designed to inspire action that leads to multiple innovative approaches to the area’s social problems. The new partners will award a total of $65,000 to various innovators and organizations. The deadline for the competition is February 13, 2006.

The Competition is comprised of three categories. The YouthBridge Social Entrepreneurship Investment Award will be presented, along with $35,000, to an innovator or group whose focus is at-risk youth. The YouthBridge Challenge will be awarded to an innovator or organization whose focus involves the entire community. The winner of this award will receive $20,000. The final honor will be the YouthBridge Student Team Social Entrepreneurship Scholarship Award, along with $10,000 to implement the idea or be used for college tuition.

Judging for the three competition categories will include:

• Community ROI-return on investment
• Sustainability
• Innovation
• Passion and Support of Management and Board
• Collaboration
• Proof of Demand

Each category will hold five rounds of judging that range from reviewing executive summaries to business plan presentations. Contestants will be required to create a business plan and, if selected as a semifinalist, must present the plan to judges. Judging will consist of innovators and entrepreneurs from the business community. New and existing non-profit organizations are invited to participate.

“We partnered with Washington University to build a program that creates a measuring tool for non-profits,” said Jim Cullen, long-time YouthBridge Association Board Member. “A measuring stick will allow us to drive change in the non-profit sector. We’ve centered our competition on building a business plan so that non-profits become familiar with a commerce tool that has stood the test of time.”

The long-term goals of the SEIC include conducting an annual social venture contest that is inclusive, engaging, fair and change-driven. The SEIC also hopes to provide ongoing education for non-profits, through workshops and a framework for evaluation.

St. Louis SEIC

“We are honored to partner with YouthBridge for this important competition that benefits the St. Louis community,” said Ken Harrington, Managing Director of the Skandalaris Center at Washington University. “Our staff and students are excited to be working with social innovators. The competition extends our efforts to expand social entrepreneurships and advances our mission of teaching, researching and community service.”

The YouthBridge Association is a 135-year-old organization that was previously known as the General Protestant Children’s Home. YouthBridge’s mission evolved to fund and support multiple innovative youth-focused social ventures, some of them located on its 19-acre Creve Coeur campus. YouthBridge has supported and funded ventures designed to operate as independent entities following the association’s initial support. YouthBridge’s goal is to support more ventures that can benefit from the organization’s initial support and then grow into self-sufficient entities.

Examples of this include the Good Shepherd School, which provides innovative approaches to early childhood education and intervention services for a diverse population of children with both typical skills and developmental challenges. This inclusive environment helps develop well-balanced, compassionate youth. YouthBridge also helped organize and fund the Missouri Alliance for Children and Families, LLC. Since its inception, the Alliance has helped more than 1,100 severely disadvantaged children and their families to become more functional, minimizing foster care and residential services. The YouthBridge Family Community, another organization assisted by YouthBridge, provides services to families and patients that have traveled to St. Louis to receive treatment at area hospitals. To find out more, visit their website at www.youthbridge.org.

The Skandalaris Center stimulates a campus-wide environment of collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurial creativity. This expands learning, understanding and economic opportunities for students, faculty and the St. Louis community. The Center supports entrepreneurship in all academic disciplines and defines it inclusively as “the process of seeing novel opportunities, acting energetically, and using limited resources and collaboration to create new value for others.”