GRANTS WE CAN APPLY TO

Design phase
Hershey: Professor Herz has a connection at Hershey and we have began to be in contact with them to establish a relationship. They might be able to fund testing of our cakes for the nutrients to make sure that our assumptions are right.

USAID DIV: We will have to test our muffins to make sure people like them and that mothers are willing to buy them and want to do so cost efficiently. This grant will help us do so. We will write a proposal stating how we will test our product and what the benefits will be.

Dissemination phase
USAID Food For Peace: They focus on development projects assisting food security which is ultimately the goal of our cakes. We will write a funding proposal to support the implementation of our cakes.

Gates foundation Global Grand Challenges: They don’t have any specific grant opportunities available right now but post them often. I know that this is a good opportunity because they have provided malnutrition focused ventures with grants in the past such as Creating Spirulina Microentrepreneurs to Solve Malnutrition and Folic Acid and Iron: Next Generation Nutrition in Uganda. I will keep looking at the website and wait for them to post a grant opportunity.

 

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

 

 

List five take-aways from Guy Kawasaki’s talk and explain exactly how you will integrate that concept/construct/strategy into your project. Make it compelling. Don’t write generic forgettable text.

1. Make a mantra, not a mission statement.
   Right now my team has a mission statement. It is “To provide the children of Sierra Leone with locally grown, cost-effective, and nutritious foods to address the issue of chronic malnutrition in children 2-5 years of age.” I definitely will work on turning this into a mantra. Maybe something like “Local affordable nutrition” would work well.
2. Make meaning not money
   It is difficult to not think about money when creating this venture because funds are so limited in Sierra Leone and we want to create something that will be sustainable. However, I do believe that a meaningful project will attract the right people and generate an economic profit and ultimately accomplish our goal
3. Great products polarize people – think different
   When we are coming up with a product, we are trying to think of something that everybody would like but have found that this is impossible without making sacrifices. I am comforted by his point that creating something that one group of people LOVES is more important than creating something mediocre that everybody tolerates.
4. Hire infected people
   It is important it social entrepreneurship to be “infected with love” and these are the types of people that we want to hire to work in our factory and the type of vendors that we want to sell our product. People who are passionate and really believe in our product will do a significantly better job in production and selling than people who are just in it for the money.
5. Keep the business model simple
   I think that this is a very important point. We started the semester by trying to create a business model as an output, but really have learned that it is just a learning tool. We have been modifying it so that we are able to retrieve the important information and ignore the jargon that is not relevant to our venture and is just there for formalities.

In partnership with one or at most two team members, present a business model canvas for your venture.