Take your project from ideation to execution

Our Accelerator Workshops pair entrepreneurs with expert Advisors who collaborate together and workshop the challenges great ideas face. At the end of this intensive event, community innovators come away with a clear path forward—including concrete next steps that can be put into action immediately—and a community ready to help great ideas succeed.   

What to Expect

Receive critical feedback, inspiration, and productive challenges from leaders who can help take your solutions from great ideas to actionable plans. 

Throughout the year, we invite creative entrepreneurs across the country to present their projects at Accelerator Workshops. Our goal is to accelerate solutions to the challenges our communities face, and these workshops offer a unique opportunity to collaborate with experienced leaders in for-profit and nonprofit fields to move projects from challenge to action. 

Members of the LaunchPad network are also invited to serve as expert Advisors (e.g., think tank scholars, business owners, CEOs, marketing experts, data scientists, donors, and others). 

Over the course of two days, the Advisors work closely with Project Owners to move their ideas forward or overcome specific challenges they are facing in growing their businesses. Advisors ask questions, offer advice, and source solutions to specific challenges the owners have identified as barriers to progress.

Additionally, trained Facilitators are paired with each Project Owner and work alongside them and the Advisors to ensure a smooth process throughout.  Facilitators help make the feedback from Advisors digestible and assist in forming action plans for Project Owners to take home. 

After the event, our team works with Project Owners to help them secure additional resources to implement their plans.  That support may include funding, additional coaching, or connections to others in our network.  

Experience the energy at a Workshop

Why You Should Join Us

For Project Owners: 

  • Accelerating your projects 

  • Networking with influential sector leaders 

  • Professional coaching from speaking coaches 

  • Ongoing coaching and peer-mentoring 

  • Funding potential 

  • Connection to a nationwide Network of policy experts and advocates 

For Advisors: 

  • Ground level influence on exciting social enterprises 

  • Networking with early-stage entrepreneurs and other influential sector leaders 

  • Applying your valuable experience to solutions that improve communities 

  • Opportunities to mentor innovators across the country 

The Co-Creation Process

Before the event begins, each Project Owner submits a one-page summary—outlining the challenge, what has already been tried, resources available, and goals—which provides the foundation for our Accelerator Workshop’s three-step co-creation process.  

2. How can we solve it?

Participants brainstorm, offering as many ideas as possible and in an environment where “thinking outside the box” is encouraged. Collaborators respectfully challenge one anothers’ assumption, help one another build off each others’ ideas, and attempt to surface as many solutions as time allows. At the end of brainstorming, Project Owners choose one ‘solution path’ from those offered by collaborators. 

1. What is the problem?

Project Owners, in collaboration with Advisors and guided by Facilitators, clarify the challenge. What is standing in the way of success? What has been tried? Who is the target audience for the solution and what is the change we want to see?

3. What will it take to put our solutions into action?

Project Owners and Advisors follow Facilitators’ guidance to collaborate on the design of their chosen solution. This includes identifying obstacles, defining a concrete and realistic action plan, and a road map for the next 30, 60, and 90 days that includes milestones and measure of progress.  

Meet Some of Our Collaborators

  • Arianne Craig Jolla, Ca$h Academy

    “I've spent the past year and a half refining the concept with the help of my amazing LaunchPad coach and additional LaunchPad events...Ca$h Academy is poised to revolutionize the EdTech industry and there is no doubt that LaunchPad is a major contributor to our success!"

  • Daniel Anthony, Iron Light / Great Hearts Florida

    "LaunchPad is the kind of work that matters: refining bold solutions to real challenges with smart, driven people. It’s rewarding, energizing, and just the right mix of structure and creativity to keep me coming back."

  • Kelsey Underwood, Georgia Center for Opportunity

    “As someone who has spent the majority of her career in the startup world, I can say with full confidence that LaunchPad is one of the most effective and engaging accelerators that I've experienced. I've participated as a Project Owner, a Facilitator, and an Advisor—all of which were incredibly beneficial and productive.”

Eligibility & Application Info

Do you have a great idea about how to improve your community and make it a better place? Think your project is a good fit for LaunchPad’s Accelerator Workshop?    

We’re looking for projects that leverage or create market-based solutions to eradicate poverty, expand educational opportunities, and improve educational outcomes. That might look like:  

  • Addressing poverty in your community, city, or state 

  • Increasing individual agency and economic sustainability through market-based solutions 

  • Expanding educational opportunities, regardless of zip-code 

  • Advancing innovation within traditional public schools 

  • Streamlining and easing implementation of recent legislation advancing education freedom

If you’re an entrepreneur with an innovative solution to your community’s challenges, tell us about your project, engage in the challenge process, and collaborate to develop a path forward.

 If you participate in our Accelerator Workshop, our team will work with you after the event to help secure, to the extent we can, the resources necessary to implement your plans.  That support may include funding, additional coaching, or connections to others in our network who may want to work with you.  

Being part of LaunchPad was such a game-changer for me. The coaching and support helped me fine-tune my vision for The Learning Outpost and gave me the confidence to launch projects like The Education and Policy Exchange and Founder 2 Founder podcast.

~Felicia Wright
Founder of The Learning Outpost,
host of Founder 2 Founder

Workshop Contact

We appreciate your interest in the Accelerators Workshop, online applications will be available soon. Questions? Contact us via this form.