Applications open for Social Impact Award Program (Austria)

The most promising ideas are selected by their panel of judges based on their potential impact, degree of innovation, feasibility, and team capacity for incubation.

During the Discovery Journey, you’ll turn your fledgling idea into a promising concept and focus on developing key core skills. During the incubation phase, you’ll experience intensive on-site support and work one-on-one with a mentor to implement your project.

Benefits

• Successful applicants have access to a wide range of support options:
• International experts who provide support in validating business and impact models, developing prototypes, and acquiring initial customers.
• The chance to win a Social Impact Award during incubation, which includes prize money of €3,500.
• Public recognition and the chance to win a ticket to their annual SIA Summit.
• Access to their international alumni community, which consists of over 1,000 social entrepreneurs from more than 25 countries.

Selection Criteria

• By adhering to consistent evaluation criteria, they can fulfill their mission of helping young people take their first steps into the world of social entrepreneurship. Applicants must meet the following criteria:
  • To ensure that the majority of their offerings are aimed at young people, all core team members must be between 14 and 30 years old.
  • They welcome both ideas that have not yet been implemented and ideas in the early stages of implementation. However, ideas in the early stages of implementation can only be submitted if the project was founded after January 1 of the previous year.
  • Submitted projects must not have received any significant formal seed funding at the time of application. This is defined as formal grants from external sources exceeding €6,000 (e.g., angel investment, grants, prize money, etc.).
  • Ideas submitted in previous years, with the exception of previous finalists or winning projects, may be resubmitted. Individuals/teams may apply with new ideas, even if they were selected as finalists or winners in previous years.

Selection Process

• Review of submissions
  • Their local SIA team reviews all submissions to ensure that the formal criteria are met.
• Jury selection
  • Their jury, composed of experts from the private, public, and civil society sectors, evaluates the submissions based on their criteria: potential impact, degree of innovation, and feasibility.
• Finalist Announcement
  • Their team will announce the finalist teams selected for incubation at an event.
• Feedback
  • Their on-site team offers all submitters (not just finalists) the opportunity to receive feedback on their submission.

For more information, visit SIA.