Applications open for Fast Forward Startup Accelerator 2024

The Accelerator is Fast Forward’s flagship program for tech nonprofits. They bridge the tech and nonprofit worlds, providing training and resources applicable to the challenges only a tech nonprofit entrepreneur knows. Through the Accelerator, you’ll receive a $25,000 philanthropic grant, build community among your cohort, meet dozens of mentors from the tech & social sector, and make connections to people who can help you scale.

The Accelerator is built exclusively for early-stage tech nonprofits. These are organizations that look like typical tech startups—they build tech products—and have selected a nonprofit structure because they are building for impact instead of profit.

What makes the Fast Forward Accelerator special?

Fast Forward’s program is designed to address the unique needs of tech nonprofits:

• Capital: Fundraising strategies (including tactics and sources of capital) are different for tech nonprofits at every stage of the fundraising process as compared to their for-profit peers. There are also unique challenges and opportunities available to tech nonprofits in particular, which they will help you navigate.
• Content: Their curriculum is different. Yes, tech nonprofits must focus on product, hiring, and growth. However, tech nonprofits also need to learn about board development, governance, leveraging volunteers, and other issues specific to nonprofits. The knowledge base they’ve put together for tech nonprofits differs substantially from what for-profits would find valuable.
• Customer: Because of their focus on impact over profit, nonprofits often chase the least profitable customer, which impacts go-to-market strategy and customer life cycle in a way that’s different from for-profits.
• Cohort: Entrepreneurship is lonely. Tech nonprofit entrepreneurship even more so. Tech nonprofit leaders tell them that because of their nonprofit focus they don’t quite fit into for-profit accelerators, and because of their tech/product focus they don’t always fit into nonprofit fellowships. They share a set of challenges unique to this intersection, and they’re excited to go through a program with others like them as well as provide each other ongoing support as their organizations grow.
• Community Key to their mission is building closer ties between the nonprofit and for-profit tech community. The tech world has the opportunity to have a huge impact on these organizations and therefore the world. Their focus on collaborative philanthropy is quite different from for-profit accelerators, which don’t need to invest heavily in community building due to the nature of venture investing.

How It Works

• Get Funded
  • Receive a $25,000 philanthropic grant
• Get Schooled
  • Learn from tech and social sector leaders
• Get Connected
  • Meet investors and like-minded founders

Selection Criteria

Fast Forward’s program is designed to address the unique needs of tech nonprofits:

• Leadership. Tech nonprofits face everything that is hard for a tech startup and everything that’s hard for a nonprofit. To pull it off, the leaders must have steadfast vision and incredible gumption.
• Lived in Experience With The Problem. People solve problems in front of them. They want to empower people to solve the problems they see and experience.
• Tech Talent. The tech vision should be the driving force of the organization and not an auxiliary program. To successfully execute that vision, tech talent must be in a leadership role.
• Potential for Impact. Impact is a thorny subject. To get to the heart of an organization’s potential, they ask questions like: Who is the organization primarily serving? If successful, how many lives will be positively influenced? How deeply will the organization impact those lives?
• Scalibility. Software scales incredibly well. They support organizations with a vision for change that is matched only by the potential for scale.
• Alignement. Fast Forward is a small organization. As such, they choose organizations who they are best poised to help scale.

For more information, visit Fast Forward.