Render is launching the second iteration of its national prize competition this week.
The public benefit corporation, working alongside Access Ventures, will host the Reconstruct Challenge, which will focus on addressing barriers to employment in the U.S. The first iteration of the competition, launched in 2019, focused on finding creative solutions to the nation's affordable housing gap and granted six innovations with $300,000 each.
This year, the Reconstruct Challenge will grant five innovations $100,000 each for their ideas that will address obstacles to employment, such as lack of transportation, childcare and support from employers, that prevent people from participating in the economy.
The winners will participate in a 12-18 month proof-of-concept phase where they will test their innovations in the Louisville and Southern Indiana region. After this period, one of the five innovations will have the opportunity to receive an additional $250,000 to further scale.
The challenge is open to anyone in the U.S. as long as the beta test of the innovation takes place in Jefferson County, Kentucky or Floyd and Clark counties in Indiana.
Registration for the Reconstruct Challenge started Feb. 1 and applications will open on March 1. The deadline to register is April 29 and the application deadline is May 27. For more information on the program click here.
Access Ventures is focused on finding solutions to help decrease the barriers to employment for individuals who want to work in the Louisville and Southern Indiana region, according to a news release.
“We are really excited to engage with Render on this challenge because we know that addressing these barriers to employment can allow families struggling with financial insecurity to find stability," said Bryce Butler, managing director of Access Ventures, in the release. "If we can identify solutions that address these barriers and help test and scale them, we have the potential to impact the issues of retention for employers and stable income for individuals in a big way and our region has the potential to lead the charge in proving out innovations that lead to more stability for low-income households."
The 2019 Reconstruct Challenge winners included Padsplit, Working Your Way Home, Urban Institute, Nesterly, Haven Connect, and mRelief, of which the latter three received $350,000 (mRelief), $100,000 (Nesterley), $100,000 (Haven Connect) in follow-on capital to further scale. Through the first program iteration alone 20,785 lives have already been impacted, over $14 million unlocked for families, and a 9X return on impact realized through the six solutions and Render expects to see those numbers continue to increase as they deepen their work within the local region over the coming years, the release continued.
“Render is excited to deploy a problem-oriented challenge to support Access Ventures in identifying exciting new ways to support our community," said Mallory Sanborn, senior project manager at Render. "Great ideas come from everywhere and we are confident our platform will help unearth some impressive new ways to support this community and help individuals thrive."
