Announcing NMV's Fall Cohort: 9 Innovative Projects!

The NMV team and I are thrilled to announce the 9 innovative projects NMV funded through our 2021 fall season: kweliTV, Right to Health Action, Seam Social Labs, Men4Choice Education, ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest?, Accelerate Impact, Ameelio, Liberation Ventures, and Rep’d!

We can’t wait to catalyze even more funding, connections, and technical assistance for these groups. If you’d like to support these incredible leaders in any way, please let me know and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

kweliTV celebrates global black stories and amplifies black storytellers through curated and critically acclaimed indie films, documentaries, animation, web series, children’s shows, audio stories & live experiences. kweliTV helps its consumers understand politics, culture, and society through a progressive lens.

How You Can Help: Make a donation and introduce them to an impact or angel investor!

Right to Health Action (R2H) is a COVID-19 born, battle-tested grassroots movement, comprised of and led by women and people of color, mobilizing COVID-impacted people in all 50 states to stop COVID, build back better, and prevent future pandemics. Their organic, up-from-nowhere group is leveraging this moment to win historic victories and make progress toward pandemic-proofing the planet.

How You Can Help: Make a donation to help them scale their work, introduce them to a funder, and connect them with groups doing digital grassroots organizing or working on related issues in the advocacy/legislative sectors.

Seam Social Labs is on a mission to empower community voices through technology. And their first product, co:census, helps government teams gather and analyze inclusive data to achieve equitable outcomes. 

How You Can Help: Invest in their company (they’re currently raising a round) and help them find and recruit new staff members!

Men4Choice supports the women and impacted individuals leading the movement for reproductive freedom by activating, educating, and mobilizing male allies into the fight to protect and expand reproductive freedom.

How You Can Help: Make a donation to support their work and help them scale their impact!

¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? is scaling their successful distributed bilingual reporting model developed for the ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? podcast to create a larger media network that will include culturally competent news and feature stories, distributed free of charge to media outlets nationwide.

How You Can Help: Make a donation, introduce them to a funder, and/or connect them with local Latine community leaders interested in hosting community engagement events virtually and, when safer to do so, in-person throughout the Midwest.

Accelerate Impact (the nonprofit arm of Revolve Impact) combines policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, and digital media strategies to advance long-term systemic change. Accelerate Impact has engaged and integrated many of the nation’s most prominent entertainers and athletes into campaigns that have significantly increased issue-specific education and participation in local and statewide civic efforts.

How You Can Help: Make a donation to support their capacity building work and introduce them to potential funders!

Ameelio is a fast-growing technology nonprofit that leverages software to combat mass incarceration. Their free-to-use communication and education platform is designed to disrupt the predatory $3B prison communications and education industry and create a more humane and rehabilitative corrections system. They are poised to democratize access to family connectivity, education, and reentry services for millions of incarcerated people and their families.

How You Can Help: Make a donation to support their work, or introduce them to someone who can! Intros to funders focused on tech and criminal justice especially welcome.

Liberation Ventures (LV) is a field builder that takes a networked approach to fueling America’s movement for racial repair. A Black-led organization, LV supports the ecosystem of organizations working on truth, reconciliation, and reparations in order to build public will for a comprehensive, federal financial and non-financial reparations program.

How You Can Help: Make a donation to support their work, or introduce them to a funder. Intros to high-net-worth individuals are especially welcome.

Rep’d is an always-on video town hall platform that powers the digital conversation between voters and candidates, constituents and elected officials. Rep’d gives candidates and elected officials the ability to aggregate voter questions, provide responsive video answers, collect voter engagement data, and market their video answers via email.

How You Can Help: Invest in the company (currently raising a seed round) and connect them with people and institutions in the civic/political space who might be interested in using their platform.

*****

As a reminder, if you're interested in joining NMV in supporting these projects, please let me know and I'll be happy to connect you with their leaders.

If you want to help spread the word about these amazing groups, please send this blog post to your network and share our posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for funding for your startup, send us your information via the Startup Intake Form on our Criteria & FAQ page!

And if you’re interested in funding the next wave of progressive innovation, we’d love to connect. Please reach out to NMV Director of Partnerships Arbour Decker.