This year marks the second Innovate for Good Challenge, an annual contest presented by Independent Sector and Accenture highlighting social purpose organizations using new I.T. to catalyze change. This year’s challenge recognizes organizations accelerating and scaling changework through the application of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and/or extended reality.
The contestants were evaluated using four major criteria:
- Mission alignment and impact
- Viability of solution
- Innovation and creativity
- Diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
We received a competitive pool of ideas and are pleased to announce an exceptional slate of 17 semifinalist organizations.
One winner will receive a $20,000 cash prize, and up to $50,000 in professional services from Accenture to help support the winning idea/solution. The second and third place finalists will also receive cash prizes. This week, staff from each of the finalist organizations will attend Upswell Chicago, where they will showcase their solutions in the Public Square, and where this year’s finalists will be announced Thursday, November 14 following a Main Stage event featuring Mick Ebeling.
Please join us in congratulating the semifinalists!
AARP Innovation Labs |Extended Reality (XR)
Alcove is a virtual reality product from AARP Innovation Labs aimed at combating social isolation by bridging the physical distance between people and the world, and between family members. Alcove brings intergenerational families together with VR and empowers people to experience new places and things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to because of cost, time, or mobility constraints.
CARE | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
CARE works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. Bihar, India’s infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world. CARE proposes an AI-powered “touchless” digital childbirth assistant/coach. Nurses at hundreds of healthcare facilities will be able to rapidly input assessments and access evidence-based protocols to make quick decisions, increasing safety and reducing maternal and newborn deaths.
Center for Elders’ Independence | Extended Reality (XR)
Center for Elders Independence is a provider of PACE, or Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly, enabling low-income older adults and individuals with complex medical care needs to age independently with dignity at home. CEI leverages virtual reality to deliver more compassionate, empathetic care to several hundred frail seniors in our care and to the community at large.
Collective Liberty | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Collective Liberty’s mission is to eradicate human trafficking by collaborating across industries, agencies, and sectors to rapidly scale data-driven best practices. Collective Liberty transforms the current dynamic of uncoordinated, reactive law enforcement investigations by analyzing datasets with sophisticated AI technology. It offers bespoke, regionally tailored training institutes; facilitates data sharing; and develops solutions to streamline adoption of best practices.
ENVision Mobile | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
ENVision Mobile is digitizing the supply chains of small retail stores in East Africa and collecting data about retail sales of consumer goods. Artificial intelligence enables ENVision to provide predictive inventory management and identify market trends. Verifiable Blockchain identities for manufacturers and their goods will open dialogue with consumers, increase trust, and combat counterfeiting.
Goodwill of Western Missouri & Eastern Kansas | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Goodwill empowers people to discover their potential and adapt for the future through the power of work. By harnessing artificial intelligence, automation, and mixed realities, the organization will revolutionize the donation cycle and customer experience in their thrift stores. The true impact is maximizing diversion of goods from landfills and training job seekers with barriers for the future state of work.
Inspiring Service | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Inspiring Service envisions a world of healthy, vibrant and connected communities. They create innovative solutions to inspire and empower people and organizations to strengthen and improve their community. Their innovative BoardConnect platform utilizes artificial intelligence to empower a community’s candidates and nonprofit board leaders to achieve diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
Johego | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Johego develops software to help social workers, nurses, and other public servants more efficiently connect people in need with social and medical services, such as overnight shelter and mental health treatment. Johego is dedicated to creating a world where connecting people in need with social and medical services is as easy as finding showtimes for movies.
Kiva | Blockchain
With a mission of expanding financial access to help underserved communities thrive, Kiva believes in a financially inclusive world where all people hold the power to improve their lives. Kiva Protocol is an exciting new initiative to give unbanked people digital identity and secure control over their own credit information.
KlickEngage | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
KlickEngage centers a mission to ensure every child feels safe and supported in every environment. They recognize that a student’s day does not begin in the classroom, so they amplify the voices of students and empower teachers with critical information in real-time. They are leveraging AI to make sure that teachers can be proactive instead of reactive to students.
Love Beyond Walls | Extended Reality (XR)
Love Beyond Walls was created as a hopeful response to a society building higher and higher walls. The organization focuses on telling the stories of those wrestling with homelessness using virtual reality and technology as a way of building empathy and changing the false narratives on homelessness. Greater empathy will spark more solutions and reduce the criminalization of the homeless.
QUIPU | Blockchain
Quipu is a digital marketplace platform for micro-merchants that builds credit and offers a digital means of exchange to previously unbanked and offline populations. By bringing informal economies online at the touch of smartphone, QUIPU is revolutionizing how data can be used as a community asset to democratize economic growth in the places that need It the most.
Research Blocks | Blockchain
Research Blocks is focused on creating transparency and credibility in various health-related industries. They are implementing a patent-pending dual-ledger system to track and timestamp the dietary supplement manufacturing process to openly share that process with consumers. This will ensure more quality products enter the market and give those products a competitive advantage.
Solve Education! | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Solve Education! is committed to helping children and youth around the world receive quality and effective education. They use innovative education technology such as gamification and artificial intelligence to achieve quality education for all.
Urban Institute | Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The Urban Institute opens minds, shapes decisions, and offers solutions through economic and social policy research. By harnessing the power of machine learning and satellite imagery of the earth, Urban Institute hopes to create more accurate building height and footprint data for cities across the US and unlock the key to affordable housing reform and accurate regional planning.
vCoder | Extended Reality (XR)
vCoder’s mission is to improve and expand computer science education by utilizing the immersive and engaging qualities of virtual reality to inspire and equip our future workforce. vCoder aims to increase access and interest in computer science to all students with a special focus on empowering young women, underrepresented groups, and under-served communities.
Volunteer Odyssey | Extended Reality (XR)
Volunteer Odyssey’s mission is to develop a pathway to volunteering that enriches our lives and communities. Their goal is to overcome Memphis’s low volunteer rate using innovations like their interactive, award-winning Heart of Memphis Mural on the facade of their office, which connects volunteers to service opportunities and through their VR, VolunTour360 to provide a realistic preview.
