The Search and Selection process reviews applications and identifies social entrepreneurs for initially the Accelerator program. The broad and extensive selection process relies on support from our partners and stakeholders as well as prominent experts in the social sector. Many applicants are carefully guided through a five-step selection process of which a handful will be successfully identified as future social entrepreneurs.

The Accelerator stream takes on smart, brave and passionate social entrepreneurs working to improve the lives of youth, women and children who will be connected with advice, expertise and tools to grow their operations. They will receive financial support and coaching in areas such as business development, leadership and expansion strategy. The program is a maximum of 6 months and also includes coaching, business expertise and, if desired, a small grant.

Those individuals deemed competitive to reach all 4 S’s (ideas that are Sustainable, Scalable, have Social Impact and can bring about System Changes) will graduate to the incubation stream whence they will receive additional and more intensive support in the second year of the project./p>

The business incubation stream will create innovative, sustainable and scalable ventures with the goal to alter societies around the world, creating better lives for youth, women and children. The incubator provides support for one year. At the end of each year Reach for Change evaluates each social entrepreneur’s work. Depending on the results of the evaluation and the availability of funding, the social entrepreneur may be invited to an additional year in the incubator up to a maximum of three years. The intensity and frequency of support is much more than the accelerator stream. More intense follow-up and support is expected for social entrepreneurs that graduate to the incubation stream as opposed to a monthly schedule for the accelerator stream. It is important to note that the incubation program will begin in Year two of the project, once progress by the social entrepreneurs in the accelerator program is reviewed and potential to graduate in the incubator program is established.

Reach for Change is a committed goal-oriented organization. In order to aggregate the impact of many different social entrepreneurs who are part of our program, we have developed a method for them to identify goals and measure and report their impact. Reporting is thus a core part of the business development tools that the social entrepreneurs learn in the Incubator. The structure of reporting on and measuring impacts of our own organization as well as the social entrepreneurs is an important part of Reach for Change’s own business evaluation and development. We continuously evaluate and develop methods to ensure the quality, validity and credibility of our impact reporting.

Social entrepreneurs have social effects in focus. How does the work of the entrepreneur influence society and peoples’ lives? And how does the entrepreneur secure positive effects through sustainable and independent work? Reach for Change uses a model for evaluation and follow-up that is inspired by social accounting in combination with Theory of Change.