Institute of Social Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University

Cohort Application

Thank you for your interest in IdeaLab! We’d like to know a little more about you, your professional background and interests, and the idea that you have for a social venture.

Please send us a single document that has the following, by 11:59 pm on Sunday, September 14th, 2012: ● Your resume (containing your current school and graduation date, as well as contact information) ● Your answers to the questions below.

QUESTIONS

Please answer these questions frankly—you don’t have to try to impress us! We don’t have word limits for your answers; we ask that you stay succinct and give us as much detail as you deem necessary for us to understand your point.

1. Please briefly outline your idea for a social venture. Please cover: a. What opportunity, need, or social problem does your venture seize, meet, or tackle? b. A description of the venture with appropriate info (ie. The description of a venture structured as a nonprofit would include a mission and vision and programs; the description of a social impact idea that is a product would include a product description, etc) c. What research (or other work) have you done to test your idea? d. What have you done so far to make your idea take shape? e. What is keeping you from successfully launching this venture?

2. What professional experiences and skills do you have that would make you a resource for your peers? (That is, when you are working with a cohort, how will your peers benefit from your presence?)

3. What do you hope to gain from this experience? How do you think it will benefit you to be a part of this project?

A Little Help: Here’s a sample response for Q1: 98% of the American food supply is grown conventionally with synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified seeds that have been linked to cancer, Parkinson's disease, childhood development problems, and soil pollution. Until policy changes protect our food supply we must advocate for our health, and the Naked Apron blog encourages women to negotiate healthy and realistic eating choices among conventionally and organic grown foods. The Naked Apron blog describes how food is grown in America through science driven content, aggregated data, and farming's sociological ramifications. The Naked Apron blog stands apart because it assumes nothing about the reader; the many "foodie" and "mommy" blogs on this subject have great barriers to entry and many others are written with a strong bias. We plan to generate revenue through a yearly e- newsletter subscription fee.

Please email your document to [email protected] with the subject line and document title “socialentrepreneur_your first initial and last name” (i.e. “socialentrepreneur_SDean.”)