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What a Great Idea! Contest

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What a Great Idea!
A contest to support innovation in human services.


Contest Overview
The Providers’ Council’s What a Great Idea! Contest aims to support innovation and social enterprise in Massachusetts human services by helping provider agencies bring their innovative ideas to fruition. Social enterprises use business methods to help achieve their social missions and serve diverse clientele. Such endeavors have the potential to diversify revenue streams in organizations, provide new work opportunities for clients and consumers, increase efficiency and cost effectiveness, and create more jobs in the human services sector.

What a Great Idea! Contest winner(s) will receive consulting services from graduate students at local universities. Services received will depend upon the project and could include a feasibility study, marketing plan, business plan, strategic plan, etc.

The entry period for the 2012 contest is now closed. Winners will be announced shortly.

What last year's winners are saying:

"The collaboration with the BU Team gave us tremendous momentum and confidence, raised the profile of the project within JRI and provided us with a blue print for implementation.  The team’s business plan provided us with key development information, including financial data, sales benchmarks, goals for product development, market research, and an operational marketing strategy." - Deirdre Hunter, Justice Resource Institute

"Student work provided some good market data that changed our thinking abou tthe optimal customer in terms of size and IT needs." - Mike Moloney, HMEA

Contest Requirements
In order to be considered, ideas must:

  • Be innovative, new, and creative.
  • Serve the human services community of the Commonwealth.
  • Be feasible: the parent agency must demonstrate that they have the capacity and plans to support the project and bring this idea to fruition beyond the contest.
  • Be aligned with the parent organization’s mission as a human service provider.
  • Further self-sufficiency for the parent organization.
  • Be able to commit 8-10 hours of staff time each week that the 14 week consulting project is in progress. This will likely be spread out over multiple staff members.
  • Be connected to a human service agency based in Massachusetts that is a Providers Council Member. Not a member?

Restrictions:
All ideas must be brand new - the scaling up of an existing social enterprise is not an eligible entry for this contest.  All agencies must be members of the Providers’ Council to be eligible to win. Agencies represented on the ISE committee are not eligible to participate.

For more information, please contact Rachel Lurie at 617.428.3637 x125.