Santa Clara University

The GSBI Accelerator focuses on organizations which have demonstrated the ability to create significant social impact and to conduct financially sustainable operations. For those 10-15 applicants selected to receive scholarships valued at $25,000 for GSBI 2013, the program will last from May through December and will consist of online, mentored exercises, and a 9-day in-residence program (August 15-23, 2013)  which are designed to create an investment-ready, fundable plan for scaling the organization.

Overview

Begin the application process by filling out the application form with details about you and your enterprise. Once we have received your application, we will provide a document storage link for you to upload four files from your organization, all of which will be treated as confidential.

The 2013 GSBI Application Package consists of the following five components:

These components may be presented in an existing format; however, we provide examples and templates, and encourage you to ensure that whatever format you utilize addresses the required information.

(1) Application Form

Go to this link to fill out the application form. Once we have received your application, we will provide a document storage link through Box.net for you to upload four files from your organization, all of which will be treated as confidential.

(2) Elevator Pitch

As you are contacting potential funding sources, partners, and others who may be interested in helping you, it is valuable to have an Elevator Pitch. An Elevator Pitch is a 2-3 minute verbal summary of:

• What an organization does. (What are your products or services?)
• Who the intended beneficiaries are. (Who benefits from your products or services?)
• Why the organization’s product or service is important to the beneficiaries. (How, specifically, are the beneficiaries’ situations improved?)
• Why the organization is the best at what it does. (Why are you a better choice than the alternatives?)
• How the organization measures what it does. (What metrics do you use to know if you are successful?)

The intended audience for an Elevator Pitch is someone who is interested in potentially helping the organization (financially) and therefore is interested in what the organization does, but is generally unfamiliar with the organization and its intended beneficiaries. Submit a video or audio recording of your Elevator Pitch in any standard Windows Media Player format (file name extensions: .asf, .asx, .avi, .wav, .wma, .wax, .wm, .wmv, .wvx).

(3) Summary Business Plan

There are many different outlines for business plans. You may use any outline for the plan, such as those given in either of the Background Resources, as long as you provide all of the information listed in the outline below. This outline shows the recommended number of PowerPoint charts, should you decide to submit the document in PowerPoint format. Alternatively, you may submit a Word document.

Outline of information required (with recommend number of PowerPoint slides or Word document pages):

4.1 Mission, Opportunity, Strategies, and Impact (3)
4.2 Value Proposition (1)
4.3 External Environment (1)
4.4 Market/Beneficiary Analyses and Sales/Marketing Plan (1-5)
4.5 Key Operations and Value Chain (1-3)
4.6 Organization, Governance, and Key Partners (2-3)
4.7 Business Model and Unit Economics (3)
4.8 Metrics Dashboard (1)
4.9 Future Financing: Amounts Needed and Uses (1)

(4) 3-Year Financials

In this document, you will provide 3 years of financial data including:

If you are not on a calendar year, use your current fiscal year as “this year.” If you’d like to provide financials for more years, feel free to do so, but you must show at least these three years of financials. We will accept any electronic format for your financials – a spreadsheet, a Word document, or the output (pdf) from any commonly used budgeting software.

(5) Operating Plan

Submit a 1-year operating plan for your organization for your current or next fiscal year, containing the following information:

1. Key programs/strategic initiatives, with owner/manager, measureable outcome, and target completion date for each
2. Tactics for each strategic initiative with milestones and resource requirements
3. A resource table showing all the required resources in terms of money, people, and support