SEED20 OnStage 2023

Created by Social Venture Partners (SVP) Charlotte, the annual SEED20 program identifies, highlights, and connects the community to our region’s most innovative ideas for tackling pressing social challenges. These innovations can be developed by an individual or start up, emerging nonprofit, or well-established nonprofit.    

Over two months, a class of nonprofit participants receives training, coaching, feedback, and mentoring on how to tell their story succinctly and powerfully – who they are and why they matter. Participants showcase their effort during SEED20 OnStage, a high-energy event where participants compete to win awards by making three-minute pitches to a community audience. On Thursday, April 27th, 2023, these mission-driven nonprofits will take to the stage to pitch their innovative nonprofit programs to Charlotte-area investors, donors, and community leaders. The priorities of our 2023 program include mental health, economic mobility, racial equity, and housing.   

Class of 2023 SEED20 participants:  

Community Kitchen Program (CKP) - Offers refugees and immigrants a free 10-week course teaching skills and Safe Serve Certification needed to secure quality employment in the restaurant industry of Charlotte. Having a strong skill set in food services is a powerful tool for increasing employability and earning potential. The CKP training concentrates on the essentials of culinary arts. 

The FACTS Initiative - Provides trauma-focused, evidence-based mental health therapy for children and families in the Charlotte Mecklenburg area. By providing outpatient services on an income-based sliding scale, The FACTS Initiative ensures that families receive necessary mental health care that would not otherwise be accessible. The FACTS Initiative also brings essential mental services directly to families by partnering with other community organizations.  

The Forum at Hope Haven - Helps the people who help the people. We provide training, connection, community, and collaboration opportunities for front-line non-profit staff working with the most vulnerable people in our community. We support dedicated community staff so they can serve with confidence, competence, and compassion.  

Friendship Circle - Cultivates genuine friendships between teens who are typically-developing and children, teens and young adults with special needs. The mission is to create appreciation for all people, recognizing that our unique differences are "by Godly design". For over a decade, Friendship Circle has introduced hundreds of Friends and nurtured genuine friendships through inclusive fun-focused programming in the Charlotte community.  

GardHouse - Offers semester-long paid internships with local small businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to college students of color to increase employment opportunities and change the statistic that minority college graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed. GardHouse remains the only organization dedicated to serving this demographic in the Charlotte area, which houses over 37,000 students of color.  

Juvenile Court Intervention Prevention Program (a program of Mecklenburg Council of Elders) - Aims to reduce juvenile incarceration by providing alternatives to incarceration through a community-based intervention program. Trained volunteers serve as juvenile advocates in delinquency court to provide equity in treatment, alternative methods of case management and disposition, and community resources in support of juveniles and their families.  

Money Magnets Club (MMC) - A West Charlotte community that teaches kids aged 5-11 the fundamentals of entrepreneurship through education, exposure, and resources. MMC is introducing Money TRAIN (Teaching Responsibility with Assets and Income Navigation) as a pilot program in 2023. Money TRAIN combats contributing factors to intergenerational poverty, while promoting intergenerational wealth practices, by pairing a two-generation cohort with asset and income support.  

Pivot Point Transitional Housing - Offers those experiencing homelessness access to dignified, low-cost mini shelters in village settings as bridge solutions while they pursue stable, long-term housing. By providing safe, clean habitation and positive support systems to elevate the overall health and well-being and offer socioeconomic opportunities, Pivot Point creates a village that promotes upward mobility through community and unity.  

Sullenberger Aviation Museum (SAM) - Developing a new destination that celebrates the innovations that led to the emergence of today's aviation industry. In doing so, SAM will excite future generations of innovators through its mission to inspire, educate and elevate with diverse and equitable access to STEM programs with a goal of building pathways to economic mobility.  

The Third Talk- Protects children from exposure to internet pornography by educating kids and parents together. Underage American children are the largest viewing demographic of internet pornography in the world. The Third Talk provides the practical real-world language necessary to initiate a pornography prevention conversation between parents and children plus the “how and why” to keep the conversation going throughout adolescence.