3, Hristo Belchev str.
1000 Sofia
Bulgaria
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Change Foundation is part of the Reach for Change Group that is an international non-profit founded in Sweden in 2010 operating in 12 countries on three continents.
Full-time employees are 4 people – management, administration, program and communication. Temporary we work with 14 peoples – design and delivery of workshops, pro-bono trainers, mentors, interns.
Budgetary resources available in 2021 are 100 000 EUR fund-raised from Nova Broadcasting Group and ING Bank.
Our projects are PROMYANATA, Innovation for Inclusion, Social Innovation Fund, Project “Transfer of Innovative Practices for Enhancing the Social Impact from the Activity of Social Entrepreneurs”.
Main partners involved in the organization's projects/activities are Reach for Change, Nova Broadcasting Group, ING Bank, The Business Institute.
A special focus for the partnership between ING Bank and The Change Foundation is on providing support to social entrepreneurs in Bulgaria to better serve the underprivileged groups of the society through Sofia Innovation Fund.
The vision of The Change Foundation is a world where all children and youth reach their full potential. Since 2015 we’re working towards this vision by finding social entrepreneurs and empowering them to develop and scale innovative solutions that help children have better lives.
We find social entrepreneurs through our search and selection, and support them in becoming investment ready to qualify for intensive support in our incubator programs. We run development programs for social entrepreneurs, tailored to their specific development stage. The social entrepreneurs are supported to scale their innovation through capacity-building, network connections and funding, all in partnership with multiple sectors.
Our medium-term objective is that our social ventures develop effective solutions for children and youth and become ready to scale. More specifically our objectives are that, by the end of their third year in the incubator, our social ventures:
- Have proven an effective solution for children and youth
- Are ready to financially sustain their operations at scale
- Have strong leadership and a team ready for scale
- Have initiated impact scaling
- Have begun carrying out systems change activities (if applicable)
Our long-term objective is that our alumni (the social ventures that have graduated from the incubator) scale their impact to a significant share of their target group, contributing to the fulfillment of the sustainable development goals for children and youth.
The Change Foundation's projects:
PROMYANATA Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs (2015 – 2020) - to support early stage social entrepreneurs to develop and scale their innovations, solving pressing social issues for children and youth. Within 3 to 5 years in the Incubator SEs to have proven their impact, become financially sustainable, established a strong leadership and team, and to have initiated scale of their impact. To develop a community of social entrepreneurs.
PROMYANATA Pre-Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs (2015 – 2020) - to support early stage SE to get investment ready for the Incubator of The Change Foundation . To support the development of the SEs in terms of: effective solution, financial sustainability, pitching . To create a community of SE.
Innovation for Inclusion (2020 - ....) - to empower innovators to develop their sustainable solutions for social inclusion.
Social Innovation Fund (2015 – 2020) - to support, through social-entrepreneur initiatives that have a sustainable business model and that create social change in Bulgaria, especially for underprivileged people.
Project “Transfer of Innovative Practices for Enhancing the Social Impact from the Activity of Social Entrepreneurs” (2017-2018) - to research, pilot and transfer in Bulgaria innovative practices for support of social entrepreneurs in regard to: impact management, organisational growth and impact scaling, system change.
Accelerator and Incubator for early stage SE in the field of Education (2018- 2019) - to help teachers and alumni of Teach for Bulgaria further develop their knowledge, skills, and capacity in order to start successful businesses dedicated to various social causes
The Change Foundation's programs:
Pre-incubator and Incubator program – our pre-incubator and incubator are designed to support social enterprises in the proof-of-concept and early-growth stages. We help social entrepreneurs maximize and effectively measure their social impact, strengthen internal capacities and increase revenues and typically lasts up to three years. The incubator supports includes:
- Capacity-building. We offer advisory, technical training, mentoring, coaching and peer-to-peer exchange across five key development areas: effective solution, financial sustainability, leadership and team, impact scaling and system change.
- Network connections. We connect our social entrepreneurs to our local and international network of experts and funders, with the aim of creating new learning opportunities, partnerships and sources of revenue.
- Stamp of approval. In addition to assistance with capacity building and access to network and grant funding, a place in our incubator represents a stamp of approval because of our highly competitive selection process.
- Grant funding. Selected social entrepreneurs are offered unrestricted support for developing and delivering their solution and for strengthening the capacity and capabilities of their team.
In addition to the direct support to social entrepreneurs, The Change Foundation also works to create a sustainable supportive environment that enables social entrepreneurs to develop and scale. This includes increasing awareness of social entrepreneurship, facilitating cross-sector exchange and establishing support networks.
Our contribution to the Network will be the network of social entrepreneurs in Bulgaria that The Change Foundation have been built since 2015. We can contribute with our strong methodology. The methodology of the incubator program centers around the Development Tracker, a tool consisting of development milestones that like a map or curriculum sets out what is to be achieved during the program. In addition to our direct support to help our incubator participants achieve these milestones, we offer support through different resources (lectures, tools, quizzes, articles and homeworks).
One of our core principles on how we design our program is co-creation, partnering for change. We work with local and international partners who are brave enough to innovate together and to invest in new ideas and people. Participating in the ALF Network we would be grate to make more partnerships.