YIC is looking to launch an accelerator for youth-led non-profits in late 2024 or 2025. This project will look to provide youth-led ventures in the non-profit or cooperative space with funding, education, networks & mentorship to help grow and ultimately sustain their ventures long-term, with an eye on ensuring their impact can be maintained over time.

To do this, we are looking to gain a better understanding of the ecosystem that exists within our space to support youth non-profit founders, especially as we look to launch in late 2024 or 2025 an accelerator for youth non-profit founders. We believe this accelerator will be among the first of its kind for youth at a nationwide level, but recognize that there are likely support networks already there that we should understand and look to leverage where possible.

Equally, we want to conduct interviews and surveys with youth currently running such non-profit or cooperative ventures to better understand their challenges. This will help in program design and help in a more systematic way to validate findings from internal conversations that we have had with young youth founders across Canada.

Key project activities are below:

• Desk research around what supports exist in Canada for supporting youth-led non-profit or cooperative ventures, both at a nationwide and regional level
• Primary research with youth leading non-profit or cooperative ventures via interviews and surveys to better understood their needs as we design the ImpactFirst accelerator.
• Exploration around organizations with whom there is potential for meaningful partnerships as we build out our program concept, both for funding and in-kind support.
• Supporting in the design of documentation around ImpactFirst and advising the team on program design based on the findings of the aforementioned research
• Producing for the YIC team and external stakeholders a research report outlining the kinds of challenges and opportunities that may arise with designing ImpactFirst.

We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of where ImapctFirst could benefit youth in the non-profit or cooperative space. This is an ideal project for any students keen to contribute within the social impact space in Canada and possibly even beyond.

We will be providing mentorship throughout the project, especially given our own experiences developing youth-led non-profit initiatives, plus supporting such work as well.

Further, we are well-connected with others in the space and will strive to foster connections or networks wherever possible, both internally within the board/ staffing team and externally with other stakeholders who may be valuable to contribute to the project.