New Profit Launches Connected Futures Cohort—Discovery Forms Now Open
New Profit’s Catalyze cohorts support innovative social impact organizations expanding access and opportunity in America. This model brings together cohorts of organizations with similar focus areas and stages, providing each with a one-year $100,000 unrestricted grant, a $10,000 grant for leadership development, and strategic advisory support.
Social Entrepreneurs* participate in a year-long cohort experience designed to build community, facilitate peer learning, and provide capacity-building support, including workshops on topics such as board development, fundraising, scenario planning, and storytelling.
*We define a Social Entrepreneur (often the Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, or equivalent title) as both the leader and final decision-maker of an organization’s internal/external strategy, daily operations, and financial decisions. Organizations with co-leadership models will be considered.
About Connected Futures
Connected Futures is a new Catalyze cohort for organizations that help people move across active divides to take action toward common goals. We are looking for organizations that build trust, strengthen collaboration, and create ways for people to act together when mistrust, polarization, exclusion, or disconnection would otherwise keep them apart and prevent them from solving problems together.
These organizations may work in the health, economic mobility, democracy, and/or education sectors. What connects them is not a single issue area, but a common approach to bridgebuilding: creating the relationships, skills, and structures people need to work together toward positive change.
To be considered for the 2026 grantmaking cycle for this cohort, interested organizations are invited to complete New Profit’s Discovery Form by Tuesday, May 26, at 2pm PT/5pm ET.
Review the eligibility criteria below before submitting a Discovery Form.
Submitting a New Profit Discovery Form
Submitting a Discovery Form communicates that you are interested in funding from New Profit and gives us baseline information to help assess strategic alignment to a given grantmaking cycle before inviting organizations to apply.
Please note: Submitting a Discovery Form does not mean you are submitting an application. Learn more about our Discovery Form here.
If you are interested in being considered for the upcoming Catalyze Connected Futures cohort grantmaking cycle, select “Cycle-specific submission” in the “Submission Type” section of the Discovery Form and then type “Connected Futures 2026” into the search field that pops up. Otherwise, select “General Submission.”
Invitations to complete a full application to this year’s cycle will be sent in late June to organizations considered a strong fit based on alignment with New Profit’s portfolio investing strategic priorities. See below for more information.
If you have submitted a Discovery Form within the last 12 months, please reach out to [email protected], and we will send you a unique link to review and edit your prior submission. Otherwise, please fill out a new form for us to review.
Discovery Forms must be submitted via this link by the due date for consideration.
New Profit will also continue to accept Discovery Form submissions on a rolling basis throughout the year for grantmaking cycles taking place in 2026 and beyond.
Catalyze Cohort Eligibility Criteria
Organizations interested in being considered for the Catalyze Connected Futures cohort must meet the following eligibility criteria:
- Focus on the United States: Organization operates in and primarily serves communities in the United States and its territories.
- 501(c)(3) status: Organization or its fiscal sponsor is an independent 501(c)(3).
- Annual expenses: Organization’s annual expenses for its most recently closed fiscal year are between $250,000 and $2 million.
- Led by a full-time Social Entrepreneur(s): Organization must be led by at least one Social Entrepreneur employed on a full-time basis (~30 hours/week).
- Programmatic operation for at least two years: Organization has operated its program or impact approach for at least two years.
We are looking to fund organizations that have operated the core elements of their programming for at least two years. Legal structure over that time period is less important – an organization does not need to have had 501(c)(3) or fiscal sponsorship status for two or more years, as long as they have it at the time of submission.
- Not a previous New Profit grantee: Organization has not previously received investment from New Profit’s Build or Catalyze initiatives.
- Aligned with Strategic Priorities: Organization’s work is aligned with New Profit’s Portfolio Investing Strategic Priorities, outlined below.
New Profit’s Portfolio Investing Strategic Priorities
At New Profit, we catalyze the impact of social entrepreneurs who are expanding access and opportunity in America. We invest in organizations with a range of impact models that seek to transform the intertwined systems of opportunity in education, economic mobility, democracy, and health as the foundation to thriving communities. We are driven by the belief that those who are closest to the communities they serve are those with the most effective solutions.
To align with New Profit’s investment strategy for Connected Futures, an organization’s core work must be focused on helping people move across active divides toward durable connection, collaboration, and collective problem solving.
Differences are a normal part of a pluralistic society in which multiple distinct groups coexist while maintaining their unique identities within a single, unified political structure. Divides emerge when those differences harden into mistrust, contempt, fear, or disconnection that make it harder for people to listen, work together, share power, or pursue common goals. Connected Futures is focused on organizations that can help people cross that harder terrain, because solving systemic problems requires more than diverse participation—it requires rebuilding the conditions for people who may not otherwise see one another as partners to build trust, develop shared capacity, and take action together.
An organization aligned with the Connected Futures strategy will:
- Bridge divides between people with differences in backgrounds or beliefs. For example: political, racial, ethnic, economic, religious, geographic, generational, or ideological differences
- Use one or more of the following approaches as a core part of its model:
- Build the skills needed to engage in productive dialogue, conflict, and civic participation
- Cultivate relationships rooted in trust, understanding, belonging, and mutual accountability
- Create structures for collective action, co-design, problem-solving, or shared decision-making
- Show how its work strengthens connection (shifts in beliefs, attitudes, and relationships) and collaboration (shifts in skills and behaviors) among the people or groups it serves
- Align to one or more of New Profit’s core focus areas, Democracy, Economic Mobility, Education, and/or Physical & Mental Health, by demonstrating how it is strengthening the conditions for progress on critical challenges related to these systems
For any questions, please contact [email protected].
Catalyze Support Model
Catalyze cohorts bring together groups of innovative leaders who are proximate to the communities and issues they’re working on, to learn together over a 12-month period. New Profit invests in all participating Catalyze organizations with a mix of capital, capacity building, and community. Through Catalyze cohorts, New Profit has invested in over 250 organizations in recent years, with 86% of participating Social Entrepreneurs reporting that New Profit helped amplify their level of impact.
Catalyze cohorts are at their best when cohort members are fully engaged. The Social Entrepreneurs that lead selected organizations are expected to participate in the Catalyze support model and peer learning community in the following ways:
- Social Entrepreneurs attend three in-person convenings, each of which are held over 3-4 days in cities across the United States. Convening dates for this cohort will be shared with organizations invited to complete a full application.
- Social Entrepreneurs attend three virtual learning sessions, each lasting 2-3 hours. Webinar dates for this cohort will be shared with organizations invited to complete a full application.
- Social Entrepreneurs engage with the New Profit team via 1:1 strategic advising, including a minimum of six virtual sessions over the yearlong cohort.
- Entrepreneurs receive a $10,000 stipend specifically to support their own leadership development goals.
Programming requires a commitment of 6-8 hours per month on average. New Profit covers the cost of travel, accommodation, and meal expenses for each in-person convening.
About New Profit
New Profit is a venture philanthropy organization that catalyzes the impact of social entrepreneurs who are expanding access and opportunity in America. We provide capital, capacity, and community to a portfolio of organizations to increase their impact, scale, and sustainability. And we partner with social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and cross-sector leaders to shift how the philanthropic sector pursues social change and ensures that everyone in America can thrive. Since 1998, New Profit has invested over $350M in 275+ high-impact organizations serving more than 35 million people in all 50 states.