The Million Lives Club (MLC), a new initiative that recognizes and raises awareness of innovators and social entrepreneurs that are making a significant impact in addressing global development challenges, announced its first cohort of 44 social innovations at SOCAP on 22 October. 

Inspired by members of the International Development Innovation Alliance, MLC is made up of three cohorts of innovators and social entrepreneurs who are improving the lives of those living on less than $5 a day:

You can view innovation profiles for all the social innovations of this MLC cohort on the Million Lives Club website powered by GIE Custom. Each member has an innovation profile with basics such as the focus areas of their work listed along with the geography in which they are being implemented. The profiles also include Milestones achieved by these innovations such as funds raised or recognitions like MLC. Milestones that have been provided or confirmed by the partners are marked as Verified.

These innovation profiles serve as “digital pitch decks” and are managed by the social entrepreneurs behind the innovations. They serve as an easy way for entrepreneurs to get their innovation included in GIE’s searches for funders or others looking to support these innovations as well as receive relevant funding alert emails.

Global Innovation Exchange (GIE) played a key role in not only powering the website but it also: 

1. Brought new innovations to MLC: 73% of applicants, including 22% of the social innovations, heard about MLC from GIE
2. Provided an easy application process: 18% of the applicants used information from their public GIE innovation profiles to auto-complete relevant parts of the application. 
3. Connected applicants to new opportunities: 103 GIE innovation profiles were created using relevant application information for those who didn’t already have one. Social entrepreneurs will be able to use these newly created innovation profiles to apply for future opportunities as well as “digital pitch decks” to get in front of prospective new partners. 

This is part of GIE’s vision for a Universal Application to save valuable time currently spent filling out applications with identical questions for various opportunities. 

There are 13,000+ innovations on GIE already so the GIE team works with partners to mark some information as “Verified” to help surface the most promising and validated innovations in the ecosystem. All the members for the MLC have a Verified milestone on their profiles with this achievement which will help surface them to the top of searches.  

Explore the innovation profiles for the 44 extraordinary social innovations selected for the Million Lives Club. 

The Million Lives Club will continue to accept applications on a rolling basis. The deadline for inclusion in the next round of reviews will be 10 January 2020.  

To learn more about GIE Custom, visit here and to learn more about how your program can use GIE’s Universal Application, email us.