Fast Forward’s 2018 Accelerator Cohort

Hundreds of tech for good founders and supporters spent the evening at Box HQ earlier this month to see demo pitches from ten inspiring tech-centered nonprofit startups in Fast Forward's 2018 Accelerator cohort.

If you’ve taken part in Fast Forward’s journey over the past 4 years, you’ve likely had the incomparable experience of chatting with a tech nonprofit entrepreneur, or hearing one of them pitch at Demo Day. Their passion and grit is evident as they speak about their commitment to their mission, and why they cannot help but do this work.  The entire community gathering at Box to celebrate innovation for good were inspired by the ways Fast Forward cohort members are using technology as a building block for exponential social impact.

We learned that this group was Fast Forward's biggest (!!!) cohort yet.  Just about all the teams have built tech solutions to the problems we are reading about in the news every day.   We saw pitches supporting refugees,  DREAMers, those being harassed in the workplace, and veterans facing mental health issues.

Here's where you can learn about and donate to the Fast Forward 2018 Accelerator cohort:

• Dost Education: Mobile audio content that helps parents of any literacy level support their child’s early education success
• DREAMers Roadmap: A mobile app connecting undocumented students to hard-to-find college scholarships
• Empower Work: A real-time SMS hotline for workplace issues
• Learning Equality: An offline platform making open education resources globally accessible
• Objective Zero Foundation: An app providing 24/7 mental health interventions for active military and veterans
• Peerlift: Platform connecting underserved high schoolers to exceptional college opportunities
• Tarjimly:  A real-time translation app connecting the world’s 3 billion bilinguals to the 23 million refugees worldwide
• UPchieve: Free, online, & on-demand STEM tutoring and college counseling for underserved high school students
• Upsolve: TurboTax for personal bankruptcy
• We Vote: A national, digital guide that leverages the power of networks to make voting easier

Beyond the critical issue areas these teams are focused on, Box.org is also excited about the diversity of this cohort. Every one of the teams have at least one founder who is a woman or a person of color, echoing their diversity report findings.

Through Fast Forward’s 2018 Accelerator, each of these promising teams will receive:

• $25,000 philanthropic grant
• 3 months of curated training
• Meetings with over 100 mentors
• Access to their peer community
• 2 Demo Days, like that one this post describes - offering entrepreneurs a chance to pitch to hundreds of philanthropists, funders, and CSR leaders

The Box.org Fund was able to match donations made during this month's Demo Day!  According to Fast Forward it helped light a fire helping much needed funding arrive with cohort members.

We at Box.org love supporting Fast Forward Accelerator cohort members with donated/discounted Box access, volunteer mentorship, awareness generation and much more.  We proudly donate Box to nonprofits at www.box.org.