Miller Center Accelerator (MCA25)

Take your impact to scale and get ready for the next level of investment! Create a credible, investable plan to scale your business and your impact!

If you lead a mission-driven social enterprise looking to scale a proven impact model, you’ve come to the right place! Miller Center’s Silicon Valley-based, globally recognized, investment readiness accelerator helps leaders develop pathways to scale and prepare for next-level investment.

We focus on social enterprises working on women’s economic empowerment and/or climate resilience. With proven curricula and accompanied by our outstanding executive mentors and leadership coaches, together we’ll uncover and address gaps and opportunities in your business, and develop an action plan so you can achieve your vision for organizational growth.

Grow Your Impact
100% of program participants leave with a more robust, integrated, and credible plan for scaling. Our graduates have collectively doubled their impact during their first 3 years post-accelerator.

Get Ready for Investment
9 out of 10 graduating social entrepreneurs report significantly increased confidence in their ability to fundraise. Within 3 years post-program, our graduates increased their investment raised by 50%.

Program details

Mentor accomplishment:

• Work closely with two of our 300+ executive mentors, comprising diverse start-up founders, serial entrepreneurs, and senior executives who have honed their expertise in companies such as Apple, Google, Intel, Paypal, Cisco and others.
• Leverage dedicated mentoring: 180 hours of executive mentoring that is focused, immersive, and customized to your unique business needs.

Tailored post-accelerator support: Access funding opportunities, investment facilitation, bespoke mentoring, leadership coaching, peer-to-peer leadership circles, dedicated support from undergraduate and graduate Santa Clara University students, and more.

Our proven approach:

• Apply our proven methodology that combines advanced curriculum with accompaniment by experienced mentors for 6-months of structured programming — like a “mini MBA” for social entrepreneurs..
• Deep dive into feedback sessions that fully prepare you to present your plans to investors.
• Prepare mock investment memos to provide investor perspectives and honest assessment of your investment readiness.

Our Definitions

Climate resilience: Social enterprises address the needs of those living in poverty who suffer disproportionately from climate change.Their climate resilience focus areas fall into one of the following three categories:

• Clean Energy — providing access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.
• Safe Water — ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation.
• Climate-Smart Agriculture — implementing sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices to increase productivity and production.

Women economic empowerment: Social enterprises that have a focus on women’s economic empowerment can be identified through one or more of the following areas (ideally all four):

• Social Enterprise Leaders: The primary participant identifies as female and is a founder, CEO, or other top-level leader with decision-making authority.
• Employees: The business model intentionally creates more jobs for women within the enterprise.
• Value Chain Contributors: The organization creates increasing business opportunities for women along its value chain (e.g., using a village sales agent model that is more amenable to women villagers’ lifestyles or buying products made by women).
• Customers: Predominantly female customers by design. In this case, “customers” refers to those who are positively impacted by the enterprise.

Requirements

Application requirements:

• A senior leader (e.g., CEO, Executive Director, Managing Director).
• Fluent in English.
• Has consistent and reliable access to internet connectivity.
• Has the availability to participate in the program’s 6-month duration, requiring an average of 4-6 hours/week.

Organization requirements:

• Committed to creating positive benefits for people living in poverty, addressing one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Is a social enterprise that is intentional about supporting women’s economic empowerment, climate resilience, or the intersection of both (see below for how Miller Center identifies women’s economic empowerment and climate resilience)..
• Committed to scaling its solution far beyond current operations.
• Has been operational for at least a year and is delivering products/services to customers.
• Has at least $50,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) in annual earned income and is not entirely dependent on contributions or grants.
• Has at least 3 paid, full-time employees (or equivalent).
• Has at least 3-months of cash runway.