Civic Ventures announced yesterday that JVA Consulting President/CEO Janine Vanderburg was one of five winners in its first ever Launch Pad contest,  which aims to help people over age 45 turn creative ideas for solving problems in their communities into working solutions. The winners, who beat out 20 other finalists from more than 1,000 submissions nationwide in an online voting contest, will each receive $5,000, plus resources and support from the larger Encore.org community. Here is the story in the Huffington Post.

Janine’s idea, previously described in this blog post, is to train unemployed/retired boomers with sales backgrounds to become nonprofit fundraisers, both creating jobs—encore careers— and infusing nonprofits with much needed funding for their programs. The project will build on JVA’s successful Development Director Intensive (DDI), adding to DDI specific training to help boomers who have worked primarily in the private sector for most of the careers successfully transition to nonprofit employment and/or board work.

In the next few weeks, Janine will be convening groups to further shape the idea and move from idea to reality. If you are:

  • Someone who would like to help shape this idea, or has thoughts to share about it
  • Someone who would eventually like to participate in the training, or
  • A nonprofit who would like a program graduate at your organization.

We’d love to hear from you! Please contact us by clicking here.