The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth announced the newest grant recipients of the Mastercard Strive Innovation Fund, with nearly $2 million in grants distributed globally.
Mastercard Strive supports early-stage solutions “with the potential to drive outsized impact for small businesses in the categories of sustainability, digitalization, community lending, and more. Funding is awarded to change-making organizations focused on building, testing, and scaling creative solutions that drive small business growth, financial resilience, and environmental sustainability.”
The Strive Innovation Fund program, which is administered by Caribou Digital and DAI, will support 11 organizations around the world, “including seven organizations focused on innovative digital solutions that support small businesses’ growth in environmental sustainability and data for market access.”
In the United States, grants will be awarded, “through Strive USA, to four organizations focused on elevating and accelerating promising ideas for strengthening the small business ecosystem through digital and data-first approaches.”
Shamina Singh, founder and president of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, said:
“Every day, digital advances are creating new opportunities for small business growth and resilience. Mastercard Strive helps provide the necessary funding to develop and scale ideas and solutions that meet the needs of small businesses today and for the future. This is key as we work toward an economy and society that promises opportunity for everyone, everywhere.”
Strive is a global portfolio of philanthropic programs that aim “to help small businesses around the world thrive in the digital economy.”
Through targeted grantmaking and local partnerships, Strive supports small businesses with the goal of “building more resilient enterprises that have more opportunities to grow and succeed.”
Some of the Grantees of the Strive Innovation Fund include:
Global
Vested Impact, Global
Vested Impact assesses “the impact of companies’ activities against the 169 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Targets. They are developing a portal for automated impact assessment for small businesses, particularly in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.”
Asia Pacific
Alner, Indonesia
Alner employs a reusable and returnable “packaging system in Indonesia, replacing single-use, non-recyclable packaging for daily essentials. They empower small businesses as resellers with a digital solution, namely a mobile app, enabling them to sell zero-waste yet affordable daily products and monitor consumer habits, packaging return rates, and business performance to drive efficiency.”
North America
Accessity, Calif., U.S.
Accessity opens the doors of financial opportunity “for primarily low-to-moderate income and diverse entrepreneurs through access to small business loans and a community of support and resources. Accessity’s SmartLend solution will utilize Accessity’s years of lending data and integrate AI-enabled tools to enhance the client experience through education and resources, predictive analytics, and a simplified and expedited loan application and underwriting process.”
For more details and complete list of grantees, check here.
