Which social entrepreneur should win $25,000? We let them decide.
How we designed and implemented a peer review system to award $25K
It was a thrilling moment: screams of joy, people jumping to their feet and raucous applause as soon as I announced Shantell Roberts’ venture — the Portable Alternative Crib — as the winner of Social Innovation Lab’s inaugural $25,000 Cohort Prize. This was the scene at SIL’s Impact+Innovation Forum, our annual “demo day” featuring the ventures in our six-month accelerator program.
The identity of the winner was a secret to the nearly 200 people in the room, including the venture leaders in the cohort. Most importantly, the winner was selected by the venture leaders via a four-month peer review process. Awarding this prize via a peer review process was a bit of an experiment and a new approach for us. Here’s how we did it.
Through our accelerator program, Social Innovation Lab provides early stage social ventures with a suite of resources to help them move their ventures forward faster. Among these are $1,000 upon acceptance to help launch a pilot program or create a prototype, dedicated office and meeting space, weekly workshops, and more. The most significant resource has been the intensive coaching and mentorship that venture leaders receive from:
- SIL’s Director (me), on a weekly basis to help them meet milestones and overcome challenges;
- Social Design Fellows, specializing in human-centered design;
- Innovators-in-Residence, seasoned social entrepreneurs that provide high-level insight and guidance; and
- Neighbor-in-Residence, providing a deep level of expertise and connections to help our venture leaders connect with neighborhood organizations and local government agencies.
Over the years, the $1,000 in seed funding has been catalytic for many of our ventures, helping fill a gap in their ability to transform their idea into a tangible project. We know, however, that in order to build a thriving, impactful, and sustainable venture it takes so much more. One of the biggest needs that our past ventures have stated is the need for substantial funding once they leave our program to help them expand their capacity and hire staff. Until this year, we were unable to offer that kind of funding.
Thanks to some adjustments to our program budget, we set aside $25,000 that would be awarded as a prize to one venture in the cohort. Inspired by Village Capital’s Peer-Selected Investment Model, we designed the prize so that the winner would be selected by the cohort itself — not by staff or a panel of experts.
Our peer review system is based on seven criteria that our venture leaders score each other on. In identifying these criteria, I looked historically at our most successful venture leaders to determine what traits set them apart from their peers. The seven criteria are:
1. Compelling Spokesperson
Whether the person/team is a compelling spokesperson or advocate for their venture. This is not necessarily the loudest or most “polished” speaker, but demonstrates palpable passion, enthusiasm, or commitment to their venture.
2. Vision for impact
Whether the person/team has and presents a reasonably ambitious vision for the impact their venture will have. They are not content with impacting a few, but instead wants to make an impact in a substantial way.
3. Vision for venture
Whether the person/team has and presents a reasonably ambitious vision for their venture (its future size, scale, impact, profile, etc.). They are not content with their venture being a small, underfunded, side-project.
4. Resilience
Whether the person/team acknowledges challenges and works to overcome them, not getting bogged-down by setbacks and roadblocks.
5. Empathy for and extensive understanding of beneficiary
Whether the person/team demonstrates empathy for and extensive understanding of the beneficiary of their venture. This may be demonstrated by significant validation and/or life experience.
6. Progress
Whether the person/team has made demonstrated progress on their venture during the program.
7. Generosity
Whether the person/team offers time, contacts, or ideas to help others in the cohort.
Each venture leader scored the other leaders in the cohort four times over four months. For each criterion, they gave each other a numerical score of zero to three (zero = no or don’t know; three = yes). They also had the option to provide comments for each score they provided. All of the scores from those reviews were averaged, and the team with the highest overall average became the recipient of the prize. Scores and comments were shared with the teams over time (with the identity of the submitter made anonymous), so that teams could benefit from the actual feedback from their cohort members in addition to the ongoing feedback they received from mentors.
We’re thrilled to be able to provide this additional support to one of our ventures. Our goal is to continue offering this prize and even offering mulitple prizes in the future so that even more of our ventures can take the next leap in their work.
As I mentioned earlier, this was in part an experiment for us. As with any good experiment we sought feedback from our venture leaders on what worked well and what didn’t work well with this process. As a result, we’ll be making some tweaks to the process such as requiring comments (not just numerical scores) for each of the criteria.
