The world has been undergoing so many changes in the last few years, and our society has begun to have a deeper interest and understanding of how businesses focused on social impact can be key to changing the future. In this year’s recruitment for our 2023 Cohort of Global Good Fund Fellows, we received more than 3800 applications. Our applicant pool was a reflection of the diversity of entrepreneurs working on social good, building businesses focused on change, and reflecting how much society is longing for big bold solutions that will have a lasting social impact.
We began our Fellowship recruitment process after a very successful in-person Gala & summit earlier in May, with our 2021& 2022 fellow class joining us in Washington D.C. This year we received over 3,800 applications from various global areas in the world. These were some of the new countries that we received applications from:
- + Hong Kong
- + Haiti
- + North Macedonia
- + Madagascar
- + Mongolia
- + Bosnia
- + Myanmar
- + Thailand
- + France
This year’s search & selection process could not have been as successful without our partners, our alumni & our community. We hit our biggest record-breaking number of applications; showing once again that the community of social entrepreneurs and social change-makers is growing. The Global Good Fund is committed to supporting social entrepreneurs who focus on creating positive change in health, education, and the environment, and through their social enterprises are enabling economic mobility and financial inclusion. Our applicant pool reflected our five major sectors through this breakdown:
- + 39.8% Education
- + 28.6% Environment
- + 23.6% Health
- + 20.9% Economic Mobility
- + 15.4% Financial Inclusion
Many of our applications fall in this intersection between all five sectors or their work touches goals related to the SDG goals set out by the U.N. Our metrics this year hit an all-time high with 80% of applications being submitted by people of color, 7% self-identifying themselves as part of the LGBTQIA community and 4.85% self-identified as a person with a disability. We are so privileged to have so many social entrepreneurs all over the world apply for the Global Good Fund Fellowship. Thank you to everyone who shared our call for applications with your networks, for our applicants who put in the time and effort to apply for this fellowship, and for the social entrepreneurs around the world who continue to do good and strive to change the world.