A. YOUR TEAM

The following information is required to capture a basic understanding of the leadership, structure, vision, and the capabilities of your team.

WHO ARE YOU?
Each team must consist of approximately 10 individuals, and each team must be led by one person, who assumes final responsibility for completing the application.  Team leaders may delegate responsibilities to others, but each team leader will act as the primary point of contact and must coordinate answers to any questions and/or have a working knowledge of all decisions made by the team.

Please provide the name and title of your team leader for the purposes of communicating with your team. The person should be between the ages of 20-36.  If your team is a group of individuals with no formal titles, then the Point of Contact may simply indicate “team leader” and later describe how that role relates to the other team members. 

Please provide the phone number(s) and email address(es) of your designated Point of Contact.  Your team leader’s contact information will not be used for any purpose other than direct communication about the competition.

Teams may consist of either a group of dedicated individuals, who have come together to deliver a clear and compelling plan for executing a proposed project, and/or a structured organization with both legal and governing control over their proposed project.  Organizations may be either for-profit or non-profit, but for-profit companies must show their specific credentials as “social entrepreneurs,” to solve a problem which would improve the world.  If you are a for-profit company, within your country of origin please indicate the legally recognized structure of the venture (e.g., sole proprietorship, limited liability corporation, Pty. Ltd., Pvt. Ltd., partnership, Guarantee Company, etc.).  Public government agencies are precluded from applying. 

Please provide the total number of team members.  If the team is an organization, please indicate the total number of staff within the last reported fiscal period.  Please note that we are inviting teams of approximately 10 people, which should consist of one team leader (age 20-36) and all other members 18 or older.

Please provide the year in which your team or organization was established; if your team or organization has been reorganized or restructured, only offer the most recent date of instatement. If you are forming your team for the purposes of this competition, you can include the current year.

Please provide a narrative description of your team or organization management structure with the name/title for each senior team member or executive, responsible for delivering the proposed project, and their relationship to other senior team members or executives.  You may describe a formal organizational chart, but if your team is only loosely constructed please offer a description of how the parties share responsibilities and/or hold one another accountable.  Include a brief biographical statement for each of the top three team members or executives.  You may also list the name and credentials of any key advisors not included as a member of your team (up to three) who are responsible for counseling challenges where management appears to lack relevant credentials.  If your organization is governed by a Board of Directors, please describe those Directors briefly and any controlling authority that they have.
(up to 250 words)

If your team or organization has agreed to partner with one or more other organizations, please list each partner organization in a bullet point format, indicating the name of each partner organization, the point of contact for each partner organization (name/title), contact information for each partner organization (phone and email), and the legal structure of each partner organization.  Each team is strongly encouraged to develop partnerships, and to use the tools available through the competition website to identify potential partners or teammates. Following the list of partners, provide a brief narrative of the structure of your partnerships, such as roles and any specific decision-making control between the parties. Please note that all other elements of the application assume that your team or organization is the final controlling authority, that any financial commitments within one or more partnership(s) are disclosed, and that those obligations are incorporated as part of your own financial and operational considerations; if these assumptions are incorrect, please do not proceed further.
(up to 250 words)

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?

One of the goals of the Genesis Generation Challenge is to bring people and organizations together to deliver inspirational projects.  While we want you to focus on the detailed requirements to implement your proposed project, it is also important for us to understand your motivation and how you have been inspired to pursue your goals. At the Genesis Prize Award Ceremony in May, Michael Bloomberg specifically addressed young adults: “…believe that tomorrow can be better than today. It’s your responsibility to help make it so.” 
Please explain why you are inspired to take this charge.

Projects developed to better the world are often inspired by a person or series of events that led the team starting the project to believe in themselves and their ability to make a difference. Please describe who or what has inspired you and your team to pursue your goals.  Your inspiration may be embodied by a public figure, by someone with whom you have developed a personal relationship, or by certain events or circumstances.  In any case, please describe how your inspiration is connected to the Jewish values that your proposed project will realize.  
(up to 250 words)

You have already established “who you are” and “your inspiration.”  In this section, please synthesize the salient points about your team and credentials, which will serve as a brief and final pitch for your team or organization.  This brief pitch may be used in other materials, to encapsulate your team or organization and to offer others an overview of your capabilities.
(up to 150 words)

B. YOUR PROPOSED PROJECT

In this section, you will respond to several items that help you describe your proposed project. Your proposal should emphasize how your project aligns with the four traits that will be used to score your application.  You are also expected to describe how the proposed project relates to social entrepreneurship and how it represents Jewish values.  Take time to underscore both the specific strengths of your proposed project and how they represent broader qualities of an overall growth strategy.  Please read the entire section before starting.  Registrants may ask questions on the discussion forum(s).  Keep in mind that some of the project requirements include minimum expectations.  Your team is encouraged to exceed those minimum requirements. For an additional resource on Jewish values, please download this.

PROBLEM STATEMENT 
Each team must start with a clear and compelling set of goals to address a problem of public concern.  To achieve your goals, you must show that you understand the underlying problem before explaining how you intend to address it.  Take time to explain the circumstance that led to the problem and set the stage for why your approach will intentionally deliver meaningful breakthroughs.

Please provide an exact description of the big challenge that you are trying to solve. Offer a detailed explanation of the current resources that are dedicated to addressing it. Focus on how those resources are either not currently used to solve one or more aspects of the problem and/or why those resources have insufficiently led to results. You are approaching the challenge as a social entrepreneur; so, explain any previous attempts to solve the problem, if there were any, and why the big challenge persists within the current environment.
(up to 150 words)

Building on your description of the big challenge, offer a complementary description of the local conditions which you plan to confront.  Show us that you understand the environment where you have chosen to showcase your approach and explain your understanding of specific operational and tactical hurdles. 
(up to 150 words)

YOUR APPROACH
Now that you’ve defined the problem that you are solving and the local conditions in which you will showcase your solution, you’re invited to offer a description of your strategy and a specific scope of the proposed project.

Briefly describe your overarching approach to solving the big challenge that you have previously described.  This explanation needs to provide your core philosophy behind the solution, to illustrate any guiding principles or factors which would clearly differentiate your approach from other competing solutions.  
(up to 150 words)

The project pitch is your opportunity to share an overview of the project, your goals, any factors which validate your approach, including how you designed the project to produce measurable indicators of success (or considerations for ongoing improvement).  This description needs to entice the judges to read more, to understand the details of the project. Your response may be used by administrators to encapsulate your project for a public audience or other partners.   
(up to 150 words)

PROJECT PLANNING
In this section you will be asked to provide more specific details about your project. Please read all of the requirements first, so that you avoid repeating points or being overly redundant.  Your project plan must build, so that judges are left with a clear understanding of your goals, the measure of your success, and the steps required to achieve your results.

Please describe the product or service that your project will deliver and offer a narrative case study of one beneficiary’s potential experience.  Beneficiaries are defined as those individuals who receive a direct benefit from the product(s) or service(s) that you are offering.  This is your opportunity to emphasize depth of engagement. Regardless of how many individuals you plan to reach, you must first describe a typical experience, and later you will have an opportunity to project the number of beneficiaries. If you plan to offer multiple products or services, please illustrate a successful example of one individual’s experience across the full range of your efforts.
(up to 150 words)

Please provide the total number of beneficiaries of the proposed project.  For some, this is easily measured by headcounts (e.g., the number of individuals receiving products or services); for others, the benefits are harder to count (e.g., general awareness of an issue).  In any case, you are asked to provide a number of the projected beneficiaries, and later you will have the opportunity to describe how you will calculate those and other outcomes.  Do not include individuals who might benefit from the project through their involvement managing or volunteering in the effort – they will be described later.
(up to 150 words)

Provide the way in which you plan to measure the overall performance of the proposed project.  You will choose how to calculate your performance, but you are required to submit projected goals and the means through which you will track results.  While projects may range according to their goals and the way in which they define success, our judges will assess your project metrics according to how precisely your methodologies will track meaningful outcomes and how closely your metrics are linked to a meaningful assessment of your performance.
(up to 150 words)

Please provide the total duration of the proposed project (in months).  Every project must occur over a minimum of three months. Teams will be judged on their ability to exceed the minimum three month requirement.

In this section, you are asked to list the individual tasks that you must complete to implement and manage the project.  This exercise is important for the judges to understand your practical approach and the feasibility of your plan. For some, project plans are not linear, meaning that tasks may overlap or persist over the entire project – that is OK.

We are providing the following tool for you to document your plan. It requires you to indicate tasks by number and name. You will be assessed based on the level of detail you are able to provide, so we encourage you to identify any subtasks that will support your primary tasks.  Please list each task chronologically by start date, and enter end dates accordingly.  For tasks that start at the same time, please start with the most essential and continue the list in order of importance.

Now that you have mapped your project plan, please describe the use of any volunteers or other in-kind resources by describing those contributions against each relevant task identified in the project plan.  Your description of any necessary project support is intended to show where difficult tasks will be supported through means other than funding.   In your response, you may refer to partnership(s) that have been previously identified.
(up to 150 words)

Please describe threats to the proposed project and your plan to address them. While every project is different, we expect you to raise any assumptions and how you intend to manage risk(s).  
(up to 150 words)

Please provide a narrative description of your strategy for growth.  Base your description of the strategy on data provided in previous responses, such as how the successful execution of key tasks will lower risks and/or attract additional resources.  Your growth strategy should include detailed descriptions of inherent strengths, which would lead to scalability or net gains (e.g., financial returns or compelling outcomes for attracting additional sponsors).
(up to 150 words)

ALIGNMENT WITH JEWISH VALUES
The Genesis Generation Challenge is designed to encourage members of the millennial generation from across the globe to submit ideas for projects, guided by Jewish values, which will measurably better the world, and is directed at encouraging teams to creatively fulfill their potential and to engage with their community.

The goals of the Challenge also include promoting social entrepreneurship and inspiring engagement among young adult Jews (ages 20-36). Teams compete by attracting creative social entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for transforming their larger communities and also encouraging other Jewish young adults to participate.  We invite teams of young Jewish adults to form and to submit proposed projects, and we recognize that many non-Jewish team members will contribute.  We require every team to consider how their proposed project will represent Jewish values and how the project may attract Jewish young adults to participate, either as beneficiaries or as fellow organizers.

Please take time to identify the Jewish values which your project embodies.  We ask that you explain which Jewish values are driving your proposed project and how.  We welcome your story and encourage you to spend time considering your response.
(up to 250 words)

The Genesis Generation Challenge seeks to activate young adult Jews between the ages of 20-36, to connect with each other and to provide inspirational projects that represent their commitments to social entrepreneurship.  Use this section to describe how you plan to reach this group. After describing how you will reach them, please project the number of Jewish volunteers or beneficiaries that you will engage.  
(up to 150 words)

The Genesis Generation Challenge encourages you to make a personal connection to other teams and our judges. Therefore, you are asked to submit a video presentation, which captures your own pitch for why your proposed project should be funded. You will upload a short digital film before you can complete the application requirements.  Video submissions should follow these guidelines: 

• A length of 30-120 seconds (no more than 2 minutes).
• One person (two maximum) should present him or herself during the video.
• Focus on providing a personal connection; it is not necessary to produce a sophisticated video.
• Your pitch must be in English.

Video submissions that do not follow these guidelines may be removed from the application. 

Here are some logistical and technical suggestions: 

• Video cameras, digital cameras, and phones are easy ways to record your video.
• Laptop and desktop computers can typically record video through Skype or other software.
• If possible, set to a low resolution to reduce file size. This will enable an easier video uploading process.


Here are general suggestions for delivering a high-quality video pitch: 

• Introduce yourself and your organization.
• What is your proposed project?
• What is unique about your team and approach?

Hone your content:

• Keep your description and language simple.
• Demonstrate passion through your words and enthusiasm.
• Thoroughly prepare.

Practice numerous times and solicit feedback from colleagues, family, and friends.
You may publish your video to other registrants or teams and solicit their feedback.

C. RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

While the information that you provide under the previous section, Your Proposed Project, is intended to reveal strategic and practical implementation plans for your approach, we also require other information necessary for our judges to understand the health and scalability of your project.  For this reason, we are asking you to offer a detailed budget and notes, explaining all of your resource requirements.

FINANCIALS

What is the total cost to implement the proposed project within the specified duration?  This includes capital expenditures and operational expenditures.  Please list each cost category in the following table and provide notes for the cost categories if they require further explanation.  Please clarify whether each cost category is a capital expenditure or an operational expenditure.

Please indicate the amount of capital secured (to date) to implement the project in the first year.  You may enter the source of the secured funding in line item descriptions (e.g., Grant, In-Kind Resource, etc.). Also, please indicate any outstanding capital required to implement the project.  Identify this amount by entering “OUTSTANDING CAPITAL” in the last line item description.  The amount of “OUTSTANDING CAPITAL” should equal $100,000.  If it does not, then you need to provide a clear explanation for how you plan to secure the balance before your application can be considered feasible.

As you compose your resource requirements, it is important to remember that you are a social entrepreneur, and we encourage you to conceive of ways that your proposed project may become self-sustaining.  For some, that means that revenue may be derived from the project.  So long as your priorities remain focused on the social purpose of the project, generating revenue is considered an essential element of long term growth. Revenue may include the sale of products or services or the ability to pursue fundraising opportunities as a result of your outcome projections. In some cases, this might refer to in kind support you receive (e.g., free office space, equipment use, etc.). As you describe your resource requirements, please offer any other plans for how you may incorporate other methods for ensuring a healthy and scalable economic model.
(up to 250 words)