2027 US Nonprofit Accelerator

Barrier Breakers® is an education and economic mobility organization building pathways for first-generation and low-income students to become leaders in the industries that shape society. Having served more than 7,000 students and families, Barrier Breakers provides personalized advising, mentorship, and career preparation from college access through graduate education and into careers in law, healthcare, STEM, finance, and climate. Barrier Breakers students have achieved a 100% college acceptance and graduation rate and a 95% graduate school acceptance rate. By expanding who enters these influential fields, Barrier Breakers brings lived experience and greater proximity to marginalized communities into the institutions and decisions shaping our collective future.

The Center for Ethical Intelligence (CEI) works to ensure that AI advances human flourishing, dignity, and accountable use at a moment when capability is outpacing meaningful alignment. Building on diverse existing and emerging principles and governance frameworks, CEI translates abstract ethics into measurable infrastructure: datasets, benchmarks, and open-source tools that model developers can apply directly in how AI systems are built, trained, and evaluated. Its work connects AI governance policy, alignment theory, and ethics practice, contributing to academic scholarship and practitioners alike. Serving researchers, developers, and policymakers, CEI aims to make values alignment something the field can measure and test rather than merely assert.

Joy Education Foundation builds public literacy infrastructure by expanding access to high-quality, evidence-based reading instruction through virtual and mobile learning models embedded in communities. Joy Education serves over 3,500 students with diagnosed and undiagnosed language-based learning disabilities, along with their families.

The vision is simple: to see every child in need raised in a strong family. The mission is clear: Kids Matter runs community-based, evidence-informed parenting programs for families, to reduce the impact of poverty on children in need. When children grow up in poverty, family relationships suffer—and the impact can echo through generations. That’s why Kids Matter comes alongside parents facing the greatest challenges to help them build strong, positive relationships with their children. Because making this one change can spark change that lasts forever. Kids Matter partners with local churches and community organizations to support parents of young children living on a low income and with limited support to bring about generational change.

La Cuna Center envisions communities where people live in healthier, more balanced relationships with the places they call home. Based at a field station in the Texas Hill Country, La Cuna brings together artists, designers, scientists, land stewards, and local communities to understand the challenges facing a place and develop creative, practical responses. Through site-specific works, films, public programs, fellowships, and other forms of storytelling, La Cuna translates what is learned locally into ideas and experiences that can help people live, build, and care for their own places more thoughtfully. Their distinct approach combines long-term, place-based research with interdisciplinary creative practice, using art and design to make complex challenges tangible, invite broader participation, and imagine better ways forward.

Living Redemption Community Development Corporation is a Harlem-rooted nonprofit creating redemptive pathways for youth, families, and communities impacted by violence, justice-system involvement, poverty, and disconnection. Their relationship-centered model integrates mentoring, credible messengers, education, employment, family support, violence prevention, and community healing because services and opportunities become transformative within trusted relationships. Living Redemption has attracted and stewarded over $33M in investment while growing from a mentoring initiative into a comprehensive community ecosystem. LR’s foundational Arches mentoring model was part of an independent Urban Institute evaluation that found participants experienced a 69% lower felony reconviction rate after 12 months. Deep community trust enables LR to work alongside institutions and systems toward more restorative and redemptive responses.

My Village Ministries is a gospel-focused nonprofit that equips and mobilizes local churches to become a source of long-term care and community for isolated families facing crisis. Their vision is to see a world where no family faces crisis alone—where the Church helps prevent family separation, preserves families, and makes abortion an afterthought by surrounding parents with tangible, enduring community. In Central Ohio, My Village’s church-based model has contributed to a 39% decrease in the number of children in foster care, mobilizes more than 75 volunteers for every staff member, and has provided more than 4,000 days of wraparound support to vulnerable families with unexpected pregnancies in the past three years. Phil and Melody are now working to scale this model into new communities, equipping churches to move beyond crisis response and walk alongside families for the long haul.

NeuroKids envisions a world where no child suffers or dies from hydrocephalus because of where they are born. NeuroKids expands access to surgical care by training, mentoring, and equipping local surgeons and their teams in low-resource settings, with a focus on the dissemination of the life-saving ETV/CPC procedure pioneered by Dr. Ben Warf. Through their global network of expert faculty, NeuroKids has trained neurosurgeons who are now serving as trainers themselves, creating a multiplying model of local leadership. This approach builds sustainable systems of care by empowering surgeons not only to provide high-quality treatment but also to train the next generation of clinical leaders. NeuroKids has supported more than 4,000 life-saving surgeries for children, delivered over 800 hours of neurosurgical training, and partnered with hospitals in 21 countries, expanding access to specialized care where it is needed most.

Every year, millions of believers find themselves drifting or struggling in their relationship with God. Many individuals will go on to leave their faith behind altogether. (Research predicts that up to 40 million people in North America will abandon their faith in Jesus by 2050.) Each time this happens it's heartbreaking—for the person, for their friends with faith, and for God. Streams Studio exists to serve Christians who are at risk of walking away by creating sharable video content that sits within places of distraction: social media. To date, their videos have been viewed more than 150 million times.

Choir Room believes that everyone has a voice and every room can become a choir. They bring together people across generations, cultures, denominations, and backgrounds to address widespread loneliness and division by creating spaces of belonging, joy, and shared purpose. Unlike a traditional choir or concert, there is no audience and no audition; everyone participates by singing gospel music in the round. Choir Room has grown from gatherings of hundreds in Nashville to thousands in multi-city events, as well as a digital audience reaching more than 13 million views.

The Grace Network helps embody the promise of Jesus' Luke 4 mission statement in the economic, intellectual, social, and political communities we habitat. They build monasteries for the modern world—ancient wisdom for modern problems—that give space for all to come together. The Grace Network employs 136 staff across four sites in South West England and has a Bishops' Mission Order with the Diocese of Gloucester. The business model is simple: take over large buildings and use the 7 Sacred Spaces model to hold trading businesses and community events, and offer training and personal and spiritual development in one place. All trading revenues are used to grow new sites, share crisis resources with the marginalized, and share this model through training and development.

The Great Commission will only be finished in our lifetime if ordinary people multiply disciples inside their own networks. Yet most have simply never been shown how to begin. Waha exists to empower and equip people everywhere to multiply disciples among the unchurched and the unreached. Waha's free app has helped nearly 100,000 groups in more than 180 countries across 60 languages read scripture for themselves and hold each other accountable to obey and share it; the majority of those groups began as seekers. Waha builds alongside organizations already carrying this work, including Frontiers, Pioneers, YWAM, the IMB, and YouVersion, with a vision to make disciple-making simple, reproducible, and viral everywhere.