Our Story

The Thunderbird D-Prize award is a partnership program between the Thunderbird Project Management Club at the Thunderbird School of Management and D-Prize.

The Project Management Club’s mission is to develop global opportunities for students, practicing project management and support their professional development through practice and experience.

D-Prize is dedicated toward expanding access to poverty-alleviation solutions in the developing world. Many solutions to poverty already exist; the challenge is distributing these solutions to the people who need it most. We tackle this by challenging social entrepreneurs to develop better ways to distribute proven life-enhancing technologies, and then providing crucial funding and support so that these ideas can launch a pilot. D-Prize was started by a team of investors and social enterprise co-founders who are excited to support the world’s next wave of entrepreneurs who will change the world. D-Prize is a 501(c)3 organization.

Benefit for Students

Winners of D-Prize competition have a high rate of success, even though they begin at the idea stage. Every single one of our winners has gone on to launch an actual new pilot and begin scaling. Why?

Winners have high impact ideas. We have already identified a suite of proven interventions that, if distributed, would have enormous social impact. Focusing on distribution means that new ventures will reduce the risk of R&D, become operational quicker, and scale more rapidly.

Winners also receive mentorship from successful developing world social entrepreneurs. Current mentors include Kiva President Premal Shah, One Acre Fund co-founder Andrew Youn, and Sanergy co-founder Ani Vallabhaneni.

Why D-Prize is Unique?

Co-funding: Winning teams receive a total prize purse of $10-20k, and any funding that you put forward toward that amount would be matched with.

Issue Selection: Many competitions glorify new products, but we believe innovation only counts when it leaves the lab and reaches actual people. Through research and practical field knowledge, we have identified a number of proven poverty solutions that have yet to be distributed at scale. We challenge students to focus on these solvable, high-potential issues.

For instance, childhood vaccines have existed for generations and cost only $20. Yet infectious disease is still responsible for nearly 1 of every 5 childhood deaths. An entrepreneur that can figure out a way to better distribute these vaccines could single-handedly prevent hundreds of thousands of easily avoidable deaths.

Active support: We are active during and after the competition. We provide operational support to help run the competition, established entrepreneurs to judge proposals, and ongoing support to winners as they launch.

Convertible Grant: Funding from D-Prize is offered in the form of a convertible grant. An award given to a for-profit winner may have the option to convert to equity if the company issues stock to other investors in a Series A funding round. An award given to any non-profit winner or to a for-profit winner that does not sell stock in a Series A round will be treated as a grant.