YouthFundMeet the founders we're backing.
Each year, YouthFund selects a small cohort of high-school fellows and backs their social-impact ventures with funding, mentorship, and community. These are their ideas — and the teams making them real.
Choosing this cohort was the hardest part — and the best.
[Tell the real story here: how many teams applied, what moved you, the conversations that stuck with you, the moment you knew. Make it personal — this is the part people remember.] We read every application and met every team, looking past polish for one thing: founders who couldn't stop building, even with nothing but an idea and a reason that mattered.
- 01
Open call
We invited any high schooler with a social-impact idea to apply — no connections, no fees, no gatekeeping.
- 02
Applications
[#] teams told us the problem they wanted to solve, and why it was theirs to solve.
- 03
Conversations
We sat down with the finalists — not to test them, but to understand them and what they needed.
- 04
The cohort
We chose the founders we believed in, and put real funding and mentors behind every one.
Small teams, serious ideas.
The examples below show the format — replace them with your selected teams: name, founders, school, and the idea they're building.
ReadyMentor
[Founder names] · [School]
Turns high schoolers into paid peer tutors for younger students in under-resourced schools — a youth-run answer to the tutoring gap.
GreenPlate
[Founder names] · [School]
An app that routes surplus cafeteria food to local shelters before it's thrown out, cutting waste and feeding neighbors.
MindRise
[Founder names] · [School]
A peer-led mental-health support network that trains teens to show up for each other between counselor visits.
CodeBridge
[Founder names] · [School]
Free weekend coding workshops that get first-generation students their first portfolio project and first internship.
AquaSense
[Founder names] · [School]
Low-cost water-quality testing kits and a simple dashboard so communities can monitor their own wells.
Lingua Buddies
[Founder names] · [School]
Pairs bilingual teens with immigrant families for language practice and help navigating school and city life.
Replace these six with your real cohort. Each card holds a category tag, the venture name, the founders + school, and one or two sentences on the idea.
Know a founder who belongs here?
Applications for the next cohort open soon. If you're a high schooler with an idea — or you want to back the founders we've already chosen — we'd love to hear from you.