Sustainability Revolving Fund Challenge
Accelerating sustainable innovation
What is a revolving fund?
A fund is a sum of money put together for a specific purpose. A revolving fund has the particularity of creating a model that not only puts together money and defines a purpose, but also helps replenish the fund and, therefore, advance toward the purpose for which the fund is established in perpetuity. In other words, a revolving fund is a tool that can help advance toward a vision of change and accelerate sustainable innovations by providing resources and expecting results with a long-term vision. These funds are usually operated by a specific organization with the mission of helping transform such institutions. Similar sustainable financial tools have already been implemented in many universities in North America, and contain around 120 million dollars in funding. In many cases they are called green revolving funds (GRFs) because they focus more on environmental objectives. Some examples are the GFL of Harvard University, WMU’s GRF or the Lane Community College EMF (Energy Management Fund).
What is the challenge about?
The challenge consists of designing an idea to create a sustainability revolving fund at Esade. The final goal is to accelerate sustainable innovation. This includes investigating the concept of revolving funds that are having an impact in other organizations, both public and private, and presenting a proposal tailored for Esade. The end deliverable will be a concept presentation in a short video format that tries to address these three questions:
How will the revolving fund be self-sustainable?
What should be the objectives of the revolving fund?
What impact will the revolving fund have on the Esade community?
To whom is it addressed and how can you participate?
This challenge is addressed to the Esade community: current students, former students and staff.
Participants can register as teams or individually. In the event of individual registration, you will be assigned to a team.
All teams will have from 3 to 6 members.
Registration open until March 22nd, 2021
Award
There will be two winning teams. These two teams will have the opportunity to work in more detail on their initiatives during the months of May and June 2021 in order to present their initiatives to Esade’s Executive Committee in July to develop a more specific proposal for the implementation of a revolving fund at Esade. The awardees will develop their initiatives under the guidance of the revolving fund team, led by Marc Vilanova (Director of the Academic Department of Society, Politics and Sustainability of Esade).
Registration
The format of the video has no restrictions except for the length (200 seconds max.) and should construct a narrative that integrates your reflections about the above questions. The proposal needs to include a theory of change on how Esade can contribute to sustainable development.
Stages
#Round 1
April 5th
Submission of short videos of the initiatives. From the submissions, a panel formed by Marc Vilanova, Sonia Gomez, Ramon Garcia and Jacobo Rengifo will select 10 semi-finalists, depending on the quantity and quality of initiatives received.
#Round 2
April 9th
The semi-finalists will go through a voting process in which the participants in the Sustainability Week events will be invited to vote for their favorite idea. The five most voted teams will go to the final round.
#Final Round
April 16th
The five finalists will present their initiatives to a panel of academic experts in the fields of sustainability, operations, marketing, finance and organizations. The presentation will take place on April 16th. Each team will have 10 min. to present their initiative followed by 5 min. of Q&A. The panel will select the two winners, who will be announced during the closing session of the Sustainability Week on April 16th.
Key dates
8th March to 22nd March – Registration period.
5th April – Deadline to submit the initiatives.
9th April – Announcement of Semifinalists.
12th to 14th April – Round 2. The Sustainability Week participants will vote for the initiatives and select the finalists.
16th April – Final Round. Finalists’ presentations to the jury and announcement of the awardees.
May and June – Workshop and follow-up between awardees of the challenge and the revolving fund team.
July 2021 – Presentation to Esade’s Executive Committee.
Contact info
For more information, please contact to revolvingchallenge@esade.edu.