Alumni Programs
When you graduate from the Miller Center Accelerator, your journey doesn’t stop there. We continue to support alumni with high-touch, custom solutions that meet your evolving needs as your enterprise grows.
Supporting Social Enterprises to Scale
Following the curriculum and mentorship of the core accelerator program, Alumni Solutions are designed to accompany social entrepreneurs by offering supported deep dives into a range of growth areas through various formats. Objectives may center around direct, short-term investment goals, leadership development goals, organizational capacity-building goals, or a combination.
Close the Gaps in Your Business
Access custom mentorship, on-demand curriculum, university research, interactive webinars, and more to improve your business, impact, and financial models.
Develop Leadership Skills
Hone your leadership skills through one-on-one sessions with a Leadership Coach, or join a peer-to-peer Leadership Circle to process challenges together.
Prepare to Access Catalytic Capital
For nearly investment-ready alumni who need to develop fundraising collateral and strategy, our impact investing team can help you prepare to access funding.
Social Enterprise Excellence Award
Each year, Miller Center nominates a select group of social enterprise alumni for the Social Enterprise Excellence Award. Recipients of the award have scaled dramatically since initial participation in a Miller Center program and stayed engaged with Miller Center through multiple touchpoints and participation in other programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most of our alumni solutions are designed for sustainable, scalable social enterprises whose stage of development falls within our “sweet spot” of post-revenue startups and early growth, and whose mission is centered around women’s economic empowerment, climate resilience, or both.
In order to apply for alumni opportunities and access a continued network of support, the social entrepreneur and their enterprise must:
- complete our annual alumni survey to update us on their growth and progress
- meet the individual requirements of the program, evaluated during the enrollment process
- Check out our Alumni Opportunities page on Miller Center’s Community Platform for up to date opportunities.
- Additionally, the Alumni Newsletter is sent the second week of every month, with updates on upcoming opportunities, interest forms and application links, recorded webinars, and featured alumni in the news. Email mc-alumni@scu.edu with any questions, or to share your news with us!
Miller Center Alumni can reach out to mc-alumni@scu.edu at any time to express interest in any of these opportunities below on a rolling basis.
- Customized Project-Based Mentoring. Customized time-bound support in key areas most often requested by our entrepreneurs. These categories represent the experience and skills represented within our mentor network. Through a Bespoke Work Plan and scoping process, Miller Center staff and mentors collaborate with the entrepreneur to clearly define their needs and determine the scope and timing of the mentored engagement (3-6 months).
- Curriculum-Based Mentoring. Formerly offered as discreet cohorts, some structured curricula (Impact Measurement and Management, Governance, and more) are available on-demand accompanied by mentorship for the qualified social enterprise. (3-6 months)
- Ad Hoc Single or Limited Session Mentoring. For social entrepreneurs seeking a mentor’s help with thought-leadership, brainstorming, problem-solving, or second-opinions on business-related topics, Ad Hoc Mentoring offers direct one-on-one feedback in an “ask me anything” style call. (Limited to one 1-hour session. Can extend to additional sessions if both parties are aligned.)
- Miller Center Lewis Family Fellowship. We recruit ambitious and enterprising teams of third-year undergraduate students who prepare a research proposal, gather data on-site, and provide consultancy-style reports for you and your team over 10 months.
- Miller Center Internship. All undergraduate or graduate student internships are for a minimum of 3 months and are paid by Miller Center.
- Santa Clara University Faculty Research. Miller Center Scholars represent an interdisciplinary group of faculty who are actively engaged in teaching, research, and service in social entrepreneurship.
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“Our mentor helped us define and nail down concrete impacts. Now I have a dashboard to track financial and social impact metrics that I can share with investors and retail clients.”