The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta is honing in on innovation in the city, with the recent adoption of the ATL + Israel Women’s Accelerator and other resources for entrepreneurs.
The ATL + Women's Accelerator officially launched on Thursday, where twelve Jewish women in different stages of their startups began learning how to bring their companies to market and connect with female mentors in Israel over the course of five weeks. The women will pitch their ideas and business to the community on Dec. 12.
But this isn't the first product of innovation to come out of the Jewish Federation of Atlanta---it's actually one of many initiatives.
The JFGA's focus on innovation spawned about a year and a half ago from front porch conversations with the entire community throughout greater Atlanta, according to Vice President of Innovation Jori Mendel. Through those discussions, the organization realized it needed to provide a culture of innovation to assist the future of Jewish Atlanta.
"What are we doing from the innovation initiative? We’re really trying to build this ecosystem and new culture of experimentation, learning and collaboration," Mendel said. "And we are really serving as a lab that’s supporting and nourishing bold new ideas for social good, and also supporting existing legacy organizations and figuring out how can you make them operate more efficiently, provide them the skills that they’re looking for to succeed in this market…really how are we making those connection points."
The federation has chosen to reach out to existing legacy organizations and others in the tech community to help them tap into the greater ecosystem, Mendel said. Her goal is for Atlanta to become the Jewish innovation hub.
Though situated in the Bible belt, Mendel said the city has a growing Jewish population and the creation of the innovation department at JFGA was to help Jewish entrepreneurs find resources in their community.
"The reason innovation is critical at this moment in time is because the face of Judaism and the face of our community is changing and the needs of people are changing and so to be able to equip all of the incredible organizations that we as a Jewish Federation help support to do better business, to serve the changing base of the community, we felt that innovation was critical," she said.
Innovation, is not a one-size-fits-all model, Mendel said, which is why JFGA is able to crank out several avenues and resources for their community. From connecting entrepreneurs with mentors to offering skill-building classes to having conversations with leading tech companies to launching the women's accelerator, it's all about establishing connections.
The federation also offers a Bloom Innovation Microgrant Fund where from one to five applicants can be awarded $500 to $2,000 every quarter. Applications are still open for the fund till October 31. On a larger scale, JFGA offers $5,000 to $15,000 to an innovation proposal that can be used for a yearlong project or to scale a business.
"We kind of felt like this was an opportunity to reset the stage and to really pivot and position us to think and act like a tech business and many ways, like a startup, in our organization," she said.
