Innovative nonprofit start-up funding

In the 90's there was Classmates and SixDegrees, but it wasn’t until the 2003 launch of Friendster that online social network websites really exploded into public consciousness. Today there are over 200 such services, with the popular MySpace getting more daily page views than Google!

Last month, a new nonprofit joined this competitive fray. YouthNoise, a spin-off from Save the Children, is the first nonprofit, youth-based social network dedicated to social change. Headquartered in San Francisco, the organization is bringing together young people ages 16-22 from around the world to form a global network for sharing and converting their ideas into action. Featuring 100% youth-generated content, it already has registered more than 113,000 youth from more than 170 countries.

Yet what I found interesting was its funding model, according to PNNOnline:

… YouthNoise recently received an innovative first round of $1.5m in financing to support the launch of YouthNoise.com. This first round of funding was led by Omidyar Network and a consortium of the Surdna Foundation, the Rappaport Family Foundation and Virgin Mobile USA, among others. This investment in YouthNoise represents a blueprint for capitalizing high-performance nonprofits in a way similar to funding for-profits.