Among funding options for innovators, the obvious ones include competitions for grants and fellowships, crowdfunding (such as kickstarter.com), and angel investors. Besides providing necessary start-up capital, these avenues give young inventors wider exposure in the media, on the web, and in the social entrepreneurship world. Our goal is to provide some vetted lists of competitions and funding sources that may offer seed money and contacts to help realize their ideas.

Competitions:   Our database comes courtesy of Drew Durbin, our friend and inventor/CEO of Anza Technologies. Now based in Tanzania, and operated with a Tanzanian team, Anza grew out of Drew’s success with a non-profit venture he co-founded at Brown. Drew and his team raised over $100,000 in seed capital from over 15 competitions, including placing in the top 3 of 13 international competitions in 2009. Thanks, Drew!

Crowdfunding: Crowdfunding enables entrepreneurs to receive small amounts of money from many different people. This list comes courtesy o f the Public Service Center at MIT.