The J.M.K. Innovation Prize

Since 2015, The J.M. Kaplan Fund has reached across America to identify and support bold problem-solvers leading transformative, early-stage projects in the fields of heritage conservation, the environment, and social justice.

Announcing Our 2025 Awardees

The J.M. Kaplan Fund is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2025 J.M.K. Innovation Prize. 

This sixth biennial cycle of the Prize drew a record 3,790 applications, more than triple the 1,100 applications received when we launched this venture in 2015. The surge in interest underscores both the urgency of America’s social and environmental challenges and an outpouring of practical creativity and civic spirit across every state and sector.

With the help of 538 volunteer reviewers, the J.M. Kaplan Fund has selected ten outstanding organizations who are confronting pressing challenges with determination, optimism, and creativity. Each will receive $175,000 over three years and gain access to strategic counsel, peer learning opportunities, and annual convenings with their cohort of fellow innovators.

This year’s awardees exemplify the ingenuity and resolve needed to reshape the future of our climate and society – watch video interviews and learn more about each of their projects here.

For more information about the Prize and the 2025 awardees, please read our press release.

Learn More

Since 2015, The J.M.K. Innovation Prize has provided 60 social, cultural, and environmental change initiatives with valuable tools, training, and capacity-building resources, in addition to crucial funding. Read about all of our past awardees here.

To dive deeper into the Prize, read our reports on previous cycles:

  • Resilient Leadership in Times of Unrelenting Change (2023) examines our pool of 3,200+ applications and highlights innovators drawing on ancient practices and inherited wisdom, leaders driving change within the justice system, women of color confronting bias and inequity in healthcare, and more.
  • Building Pathways to Collective Power (2021) highlights trends and lessons learned from our pool of proposals in 2021, as well as reflections on how the Prize has touched off social impacts far beyond the Fund.
  • Growing Grassroots Resilience (2019) features seven takeaways highlighting the resourcefulness and moxie of social innovators committed to advancing community resilience.
  • Community-Based Change Agents Rise Up (2017) features insights from entrepreneurs using new technologies, cross-sector collaboration, and a blend of for-profit and not-for-profit tools to create change across the country.
  • Learning from America’s Social Entrepreneurs (2015) explores themes from the inaugural Prize cycle, including a prescient concern for income inequality as a lens for social practice.