About Sarah

Sarah Dodds was a social innovator who was passionate about capacity building for early-stage, high potential social enterprises and social businesses. Through her work launching Accenture’s well-known ADP (Accenture Development Partnerships), her work at Crisis and boutique consultancy projects and later her role as Director of Ventures for UnLtd, the UK’s foundation for social entrepreneurs, Sarah identified a crucial gap in the current support mechanisms available to social entrepreneurs. She focused on early-stage enterprises that had achieved some level of “proof of concept” but which were in need of business thinking and operational improvements to create a platform for growth.

Sarah’s untimely death in a cycling accident in June 2008 has led her friends and family to set up a programme to carry forward Sarah’s vision of injecting highly skilled, business-minded support into early-stage social ventures.

Tributes to Sarah can be found online at http://www.sarahtribute.wordpress.com.
Donations to the fund can be made at http://www.justgiving.com/rememberingsarahdodds

Stop Press: One year on - SDEA update and funders summary downloadable here:


funders_update.ppt
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sdea_update_june2009.pdf
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THE SARAH DODDS ENTERPRISE ACCELERATOR (SDEA)
What is it?
The overarching aim of this fund is to contribute to the development of inspirational initiatives and individuals that Sarah would have committed time and resources to.

The aim of the SDEA is to match early stage social initiatives with high-quality MBA graduate calibre individuals for internships that will focus on capacity-building and investment readiness.  Internships and associated costs will be financed from funds raised in Sarah’s memory and supported in a wider context by pro bono commitments from her network.  The purpose of these matchings will be two-fold:
•    To prepare the social initiative for scale – moving it towards sustainability, success and greatly increased impact, and
•    To inspire and educate MBAs, influencing their career choices and further ‘mainstreaming’ social and environmental change into the MBA process.

The fund was set up in 2008 and is managed by the following Advisory Committee: Rachel Dodds, Ben Metz, Jessica Shorthall, Paul Cheng.

What you can do?

1.    Contribute funds to establish and maintain this memorial. Consider setting up a monthly or annual payment. Contribute to the fund (through http://www.justgiving.com/rememberingsarahdodds or CIVA (Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action), 9 Mansfield Place, London, UK NW3 1HS – (with a note that cheques are for Sarah’s fund) and filling in the Gift Aid form attached alongside this document.
2.    Commit to getting involved – providing pro bono support, spreading the word and registering this on the online community as it gets established.
3.    Commit to being a case manager, for the matching of initiatives and interns, at some point in the future.  Register this on the online community as it gets established.
4.    Commit to being a guardian or steward of this memorial. 
For more information, please email mail(at)benmetz(dot)org

Sarah Dodds Enterprise Accelerator Social enterprise fund for MBA's to help capacity building and enterpreneurs