Around the world, social change organizations are discovering the power of competitions and challenges to identify and award breakthrough social innovations. The World Bank has dedicated $45 million through the Development Marketplace. This year Skoll Foundation has committed approximately $10 million to their challenge. Others like Changemakers, Net Squared and the Case Foundation are managing impressive competitions and identifying important social innovators and their innovations. These competitions hold the potential to identify and fund innovative, early-stage projects with high potential for development impact. Often held online, at the global, regional and country level they attract immense talent. But what happens to the winners of these contests? How do they go on to scale-up their impact through dissemination and replication? Winning a prestigious award within the social development sector shouldn’t be a dead end. It should be a launching pad. Impact Ventures seeks to assist and accelerate the connection between social innovations identified and vetted through diverse competitions and the social entrepreneurs and organizations ready to put them into practice around the world.