Catchafire, a scalable professional skills-based volunteer matching platform, launched its industry-changing Beta site. CEO, Rachael Chong, founded Catchafire to improve the quality of the volunteer experience by providing opportunities for people to volunteer their skills in a powerful way. Catchafire is revolutionizing the way people volunteer through its innovative user interface and matching algorithm that makes high quality matches between professionals who want to volunteer their skills and nonprofits and social enterprises that need their help. Catchafire wants volunteers to think, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Since the soft launch of its Alpha site in May, Catchafire has matched over 70 organizations with professionals who have volunteered over 3,000 hours to provide over $500,000 in services. Catchafire’s new site will allow them to do this at a much larger scale. Catchafire Beta was built by CTO, Andrew Lin, who came to Catchafire from Hulu.com where, as VP of Technology, he built Hulu from the ground up to the household name it is today. Catchafire’s new site features include: Dashboard - users can now view and act on all of their volunteer matches through a single page - Project Logs - users can now keep track of their project progress - Project Qualification Quizzes - volunteers are now required to pass a short quiz before they are approved for projects - Facebook Connect Login - users can now use their Facebook credentials to access the site - New projects - users can now select new projects in areas including strategy, finance, technology, marketing, public relations, social media, multimedia, and design. Catchafire is also rolling out its Corporate Solution which provides companies with a pipeline of skills-based volunteer opportunities for their employees and tracking and reporting tools allowing them to measure the impact their employees are having on their community. Visit www.catchafire.org to learn more.

At this year’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Global Citizen Year made a bold commitment to send 1,000 diverse American high school graduates to the developing world annually by 2015. In pursuing this commitment, Global Citizen Year has already solidified partnerships with the Hewlett Foundation, Laureate International Universities, CARE International, the Draper Richards Foundation, and Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative. Watch this video to learn more.

Check out the revamped Encore.org: Expanded section includes encore career job finder, easy access points for those interested in finding encore careers (Explore, Prepare and Find), and top 5 job categories organized around health, education, green, government and nonprofit job sectors: www.encore.org/work. The new site also features a story bank of encore career profiles and a new animated video describing an encore career.

The Unreasonable Institute is launching applications and is searching for brilliant, ambitious, and innovative early-stage entrepreneurs who will be remembered by history as having changed the world! The Second Annual Unreasonable Institute will unite 25 of the world’s most promising entrepreneurs who are relentlessly tackling the world’s greatest social and environmental problems. Over the course of the 8-week Institute in the summer of 2011, these entrepreneurs (deemed Unreasonable Fellows) will work and live with 60 world-class mentors, pitch their ventures to investors and foundations in five major entrepreneurial hubs across the United States (San Francisco, Boulder, Boston, New York City, and Washington D.C.), learn from top consulting organizations, and gain unprecedented exposure, training, mentorship, and access to the seed capital needed to give their ventures wings. Ultimately, the Institute is relentlessly focused on one objective: accelerating ventures that future generations will remember as having defined progress in our time. If you are confident that you have what it takes and you are amongst the world’s most promising entrepreneurs, go to http://unreasonableinstitute.org/apply and join us in our effort to accelerate ventures that will ultimately meet the needs of millions around the world. Applications close on November 10.

In July, REDF was one of 11 organizations selected to receive the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Federal grant. As a recipient of the SIF, REDF will be selecting nonprofit organizations through an open, competitive process to join our portfolio and receive SIF subgrants. We are looking for strong organizations committed to building social enterprises to employ low-income individuals with barriers to employment in California. REDF is pleased to announce the launch of a web-based Request for Qualifications (RFQ) as the first step in selecting our SIF subgrantees. Completed applications must be submitted by 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Friday, October 15, 2010, although submissions prior to the deadline are encouraged and accepted. For additional information such as eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, selection process, and documents required to complete the application, please contact Jill Niehuser at jniehuser@redf.org.