"It's like a job. You have goals. You see results" -Yuriy, Experience Corps Member

The 43 winners – which include City Year, Citizen Schools, Jumpstart, Heifer International, Teach for America, DonorsChoose, the Grameen Foundation USA, and Hands On Network, among others – are featured in Fast Company’s December/January cover story (on newsstands November 21).

Civic Ventures is the only winner focused on the aging of America, specifically the aging of the baby boom generation. "The largest, healthiest, best educated generation in history is now passing through its 50s and 60s," notes Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures. "What happens in the next few years will determine if dramatic increases in longevity will become a crisis – or an opportunity for individuals and society."

Civic Ventures works to develop ideas and create programs to engage older adults in meeting society’s greatest challenges. "We’re focused on the new stage of life and work between the end of midlife careers and the beginning of true old age," adds Freedman, author of the upcoming book Encore: How Baby Boomers Are Inventing the Next Stage of Work.

"Where others see the high costs of an aging society, Civic Ventures acts in new and creative ways to uncover the value of experience in a society with so many unmet needs," says Mark Vamos, editor of Fast Company. "That’s the kind of thinking, leadership and innovation that we’re pleased to honor with the 2007 Social Capitalist Award."

Civic Ventures received the Social Capitalist Award, in part, for creating two major programs:

• Experience Corps – an intensive, team-based program that produces measurable gains for students, schools and older adults – engages 2,000 tutors and mentors over age 55 in underserved public schools in 19 cities.
• The Purpose Prize – launched in 2005 with funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton Foundation – provides five $100,000 and ten $10,000 awards each year to social innovators over 60 who are applying their experience and passion to some of society’s greatest challenges. The first winners were announced in September 2006. Nominations are now open for 2007 awards.