2024-2025 Kirby Prize
The F. M. Kirby Prize for Scaling Impact is an annual global prize of USD $150,000 in unrestricted funds that amplifies and accelerates the work of an enterprise working to scale its impact on social or environmental problems around the world. Now in its fourth year, this program is administered by the Center for Advancement of Social Enterprise (CASE) at Duke Univesity’s Fuqua School of Business in partnership with the F. M. Kirby Foundation.
Honoring Fred Morgan Kirby’s entrepreneurial spirit, the Kirby Prize recognizes enterprises pursuing strategic pathways to impact at scale, who are close to the challenges at hand, who center the voice and experience of the populations they serve, who have demonstrated traction, and who embody courageous and collaborative leadership. This prize is open to any legal form, geographic location, and any social or environmental impact area.
The 2025 Kirby Impact Prize application window is now closed. You can learn more about the F. M. Kirby Prize for Scaling Impact, the application criteria, and past winners by visiting CASE at Duke’s dedicated website page.
Past Winner
2023-2024 Winner: Semilla Nueva
Watch the CASE Announcement
The F. M. Kirby Foundation and the Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business selected Semilla Nueva as the winner of the 2023-2024 F. M. Kirby Prize for Scaling Impact.
Semilla Nueva is a social enterprise dedicated to addressing malnutrition for the more than one billion people worldwide whose diets consist primarily of maize, while promoting sustainable agriculture through the development and distribution of biofortified maize. By focusing on innovative agricultural solutions, the organization works to enhance the nutritional content of staple crops, ensuring that they are rich in vital nutrients such as zinc, iron, and protein. Semilla Nueva collaborates with seed companies, smallholder farmers, consumers, and governments to create a system where biofortified, high-yield, and climate-resilient seeds are widely adopted. This approach not only improves the health and nutrition of millions of people, but also supports the economic stability and environmental sustainability of farming communities.
The prize, consisting of $150,000 in unrestricted funds, is designed to help amplify and accelerate an enterprise’s impact on social or environmental problems around the world. In the 2023-24 application year, five finalists were chosen from a pool of 200 applicants. The five finalists include both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises working across Haiti, Africa, and the U.S., focusing on impact areas such as low-income entrepreneurs, sexual violence prevention, sanitation infrastructure, and formally incarcerated workforce development.
Read more about the four other finalists: No Means No Worldwide, Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), The Somo Project, Urban Alchemy.