Spark Category: Education

Meet Dan Weibenbenner

Motley Fool Recognizes Weibenbenner as Rule Breaker.

Dan Weibenbenner, Social Innovator, Founder and Executive Director of Mill Village Ministries, joins The Motley Fool Foundation’s inaugural cohort of Financial Freedom Rule Breakers. 

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 1, 2023 – The Motley Fool Foundation (TMFF), a public charity dedicated to Financial Freedom for all, has announced that Dan Weidenbenner, founder and executive director of Mill Village Ministries, will be joining its first cohort of Financial Freedom Rule Breakers.

“The Motley Fool Foundation’s signature program, Financial Freedom Rule Breakers, is aiming to bridge the gap between the five drivers of Financial Freedom – housing, work, money, health and education – and help fewer Americans live paycheck to paycheck,” said Jennifer Gennaro Oxley, executive director of The Motley Fool Foundation.

Mill Village Ministries is the parent organization of a collection of social entrepreneurs working together to elevate the Greenville, South Carolina, community. The organization currently operates Village Launch, a grassroots entrepreneur and small business incubator; Village Wrench, a community-based bike shop; Mill Village Farms, an urban farm, youth employment, and healthy food enterprise; and Village Engage, a faith-based community education and organizing platform that focuses on confronting the systemic problems of poverty, racism, and environmental inequity.

“Mill Village Ministries started when community members and I began teaching four teenagers to grow nutritious food for communities with limited access to fresh and locally sourced produce,” said Weidenbenner. “Thanks to The Motley Fool Foundation’s Rule Breakers program, Mill Village Ministries will continue to grow to meet the community’s needs.”

By investing in Rule Breakers like Weidenbenner, The Motley Fool Foundation is currently impacting more than 115,000 lives and is on track to grow its program to fund 25 Financial Freedom Rule Breakers by 2025.

“It takes a special kind of person to create breakthroughs, and The Motley Fool Foundation is finding them, connecting them, learning from them, and helping them go further, faster,” said Oxley. “Our Financial Freedom Rule Breakers are social innovators bringing fresh, solutions-oriented thinking and paving the way toward a better equilibrium for all.”

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Fools for Good

The Motley Fool and The Motley Fool Foundation Recently Teamed Up to Serve Communities Around the World

The Motley Fool and The Motley Fool Foundation teamed up to Pay It Foolward! by volunteering for a half-day of service helping local and national nonprofits on Friday, December 9, 2022. Fools across 17 locations in the U.S. and Australia chose to work with organizations that included Carpenter’s Shelter, Habitat for Humanity, Jeffco Eats, Junior Achievement, Feed More, Note in the Pocket, Mecklenburg County Solid Waste Management, The River Food Pantry, Catchafire, DoSomething.org, Project Gutenberg, and the United Nations.

The Motley Fool Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Gennaro Oxley said, “With the Foundation’s focus on finding, funding, and amplifying ways to help people living paycheck to paycheck, and at this time of year when things are particularly difficult, it’s so important to recognize the value of lending a hand to the many organizations that are on the ground helping strivers become thrivers. Our team of Fools is committed to helping make change happen for those who need it most since it’s been an important part of our core culture and company DNA for the last three decades.”

Spark Conversation Series

The Spark Conversation Series

The Motley Fool Foundation, in partnership with Ashoka, presents the Spark Conversation Series, which showcases social innovators – people the foundation refers to as “Foolish Rule Breakers” – and the creative ways they’re working to help Americans transition from financially striving to financially thriving. Spark Conversations focus on real-life solutions developed by social innovators who are making changes now that will impact those living paycheck to paycheck for generations to come.

“The idea behind the Spark Conversation Series is to better understand what’s actually working to promote Financial Freedom,” says David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool and chair of The Motley Fool Foundation board of directors. “What’s moving the needle that deserves more of our attention? But we also identify where there are gaps and where the opportunities lie to move from sparks to much bigger impacts.”

In episode five of the Spark Conversation Series, which was recently launched, Gardner and Ashoka US Director of Strategy and Partnerships Michael Zakaras talk with social entrepreneur Alex Bernadotte, founder of Beyond 12, about the work she’s doing through her organization.

Beyond 12 gets to the heart of social mobility and financial opportunity by creating a powerful feedback loop between K-12 schools and post-secondary institutions. Bernadotte and her team influence the national conversation about educational equity and student success by working with more than 2,000 students on 180 college campuses throughout the United States.

“It is possible to look at a child in this country and predict with alarming accuracy where that child will end up in terms of their educational and economic outcomes based solely on their race, their ZIP code, and their parents’ level of education,” says Bernadotte. “These are the gaps that fuel me as a social entrepreneur and are certainly the gaps that fuel our work and our desire to play a role in creating a society where race and income no longer predict post-secondary success and upward mobility.”

Previous episodes of the Spark Conversation Series feature social entrepreneurs from across the United States and from multiple industries and include Stacey Epperson, founder of Next Step Network; Brandon Dennison, founder and CEO of Coalfield Development; Alison Lingane, co-founder of Project Equity; José Quiñonez, CEO of Mission Asset Fund; and Priti Krishtel, co-founder and co-executive director of I-MAK.

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Financial Freedom for All.
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