AquaXi
Shauna Lee Young
website

Many people don’t think their own water is safe to drink, so they spend money on bottled water, which can cost up to 10,000 times the cost of tap water. Or they buy filtration solutions that may not address their particular problem. Even then, there is little to no visibility in water safety issues which may be all around your home. Water suppliers do a lot to remove pollutants, but there is also a lot they cannot do.

Enter AquaXi, a company that helps families by testing samples of their water to determine if its safe to drink. They then share the test results with you and others through a map on their website (never revealing the exact location of your home.) If your water test fails for any reason they’ll work with you to help resolve the issue at hand.

Kyra’s Shea Medleys
Kyra Nicole Young
website

Kyra’s Shea Medleys is a natural and multipurpose hair and skincare line based in Los Angeles, CA. They handcraft every product in LA, to bring you hand-whipped, certified vegan and cruelty-free, heavenly-scented, and nutrient-rich line of Shea Butter Creams. All of their products promote healthy living for women, men, children, and seniors as well as all hair and skin types.

TrackPacer
Alexandra Kline
website

TrackPacer is a patent-pending real-time pacing system for runners, meaning runners no longer need to look at their watch and check the splits written on their arm while you’re trying to run. Instead, they can just chase a light.

TrackPace is an LED strip along the inner perimeter of a running track that you can program on your phone to sequentially light up at your target pace. Then, all a runner has to do is chase the light and not give pacing another thought. It is the same concept as the super imposed world record line on televised running events – except the athlete can see the record line they are chasing.

Kynplex
Grace Xiao
website

Kynplex enables scientific companies and institutions to feature updates on a single site. This means that anyone can see a customized feed of scientific updates like research discoveries and new technologies. Kynplex uses this information to identify and suggest effective partnerships so that more research ideas can become life-saving drugs and treatments.

My Hoopla in a Box
Chisesi August- Brooks
website

My Hoopla in a Box is a party supplier service for a low cost parties in one box. These occasions can be anything such as a super bowl party, birthday party, weddings, baby showers & more!

Congrats to our September Qualification Grant Finalists and as always, thank you for reading! Remember we award a grant every month – if interested, here’s the link to apply!

Stay tuned: We will be announcing the winner Soon!

Water Collective
Sophia Sunwoo
website

The Water Collective is an international nonprofit that secures life-lasting clean water for rural communities in Africa and India. The organization was founded by Sophia in 2011 to resolve the shortcomings of clean water access in the developing world, where 40% of water points are not working at any given time.

SUPLOGIX
Shannon MacDowell
website

SUPLOGIX was created to contribute to the progression of stand up paddle boarding and paddle sports through scientific research, instruction, product design, sustainability initiatives and promotion of the health and fitness benefits of the sport.

ArtLifting
Liz Powers
website

ArtLifting is a social enterprise that empowers individuals who are in art groups at hospitals and shelters by selling their artwork. They are a low-profit limited liability company (“L3C”), which means they are a business driven by a social mission. Their mission: To empower individuals living with homelessness or disabilities through the celebration and sale of their artwork.

D.TAMU, Inc.
Djenee Dunn
website

D.TAMU is a boutique style content strategy firm specializing in the creative development of a brand’s speech. The D. Tamu team’s goal is to help their clients create a cohesive message through verbal, written, graphic, and social content.

Buckhead Fight Club
Terri Moss
website

Buckhead Fight Club was opened in May 2013 by Terri Moss after working in the boxing industry for over 15 years. Since then her Gym has grown to be one of Georgia’s largest boxing gym and one of the only women-owned boxing gyms in the country.

Congrats to our May Qualification Grant Finalists and as always, thank you for reading! Remember we award a grant every month – if interested, here’s the link to apply!

Stay tuned: We will be announcing the winner early next week!

Sole Savers Inc.
Melodie Narain
website

Sole Savers is a rollable flat shoe company. They provide emergency flat shoes for women through their website and vending machines. The company has big plans to contribute to charities and work in different philanthropic avenues to keep with their mantra that “every sole has a soul.”

Elu, LLC
Christina Marshall-Valdez

The Elu brand is for women who want their curves to cascade into styles that inspire confidence. Elu’s style shop at YourElu.com will soon offer gorgeous styles that can be made-to-measure to highlight everything beautiful about a womens body.

Alumni Funds
Amber fox
website

Alumni Funds is an organization founded by a group of Drum Corps International Alumni. They created a platform for alumni to create custom performing arts scholarships. Alumni groups can be comprised of anyone they wish; and each group can customize the eligibility, criteria, and dollar amount of the scholarship they wish to create.

Flying Change Equine Therapy
Lissa Corcoran
website

Flying Change Equine Therapy uses unforgettable interactive experiences with rescued and retired horses to foster emotional social, spiritual, and psychological growth in people. Flying Change provides equine assisted psychotherapy and Equine Assisted learning with children, adolescents and adults for emotional growth.

Lissa’s business provides clients with many opportunities to practice a healthy life skills in a physically and emotional safe environment, and the confident to take those skills back into their family and life.

Equilibrium Learning, LLC
Gina Clarke
website

Equilibrium is a learning software that creates individual learning profiles based on the natural skills and talents associated with the school subjects. They couple these learning profiles with Multiple Intelligences types (such as Verbal, Visual, Logical, Kinesthetic, etc.) to make the learning process as personalized as possible.

Explorer Chick Adventure Co.
Nicki Bruckmann
website

Explorer Chick Adventure Co is a travel company exclusively for women founded by Nicki Bruckmann. Her travel company plans to take women on epic adventures, in incredible parts of the world so women can live new experiences and discover new strengths while surrounded by a community of equally adventurous women.

Kettle/Black Teahouse
Christina (Tina) Eilers & Lynn Halldorson
website

Kettle/Black Teahouse plans to be a modern, Asian-inspired teahouse located in the beautiful coastal town of Cannon Beach, Oregon. Once their Teahouse opens they plan to offer monthly evening tea tastings, and hope to partner with local businesses to sell their tea wholesale to them for use in coffee shops and restaurants.

As always, thank you for reading! Remember we award a grant every month – if interested, here’s the link to apply!

Stay tuned: We will be announcing the winner very soon!

This October we had many inspiring, creative, and well though-out applicants. We enjoyed reading each one.  A huge thank you to everyone who applied this month- You made our decision very difficult!

For now, we’ve narrowed it down to the top five finalists. Be sure to check out their websites, congratulate them and stay tuned – we’ll announce the October winner very soon!

October Amber Grant Finalists 2014

Poutine Your Mouth
Jennifer Buckallew
http://www.poutineyourmouth.com/

Poutine Your Mouth is an art and food cart decorated with colorful art and music from local artists. This food trailer opens up and invites patrons to eat and enjoy poutine, which is French fries, cheddar cheese curds, and gravy with various toppings. They cater to all vegetarian, vegan and gluten food restrictions.

Hot n’ Handi
Lisa Grant
http://www.buyhotnhandi.com/

Lisa the founder of Hot n’ Handi has Friedreich’s ataxia. Friedreich’s ataxia is an autosomal recessive inherited disease that causes progressive damage to the nervous system, resulting in symptoms ranging from gait disturbance to speech problems. Currently it has no cure so she’s decided to embrace it and create Hot n’ Handi.

Lisa’s mission with Hot n’ Handi is to encourage confidence in all disabled people. They sell fun, sexy, confidence-boosting attire for women who are disabled.

Solight Designs Inc.
Alice Min Soo Chun
Solarpuff.us

SolarPuff is the first flat packageable and inflatable solar lantern. It is designed to provide an affordable and renewable light source to disaster relief victims.

Solar Puff uses the principles of origami and foldable design to “pop” open from a flat envelope into a cube with a very simple pull motion to diffuse the light after charging. It’s a lightweight solution that advances itself to easy packaging and storage.

The Wooden Palate
Eileen O’Dea
www.thewoodenpalate.com

The Wooden Palate was founded by Eileen O’Dea and Ryan Silverman. Every board they make is designed to last forever. The boards are tested for integrity by Ryan in the woodshop and further vetted by Eileen in the kitchen before sent to production. The Wooden Palate was born of the belief that every kitchen and home needs more bespoke wood pieces and that every chef should love the board on which they serve their creations.

Heathers Choice
Heather Kelly
www.heatherschoice.com

Heather looks forward to providing adventurous athletes with the most delicious dehydrated food on the planet. Her recipes are inspired by her extensive travels, and rooted in locally grown ingredients. She loves throwing on her backpack and getting out to field test each and every recipe.

Happy Friday ladies, (and gentlemen)! I figured before you get started on your weekend plans, I’d deliver some good news and announce our September Amber Grant Finalists!

Here they are – Continue to read below to learn more about our finalists,  their products, services and what each organization brings to the community!

September Amber Grant Finalists — 2014

Sling Hammocks
Nicole Otero
www.slinghammocks.com
Nicole is a lover of the outdoors and hammocking. This inspired her to start designing hammocks and hammock straps. Through trial and error she’s finally created the perfect product. Click on her website and give it a look!

Ready Set Go, LLC
Carol Cooper
website
Since Carol started her journey, she’s taught life skills and instructional reading in a private school. Carol’s constantly trying to find new and creative ways to keep her students motivated, as a result she created Ready Set Go, LLC which has inspirational jewelry and two soft plush bears named Brian and Brianna – which mean “strength.” Each bear is accompanied by a book that has been personally written in a way that will make it easy for children to understand.  A portion of Ready Set Go sales is donated to organizations that help children with autism / ASD and special needs.

Puff’s Preserves
Kirsten Dawn Farabi
www.puffspreserves.com
Puff’s Preserves is Kirsten’s little boozy jam creation. The inspiration comes from her grandparents. Kirsten’s grandmother taught her how to make preserves at the age of twelve. They have been making them together every Summer since. Her grandmother was always so creative with her concoctions, adding herbs, spices, and booze. Kirsten’s grandfather Hugo “Puff” Farabi bootlegged sugar, homemade wine, and whiskey during Prohibition. So she put the two concepts together and created Puff’s Preserves. She make boozy jams, jellies and preserves with fresh fruit, herbs and spices, and local Colorado spirits.

MagnaReady
Maura Horton
www.magnaready.com
The concept for MagnaReady came about when Maura’s husband was diagnosed at an early age with Parkinsons disease. As someone that travels for business, he was anxious about getting into a situation while he was on the road. As he shared his concerns, Maura knew right away how she could help him with this daily challenge. By magnetically infusing the buttons on his shirts, she created a product that could restore freedom to his daily routine.

Danica Yoga
Danica Lister
www.danicayoga.com
Danica has a vision of inspiring others to live at their happiest. She especially wants to work with people who suffer from depression. So she has decided to start working towards opening up her own studio based on depression as well as other chronic illnesses… fibromayalgia, cancer recovery, etc.

Hopefully everyone a great Labor Day weekend filled with good food, friends and family!

This month our Facebook ‘Likes’ broke the 900 mark and we’re very excited. Our goal for this month  is to try to crush the 1K mark, and with all of your help, we should be able to get it done!

Without further a-do meet this month’s Amber Grant Finalists!

August’s Amber Grant Finalist’s Announced:

SmileOnU
BB Maboby Bahadarakhann
website

SmileOnU is a network of dental professionals coming together to provide charitable dental-care to communities in need. They are a dental philanthropic organization that provides a vehicle for your everyday dentist, dental supply companies and dental laboratories to do charitable work.

Pawsitively Delicious, LLC
Megan Stewart
website
Pawsitively Delicious is a natural and homemade dog treat company in Colorado. They’re a small business that loves spoiling everyone’s dogs with good treats. They do not use any corn, soy, or wheat in any of our treats and only allow the best for each pup!

Western Aquatic & Terrestrial Ecological Research (W.A.T.E.R.) Associates, LLC
Melissa Mandrup
http://mcm-waterassoc.weebly.com/

W.A.T.E.R. Assoc. is a small female-owned and operated business that provides comprehensive environmental monitoring and assessments of watersheds, fisheries, and aquatic habitats. They conduct long-term environmental research and are also involved with their local and global communities (via volunteering, citizen science, and internship programs).

Nutty Scientists Greenville
Kelly Sooklal
www.nuttyscientists.com/greenville

Nutty Scientists helps kids discover their love for science by implementing hands on interactive experiments that are designed to stimulate their minds and peak their curiosities.

The company offers a wide variety of programs from after-schools, camps, birthday parties, scientific shows and awareness campaigns.

Simple Car Wash
Taylor Mitcham
www.simplewaterless.com

Simple Car Wash is a water-less car cleaning service that comes directly to you. They clean the interior and exterior of motorcycles, cars, trucks, vans, and SUV’s using a biodegradable product without using any water.

Hope everyone’s is having a fantastic summer!

As usual, you ladies have kept our hands filled with a crazy amount of applicants and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Without further ado, here are July’s five finalists.

Check them out and stay tuned! We’ll announce the winner(s) by the end of the week!

July Amber Grant Finalists – July 2014

The Creative Kitchen 
Leila “Cricket” Azima
www.thecreativekitchen.com
The Creative Kitchen, works to produce a positive relationship between children and food while having fun in the kitchen and creating healthy eating habits for life.

At the Creative kitchen they create lesson plans to not only teach children about food and how to cook in a fun, safe environment but they also incorporate other traditional disciplines into their lessons, such as reading, mathematics, science, social sciences, nutrition, art, history, and geography.

Nightingale Apps 
Tiffany Kelley Ph.D. MBA RN
www.nightingaleapps.com
Nightingale Apps is a health information technology company offering mobile applications to nurses working in hospital settings. They’re focused on improving the quality of information needed for the care of hospitalized patients.

By improving the efficiency and accuracy of information flow, the health care team can provide timely access to care and improve the safety and patient-centeredness of delivered care.

Zoo To You 
Rebecka McDonald
www.thelittlezootoyou.com
Zoo To You is a mobile petting zoo for hire at a low hourly rate. Currently they have a miniature llama, miniature donkey, miniature goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and miniature pigs. They’re available for birthday parties, school events, weddings, and much more!

Cheeky ChaCha  
Jasmine Ejan
www.CheekyChaCha.com
Jasmine created a product called, Blowpaste, a flavored edible lubricant that’s vegan, gluten free, and the only lube in the world that’s good for your teeth! She mixes, manufactures, produces, pitches and markets!

Blowpaste can now be found in over 25 stores and has been featured in the Huffington Post, web shows and on the radio. Jasmine’s mission is to spread love and healthy smiles.

SplatterBox
Kristen sabatelli
www.splatterboxart.com
Splatterbox opened 3 years ago. The store offers many different types of art activities such as, “open studio” drop in to paint pottery or canvases, classes, camps, birthday parties and more. Just recently Kristen also started holding paint and sip nights – where you can bring in wine and follow a painting tutorial!

The holiday of food, fireworks, friends and family is only a few days away! But before you get too busy celebrating our independence, we would like to announce our five Amber Grant finalists for the month of June.

This months applicants were all so creative and inspiring. It made choosing our winner(s) incredibly difficult! For now, we’ve narrowed it down to the top five finalists!

Be sure to congratulate them and stay tuned – we’ll announce the June winner right after the holiday!

June Amber Grant Finalists – June 2014

Grow Your Brew, LLC 
Jill Bong
http://chickenarmor.com

Ever heard of chicken saddles before? Neither had we! Chicken saddles protect the backs of chickens during mating and molting.

Most existing productions are expensive, fussy, or simply hard to clean. Jill designed a new type of chicken saddle. With urban farms and raising chickens gaining popularity there should be an increasing market demand for her product very soon!

SemiPro inc.
Colleen Le Goff
www.SemiProInc.com

Colleen and her team created SemiPro. SemiPro is a new sports app for the remarkably average athlete. Players worldwide can create matches, view game schedules, stay updated on local competition, and so much more.

With this app you can now you can carry your amateur sports career in your pocket and never fall out of the loop again!

The Glass Jug
Kathryn Creech
http://glass-jug.com

Kathryn and her team are opening a craft beer retail store that will take advantage of the recently-changed growler filling laws in NC. This new law allows them to serve hard-to-find craft beer in reusable and recyclable containers, while educating people about all of the fantastic breweries that exist right in NC.

They plan to have a selection of bottled and canned beer, along with 16 beers on draft that can be enjoyed by the pint or taken home in a counter-pressure filled growler.

Swagga Wear
Gillian Pennington
swaggasuits.com

Imagine a full-body snuggie or hoodie meant for wearing outside or in public, wouldn’t that be comfy? Well, thats what Swagga Suits is – full-body jumpsuits for sports fans to wear to games.

Swagga Suits was founded in 2012 by a group of UW students looking to put a little different touch on fan apparel. At Swagga Suits they specialize in one thing and one thing only…Straight up FANDIMONIUM!

HowHeAsked.com
Stacy Tasman
HowHeAsked.com

HowHeAsked started in Fall 2011 and features a new proposal story every day! The stories they share include jaw-dropping photos, tear-jerking videos, and beautiful, heart-warming words. They receive submissions from newly-engaged women, grooms-to-be, photographers, deadly duos going on their 5th or 55th anniversary, same-sex couples, and more.

Men even come to the site to find ideas and connect with jewelers and photographers for their own proposal! Bottom line, they’re in love with love (and of course gorgeous rings.)