Catapult Lakeland Inc.

“The board of directors reviews the form 990 before it is filed and designates one of its members to discuss any questions with the cpa who prepared the return.”

“We monitor any interests with our board of directors and volunteer legal counsel.”

“The organization makes it governing documents, conflict of interest policy and financial statements available to the public by having them available in the corporate office and by mail upon request.”

“Catapult puts creative capital to work through educational and mentoring programs that: support the professional growth of entrepreneurs, artisans and emerging leaders; help entrepreneurs build and develop sustainable and viable ventures; enables the development of visionary ideas for the lakeland, fl community, as well as central florida; showcase entrepreneurial successes and ideas, as well as establish a platform for social interaction.”

“Through educational and mentoring programs, catapult provides an atmosphere for education, mentoring, training and accelerating innovative ideas to help entrepreneurs learn how to build stronger, successful businesses. Catapult provides educational opportunities and resources that allow entrepreneurs to pitch and flush out ideas to catapult their businesses to the next level, as well as identify technologies or business gaps, and provide value-added solutions. Catapult is a place where ideas can be shared and problems can be solved in an entrepreneurial culture that encourages and fosters innovation for the betterment of the lakeland community. Advisory board catapult's advisory board completed five years of service in october. -chair, callie neslund - mosaic -immediate past chair - cory petcoff - baron realty -vice chair - alyssia totten - lanier upshaw -secretary - leila blacking - publix -treasurer - alex nikdel - cnp -member rep - david young - drone launch academy -at large - ricardo rivera - dynamic security staff in an effort to increase the effectiveness of the programming at catapult, robert blacklidge was hired to the team in april to serve as the education director. In addition, former intern, nichole jones was hired in october to serve as the marketing + operations coordinator. Christin strawbridge was promoted to membership director in november following connor lockhart's transition to a new job opportunity outside the organization. Maggie leach continues to serve as kitchen director. We are in the process of interviewing maker space director candidates. Bay area mini city visit christina and christin traveled to the san francisco bay area for startup grind's global conference with 4,400+ attendees from across the globe. Collectively, they attended 34 sessions that resulted in new program learnings. While there, they also spent some time visiting 26 spaces and attending 1 pitch night. These visits not only resulted in new learnings and relationships but also interior design changes of the new building. Miami mini visit maggie and lucia traveled to miami to conduct research on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in south florida. They attended 16 meetings and tours to learn about best practices. They were able to attend a general mills pitch night for food entrepreneurs, as well as venture cafe's thursday gatherings, which consists of high-impact education sessions. Furthermore, they visited places like wework labs, 500 startups miami, the cambridge innovation center, and moonlighter maker space. These visits resulted in a few key relationships, as well as ideas for future programs at catapult. Startup grind x after attending startup grind's global conference, catapult launched lakeland's startup grind x chapter. Startup grind is the largest independent startup community, actively educating, inspiring and connecting more than 2,000,000 entrepreneurs in 600 chapters in 125 countries. Our first event featured a fireside chat between tim cox, director of creative services at publix and catapult member, jon sierra of sierra creative. The 100+ attendees heard from tim cox on what it means to prioritize branding. Future bi-monthly events will feature a similar format with the goal of convening entrepreneurs together and educating and inspiring them. 1 million cups catapult partnered with the chamber of commerce, florida southern college, score, toastmasters, and boring business systems to bring 1 million cups to lakeland. 1 million cups is a kauffman foundation program operating in 180 communities. This program is designed to break down barriers that stand in the way of starting and growing a business. Every wednesday at 9am, two entrepreneurs present followed by a supportive q+a session with the audience. The lakeland chapter launched in august with an average weekly attendance of 25+. Techstars startup weekend techstars startup weekend is a 3-day event in which entrepreneurs pitch ideas for a startup, form teams around those”

“Catapult puts creative capital to work through educational and mentoring programs that: support the professional growth of entrepreneurs, artisans and emerging leaders; help entrepreneurs build and develop sustainable and viable ventures; enables the development of visionary ideas for the lakeland, fl community, as well as central florida; showcase entrepreneurial successes and ideas, as well as establish a platform for social interaction.”

“Bay area mini city visit christina and christin traveled to the san francisco bay area for startup grind's global conference with 4,400+ attendees from across the globe. Collectively, they attended 34 sessions that resulted in new program learnings. While there, they also spent some time visiting 26 spaces and attending 1 pitch night. These visits not only resulted in new learnings and relationships but also interior design changes of the new building. Miami mini visit maggie and lucia traveled to miami to conduct research on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in south florida. They attended 16 meetings and tours to learn about best practices. They were able to attend a general mills pitch night for food entrepreneurs, as well as venture cafe's thursday gatherings, which consists of high-impact education sessions. Furthermore, they visited places like wework labs, 500 startups miami, the cambridge innovation center, and moonlighter maker space. These visits resulted in a few key relationships, as well as ideas for future programs at catapult. Startup grind x after attending startup grind's global conference, catapult launched lakeland's startup grind x chapter. Startup grind is the largest independent startup community, actively educating, inspiring and connecting more than 2,000,000 entrepreneurs in 600 chapters in 125 countries. Our first event featured a fireside chat between tim cox, director of creative services at publix and catapult member, jon sierra of sierra creative. The 100+ attendees heard from tim cox on what it means to prioritize branding. Future bi-monthly events will feature a similar format with the goal of convening entrepreneurs together and educating and inspiring them. 1 million cups catapult partnered with the chamber of commerce, florida southern college, score, toastmasters, and boring business systems to bring 1 million cups to lakeland. 1 million cups is a kauffman foundation program operating in 180 communities. This program is designed to break down barriers that stand in the way of starting and growing a business. Every wednesday at 9am, two entrepreneurs present followed by a supportive q+a session with the audience. The lakeland chapter launched in august with an average weekly attendance of 25+. Techstars startup weekend techstars startup weekend is a 3-day event in which entrepreneurs pitch ideas for a startup, form teams around those ideas, and build that idea into a business. Lakeland's 1st techstars startup weekend event consisted of 45+ attendees, with several students from both florida polytechnic university and florida southern college.”

“Catapult lakeland, inc. Engages and equips local entrepreneurs, artisans and emerging leaders with a variety of tools and resources to create a community that is stronger, more distinctive and sustainable. Catapult's program and operating costs are funded by private individuals, foundations and earned revenue. All programs take place in lakeland, florida. Co.starters, two cohorts of co.starters were offered this year - one facilitated by dick pellegrini and the other facilitated by robert blacklidge and lucia forero. A total of 18 businesses participated in this nine-week course that equips entrepreneurs with the insights, relationships, and tools needed to turn ideas into action. Plans are in process with the mayor to bring this program to an under-represented segment of the community in 2020. Cat walk catapult & pilgrim associates created, and implemented, a pilot project for lakeland entrepreneurs in 2018 which focuses on peer group coaching. Cat walk is designed for entrepreneurs that have successfully launched and are now focusing on scaling their business. Deliverables include: "making better decisions - staying strategic rather than tactical. Having your answers questioned. "accountability - collective accountability tasks, "what gets measured, gets done." "growth - members learn from having their issues worked by the group as well as working on other members' issues. Occasionally, speakers are brought to the group focusing on specific areas of business needs and interests. "isolation - the "lonely at the top syndrome" is addressed through non- judgmental, trusted and confidential discussions in each others' development, aka, informal board of advisors. "change - developing the courage/confidence to discuss and implement the appropriate change in your business and personal development. Currently, there are 10 businesses participating in this program with a goal of adding two companies in 2020. Lakeland entrepreneur awards catapult secured an agreement with saddle creek logistics to be the presenting sponsor for our new annual lakeland entrepreneur awards. The total value of this sponsorship is 125,000 over a 5-year period. In addition, agamerica agreed to sponsor a keynote speaker which is a 250,000 gift over a 5-year period. Our first event was sold out with 400 guests, 4 awardees, and an additional 75,000 in income to catapult. The 2020 event is already sold out. Enterprenuher the catapult team continued the success of the pilot entreprenueher event from last fall. This year's events included a recipe to scale: fireside chat with berna nar and stephanie gregg as well as what does your customer want to hear from you? Facilitated by nyrka riskin. These events brought in 100+ women to catapult.”

“Intro to entrepreneurship - entrepreneurship training, for the rest of us. We built introduction to entrepreneurship as a business training program for aspiring entrepreneurs. We teach business fundamentals - customer development, branding essentials and basic financials, among other things - with a welcoming, hands-on and human approach. Innovation & design course our education partners polk state college, florida southern college, southeastern university, florida polytechnic university and keiser university have created an intercollegiate interdisciplinary innovation, four credit hour course to be taught at catapult. The course will be offered at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students from each of these educational institutions would form teams of 5-7, with 5 to 7 teams participating in the course. Teams would be selected on the basis of functional/industry interest.”

“Catapult's mentor program facilities one-on-one relationships that are mutually beneficial to both mentor and mentee. These individual relationships result in personal and professional accomplishments for both parties. All other aspects of the program inherently support the relationship and well-rounded development of the mentee. The relationship between mentor and mentee will last 3-months. They call or meet once a month for perhaps coffee or lunch. Each meeting is approximately 60 to 90 minutes. While each mentor will have his or her own style, remember the primary goal of these meetings is to attack a specific challenge facing the mentee's business and make forward progress. Our program is open to all catapult entrepreneurs, but the best candidates are usually actively working on a startup and have a specific topic or problem where they could use help from an experienced mentor. Catapult lakeland also offers the following weekly educational programming: lunch & learns workshops - 1 hour training on a specific topic; seminars - 2 to 3-hour in-depth training on a specific topic; office hours - questions answered by a professional. More than 1000 people have participated in free or low-cost educational workshops and training in 2017. Launch is a community-based effort lead, and funded, by local financial institutions to catapult that is created to assist local entrepreneurs. Launch's goal is to help lakeland entrepreneurs take their business concept to the next level. Launch will do this by providing grants to entrepreneurs who can successfully pitch their concepts to launch's team. Pitch sessions - are held 2 to 3 times per year at catapult. Applications are available online at catapultlakeland.com. Advisory board members attend pitch sessions, give their input in a closed-door session following the pitches and the pitch judges will vote on grant awards. The public is invited to attend pitch sessions. It's like shark tank. But with happy people. Catapult brought back the launch micro-grant program this year, hosting the first event at florida polytechnic university. A student component was added to allow students to pitch for up to 2,500 for their startups. Three poly student companies were awarded a grant, in addition to honeycomb bread bakers in the spring. This fall's event is scheduled for november 14th.”

“Other accomplishments spotlights the ledger continued their spotlight donation for another year and donated over 25,000 in print advertising to catapult in 2019. In 2019, 46 entrepreneurs were featured in the sunday business section of the ledger, catapult's website (9,300+ pageviews) & facebook (5,500 engagements).”