Initiative Honors Innovative Life-Saving National Kidney Donor Registry

New York, NY:  The founder of a national kidney donor registry has been presented with this year’s Social Entrepreneurship Award for his innovative work and service.

Garet Hil’s personal mission to find a kidney donor for his ten-year-old daughter (he and his wife were incompatible) led him to create a national registry of potential donors and recipients to instantly identify compatible sets of matches, resulting in 67 life-saving transplants over the past 18 months. NKR’s goal is to facilitate thousands of life-saving transplants, saving the U.S. health care system $100 billion from transplants facilitated over the next decade. In March of this year the National Kidney Registry organized the first ever multicenter six-way kidney swap demonstrating the scalability of this concept.

The National Kidney Registry is one of five groups recognized by the Manhattan Institute this year. Its Social Entrepreneurship Awards honor inventive nonprofit leaders who implemented pioneering solutions to challenging social problems afflicting our nation and whose effective programs influenced the way we think about helping those in need.

A prize of $25,000 will be presented to each of the 2009 Social Entrepreneurship award-winners and $100,000 will be presented to the winner of the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship.

“Once again this year, we see how resourceful and creative America’s non-profit organizations can be in helping the nation cope with some of our most difficult social problems with limited or no help from government --and in many cases doing a better job than government programs established for similar purposes,” says Howard Husock, Vice President of Programs at the Manhattan Institute and Director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative.

Hil’s work has shown that it is possible to provide life-saving, cost-saving, efficient technology without government support. For more information, please visit http://www.kidneyregistry.org

This year’s Social Entrepreneurship Award winners include:

Adam Green (Rocking the Boat) Bronx, NY
Through a wooden boatbuilding program created by Adam Green, groups of 20 Bronx teens voluntarily participate in an intensive course that teaches them responsibility while empowering them to achieve their own personal goals. Adam Green’s efforts have helped to educate and inspire more than 2,000 teens and community members. For more information, please visit http://www.rockingtheboat.org.

Dave and Liane Phillips (Cincinnati Works) Cincinnati, OH
Under the premise that existing job-readiness programs only focus on job placement and not retention to help the unemployed and underemployed, Dave and Liane Phillips created a poverty to economic self-sufficiency program with an 80% one-year employment retention rate. For more information, please visit: http://www.cincinnatiworks.org/.

Juan Rangel (United Neighborhood Organization) Chicago, IL
After learning that more than 142,000 Mexican immigrants in Chicago eligible for citizenship were not pursuing it, Juan Rangel created the United Neighborhood Organization’s naturalization drive. More than 81,000 residents have completed the naturalization process with Rangel’s help and now the organization runs a network of charter schools with a strong American civic program. For more information, please visit: http://www.uno-online.org/.

In addition to these winners, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, founders of KIPP schools, will be honored with the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship. Founded in 1994, the Knowledge is Power Program’s mission is to prepare underserved students for college and life through a rigorous educational program with longer days, regular testing, and high expectations. Today eighty-two schools form the network of KIPP schools serving 20,000 students. For more information, please visit http://www.kipp.org.

The 2009 awards will be presented in New York City on Thursday, October 29th by Initiative director Howard Husock. Mr. Husock, also a contributing editor of City Journal, is a former research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University.   

Established in 2001, the Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneurship Initiative is supported by the William E. Simon and JM Kaplan Foundations of New York.  Nominations are made by outsiders who have supported the organizations which they nominate. After initial screening by Manhattan Institute staff, ten finalists are chosen by the award program’s selection committee, consisting of leaders from the philanthropic and academic community.  Winners are chosen only after a site visit to the program and an extended in person interview.

To learn more about the National Kidney Registry or to speak with Mr. Hil, contact Katie Poedtke at 646-839-3352 or at kpoedtke@manhattan-institute.org.

For more information on the Manhattan Institute’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative, please visit http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/social_entrepreneurship.htm.