WASHINGTON—The Heritage Foundation announced Monday that it has selected the Forge Leadership Network as a recipient of the Heritage Innovation Prize.
Forge will receive a $500,000 award over three years to expand its programs to new states and double the number of young leaders trained and mentored.
Heritage launched the Innovation Prize earlier this year to provide financial support to organizations executing bold ideas and providing innovative solutions to the most pressing issues facing America.
Heritage President Kevin Roberts released a statement on Forge being selected for the Innovation Prize:
“The Heritage Foundation is on offense, and we are playing to win. But the only way we win is if the entire conservative movement works together to defeat the Left and the radicals seeking to tear our country apart. That’s why Heritage launched the Innovation Prize earlier this year. We see it as our responsibility to use our material resources, so graciously provided to us by our fellow Americans, to help benefit other groups that are working tirelessly every day to make America stronger, safer, and more free.
“The conservative movement can’t truly remain on offense without a farm team. We must train young patriots to take up the mantle of freedom and engage with the culture and fight for what’s so good in America. I am so excited by the work Forge Leadership Network is doing to identify, prepare, and equip the next generations of conservative leaders, and I look forward to seeing their efforts expand in the years ahead.”
Forge co-founder and president Adam Josefczyk released the following statement upon announcement of the award:
“Thank you to Dr. Roberts and the Heritage Foundation for your leadership of the conservative movement and recognizing that today's conservative victories depend on tomorrow's conservative leaders.
“Forge provides a long-term, formal way to raise up, steward, and deploy talented, faithful young conservatives in the states. Just as Major League Baseball cultivates talent through its minor leagues, Forge is the state-based farm system for the conservative movement and supplies talent to partners like Heritage.
“We're so grateful for Heritage Foundation's partnership and generous Innovation Prize to ensure that every state can have a formal pipeline in place by which to produce their next innovators in the marketplace, champions of free enterprise, culture shapers, defenders of the Constitution, and principled statesmen and stateswomen in office.”
The Heritage Innovation Prize recognizes and provides substantive financial awards totaling up to $1 million annually to results-oriented nonprofits for projects involving research, litigation, education, outreach, or communications, particularly those focused on empowering parents in education, holding Big Tech accountable, countering the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), securing America’s borders and reducing crime, ensuring free and fair elections, reducing the growth of spending and inflation, and promoting life and family formation.
The winners of the first-ever Heritage Innovation Prize earlier this year were Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), and the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF). Each organization received $100,000, sponsored by The Heritage Foundation’s robust endowment fund for innovative conservative projects.
For more information about the inaugural awards of the Innovation Prize, read here. For more information about the prize itself, read here.
