Impact Awards

Impact Awards for Startups Commercializing Already Approved Therapies

Cures Within Reach recognizes the potential to improve patient quality and length of life by leveraging the unrealized clinical potential and missed therapeutic opportunities of existing medicine and science. Impact Awards support startups commercializing already approved drugs, devices and other therapies for new uses / unsolved diseases: driving more treatments to more patients more quickly. Launched in 2018, the Impact Awards help de-risk product development by funding value-enhancing, milestone-based projects. Companies receiving Impact Awards are part of a thoughtfully built investment portfolio.

Cures Within Reach’s Impact Awards help solidify our leadership role as Value-Creating Catalyst while building long-term self-sustaining funding opportunities through repurposing. By awarding funds tied to equity or future equity to startups with repurposing-specific commercial opportunities, we help to de-risk these commercial repurposing startups, while any return on its investment will fund future Impact Awards and other Cures Within Reach programs, “giving forward” into the future.

Click here to see CWR's Impact Award portfolio
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Company Eligibility

  • Application is by invitation only
  • Company must have raised a minimum of $250,000 of non-founder/management and non-friends/family investment
  • Company must provide a minimum of a 100% cash match of the amount awarded (i.e. if CWR approves a $25K Impact Award, the company must provide a minimum of $25K cash outlay)
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Project Eligibility

  • Eligible projects require that the company work with a third-party organization or service provider to perform a clearly-defined project with a proposal or budget provided in writing
  • Eligible projects result in an impactful, value-enhancing milestones for the company and/or that leads to the successful achievement of a significant business milestone.
  • Projects may deliver a short-term impact on the acquisition of capital or related value-enhancing milestone, or a medium-term impact on regulatory or clinical or reimbursement strategies.

Impact Award as an Equity Investment

Cures Within Reach uses the SAFE for its Impact Awards. The dollar value of an approved Impact Award serves as the dollar value of the SAFE investment. For example, a $50,000 award would be seen as providing a $50,000 investment via a SAFE. Read more about the SAFE – Simple Agreement for Equity – here. To learn more about Cures Within Reach’s Impact Awards, email staff@cureswithinreach.org.