Village Capital, with support from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation and Salesforce, launches Thriving Communities: Climate Resilience US.
Washington, DC (April 17, 2025) – Village Capital, with support from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation and Salesforce, launches Thriving Communities: Climate Resilience US. The investment-readiness program will support ten startups building solutions that enhance the resilience of rural and low-income communities across the United States.
Climate-related events are intensifying in US communities, with 376 disasters between 2017 and 2023 causing over USD 1T in damages and significantly disrupting lives. Beyond the immediate destruction, these challenges are deepening economic and social gaps, unevenly affecting rural and low-income communities. Despite the urgent need for resiliency solutions, venture capital funding remains concentrated in a handful of states, leaving high-risk regions without sufficient resources to scale new solutions for these threats.
The TCCR program aims to bridge this gap by supporting startups that build innovative, place-based solutions for climate resiliency.
The call for applications is open to climate-focused startups across the US building solutions that advance the sustainable economy and address social challenges for low-income communities. The program will focus on the following areas:
Applications close on May 9. Full details and eligibility criteria can be found here.
From June to September, the selected entrepreneurs will participate in four online workshops to work on a tailored milestone achievement plan and one in-person Summit in Chicago at the end of the program. The initiative is focused on helping them develop the networks and tools they need to scale their impact and secure capital to support their business, including enhancing the alignment between their capital and growth strategies. They will work closely with industry experts, investors, and ecosystem partners in four online workshops and one in-person event. A founder or C-suite member of each selected startup will travel with all expenses included to the in-person Program Summit to interact with one of the most robust ecosystems of the region. At the end of the program, two startups will be eligible for investment to scale their solutions further.
All startups that apply to the program will be invited to join Abaca, Village Capital’s free web app. Abaca includes Capital Explorer, which equips entrepreneurs to make strategic fundraising decisions that align with their mission and vision and identify relevant resources and capital providers. Abaca also helps entrepreneurs on a venture path to assess their investment readiness using a consistent set of Venture Investment Levels (1-9) and then plan and track progress toward their next level with the Milestone Planner.
For more information, reach out to Yireth Villaverde at Village Capital (yireth.villaverde@vilcap.com).
About Village Capital
Village Capital is reinventing the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Known for its groundbreaking approaches to supporting founders who are building solutions to emergent environmental, social, and economic challenges, VilCap unlocks critical social and financial capital for early-stage companies to maximize business and impact growth.
Village Capital has operated in the US since 2009 by running close to 50 accelerator programs. VilCap has supported more than 570 startups from over 43 states and 23 entrepreneur support organizations (ESO) working in sectors such as financial health, health equity, justice tech, and sustainability. Learn more at www.vilcap.com and follow @villagecapital.
About Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation
The HPE foundation is committed to leveraging their technology potential to support non-profit organizations. Their mission is to deploy skills, resources, and technology to address social challenges and advance the way people live and work.
The HPE foundation believes in the use of technology and its potential to enable greater efficiencies, mitigate social inequities, and provide solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. They have donated more than $65 million in grants, contributed 1.5 million hours of community service, and supported more than 20,000 nonprofits. Learn more at www.hpe.com and follow @HPE.
About Salesforce
Salesforce helps organizations of any size reimagine their business with AI. Agentforce — the first digital labor solution for enterprises — seamlessly integrates with Customer 360 applications, Data Cloud, and Einstein AI to create a limitless workforce, bringing humans and agents together to deliver customer success on a single, trusted platform.
