MEIA Receives $10,000 Grant from The Butz Foundation
The Maryland Clean Energy Center (MCEC) has been awarded a grant of $10,000 from the Butz Foundation to support the Maryland Energy Innovation Accelerator (MEIA) program. MEIA welcomed its inaugural cohort in January of 2020 and has received funding from a variety of sources for its work to assist with the commercialization of advanced energy and climate technologies developed at Maryland-based businesses, universities, and federal laboratories.
“The Butz Foundation has been a longtime supporter of MCEC and we appreciate their latest investment in MEIA,” said Kathy Magruder, MCEC Executive Director. “The Foundation joins our growing list of supporters and partners for this initiative focused on getting technology out of the lab and into the market where real-world benefits can be realized.”
MEIA is a venture development and MEIA uniquely blends the “pull” of an early-stage venture development program with the “push” of accelerating existing pre-revenue businesses to create investible companies that will become the foundation of Maryland’s newest economic cluster. MEIA provides startups with access to domain experts, strategic partners, professional services, and project management support to execute commercialization milestones. To form or augment startup teams, MEIA recruits and engages experienced, industry-specific business executives and entrepreneurs (“energy executives”) who want to become founders or executives of the startup to perform its commercialization activities. This energy executive model creates higher quality leadership teams that, when combined with great technology, produce the investible Maryland-based companies that form the foundation of an emerging economic cluster.
MEIA is sponsored by Exelon, the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute, Banner Witcoff, Clark Hill, Paley Rothman, Snyder Cohn, Points North Studio, and Whiteford Taylor Preston. Sponsors provide both financial and in-kind support to MEIA and to Startup Teams. In October, MEIA was also awarded $750,000 in federal funds through the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s ‘Build to Scale’ program.
MEIA is currently accepting applications for inventors and newly formed companies, and for business executives who want to become energy executives in residence. To learn more about MEIA and participation opportunities, please visit: www.mdeia.org.