Praxis Wants Founders to Count the Cost of Doing Good

Doing good gets expensive when somebody has to pay for it. At Praxis, that observation is practically a founding principle. The New York venture builder works with Christian entrepreneurs who want their companies and nonprofits to help other people. Its harder question is what those founders will give up to make that happen: money, control, convenience, perhaps a cherished idea about what success looks like.

There is a price list behind the philosophy. A place in the US Business Accelerator costs $8,000 for the first founder. A second leader adds $2,000. Nonprofit participants face a different arrangement: no program fee and a $50,000 grant. The organization linking those two worlds is itself a nonprofit. Its business is helping other people build theirs.

That combination makes Praxis an interesting occupant of the accelerator market. It offers mentoring, introductions, venture design, and a community that continues beyond a cohort. It also asks founders to examine their religious convictions and personal habits. Anyone shopping for pitch practice alone should read the prospectus carefully.

A startup program with a theological premise

Dave Blanchard and Josh Kwan founded Praxis in 2011. Blanchard brought experience from IDEO’s business-design practice; Kwan brought a background in philanthropy. Their original proposition was approachable: gather entrepreneurs, surround them with experienced mentors who shared their faith, and help their ventures develop. Businesses and nonprofits belonged in the same conversation.

The ambition grew beyond a sequence of cohorts. Praxis now connects founder programs, a design studio, investor education, publishing, and local gatherings. Its leadership team includes Andy Crouch as partner for theology and culture. That title tells applicants something useful about the advice they will receive. Product decisions and beliefs about human beings are expected to meet.

Praxis calls its central idea “creative restoration through sacrifice.” In ordinary terms, building something helpful may require the builder to absorb a cost that could otherwise be pushed onto an employee, customer, supplier, or community. The Christian account of sacrifice supplies the rationale. Good intentions, under this definition, need to show up in an actual decision.

“creative restoration through sacrifice”

Praxis’s definition of redemptive action

The religious commitment is explicit. Staff and program participants are asked to affirm the Apostles’ Creed. The venture itself does not need an explicitly religious mission. A founder can serve a broad market while participating in a community whose beliefs are quite specific. That distinction explains both the appeal and the limits of the offering.

The fee buys a place at the table

The Business Accelerator selects 12 seed and early-stage ventures, with up to two founding leaders per organization. Its published 2027 cycle runs from October 2026 through May 2027, combining gatherings in New York, San Francisco, and Napa with coaching between events. Participants engage with more than 35 mentors and team members.

Praxis describes the program as fee-based rather than equity-based. Donors subsidize its delivery; participant fees cover part of the expense, including food, accommodations, and materials. An optional $50,000 investment comes through Capital Partners directly to eligible ventures. The investment has its own conditions, including a US C-corporation parent. It should not be confused with a rebate on tuition.

The Nonprofit Accelerator addresses a related problem with different economics. Founders need help refining strategy, developing leadership, and meeting people who can support their work. Its grant supplies capital alongside that support. Business and nonprofit leaders share a practical predicament: early traction creates responsibilities before it necessarily creates a dependable support system.

Selection matters. Praxis looks for ventures already in the market, with traction and ambitions to scale. Its business FAQ expresses a preference for organizations in their first five years. A mature organization seeking specialist operational consulting may need a different service. So may a founder who cannot attend the required gatherings or wants access to money without the formation work.

The nonprofit plan that became a business

One of Praxis’s clearest examples starts before an accelerator application. The Pinetops Foundation and Praxis explored technology that could connect church members in relationships of mutual discipleship. Pandemic isolation made the problem more urgent. Pinetops committed $400,000 to develop a nonprofit, recruit leadership, and launch an initial product.

Whiteboard worked on the brand. Peter Court, then on the agency’s team, became interested in leading the venture and moved into a six-month entrepreneur residency with Praxis. He received a $50,000 budget for assembling a team, building a minimum viable product, and incorporating what became Tether.

The venture-design process changed the intended structure to a business. Praxis returned half the original grant and converted the other half into stock options. Tether subsequently raised a $1.2 million seed round; Court and COO Alex Nichols joined the 2022 Business Accelerator.

The useful lesson is the sequence: investigate a problem, recruit a builder, test the venture’s shape, then revise the financing to match. A philanthropic beginning did not settle the legal form forever. The returned money made the change concrete.

Founders are only half the transaction

Praxis’s Studio gives entrepreneurial leaders somewhere to work before a venture is ready for a cohort, or when an existing organization reaches a turning point. It hosts entrepreneurs in residence and structured design sessions. Its history describes experiments beginning in 2018, including work at the earliest stages of formation and later design sprints with portfolio ventures.

The projects can take very different forms. Praxis describes collaborating with Mark Sears, a CloudFactory founder and earlier Fellow, on Sprout AI Studio’s design and launch. Work with Dan Vogel and Flourish Fund brought leaders together around foster care and produced a thesis for future activity. The common service is concentrated help turning a concern into something people can build.

Money needs its own education. The Capital Fellowship serves investors, philanthropists, and families with meaningful authority over funding decisions. Participants work on their vision, strategy, and relationships with peers and mentors. The programs overview lists a $17,500 fee, plus $3,000 for an additional member of a capital team.

This broadens the customer base beyond founders. A startup can make generous promises and still find itself constrained by the expectations attached to its money. Praxis’s approach puts the people allocating capital into the same larger conversation about purpose. For a prospective participant, the question becomes whether that shared outlook will improve the decisions they actually control.

The numbers belong to different ledgers

The organization’s scale is easiest to misunderstand when its portfolio statistics travel without their labels. Praxis’s impact page reports 303 active business and nonprofit ventures, operating across 113 countries, and more than $897 million in combined FY2025 annual revenue. It also reports a 92 percent survival rate that includes acquisitions. Those are Praxis’s reported portfolio measures.

They describe the reach of selected ventures, not a controlled experiment in acceleration. Selection favors promising organizations, and a survival figure does not show what would have happened without the program. The numbers offer evidence of a substantial network. They cannot establish that every participant receives the same benefit.

Praxis’s own fiscal 2024 tax filing tells a smaller, more revealing financial story. Revenue was $8.55 million against $7.63 million in expenses. Contributions supplied about 87 percent of revenue; program services contributed about 13 percent. Donor support is therefore central to how the institution runs, even though some participants pay substantial fees.

That is also a condition for copying the model. A small organization could convene mentors or adapt a discussion framework. Reproducing the combination of grants, subsidized programming, and sustained personal support would require dependable funding as well as a willing community. The relationship work has a budget, whether or not the participant sees the whole bill.

A method that fits on a meeting agenda

The most portable Praxis tool divides work into three questions: what an organization builds, how it builds, and why its leaders build. Its playbooks apply this lens to strategy, operations, and leadership. A reader could use those headings in a regular team discussion without first creating an accelerator or raising a philanthropic fund.

For example, a team might examine the customer problem its product solves, the pressure its delivery model puts on staff, and the rewards that shape executive behavior. That is an application of the framework, not a claim about a particular Praxis company. The value lies in requiring three connected answers rather than allowing a worthy mission to end the discussion.

Praxis also has experience changing the way it convenes people. Its planned in-person 2020 Summit moved online during the pandemic. Accelerator mentoring shifted to virtual sessions. The disruption exposed the vulnerability of a model built around gathering, while giving the organization a reason to develop other ways of maintaining contact.

Local Ecosystems training takes the ideas to leaders who can host gatherings in their own communities. Playbooks and the Praxis Course reach people outside selective founder programs. A new six-session course is announced for fall 2026. These are entry points for readers whose work matters locally but will never appear in an investor showcase.

Praxis’s distinctive offer is the combination: venture advice, a particular faith, and people willing to stay in conversation about both. The sharpest test comes after the conversation. When a better decision costs the founder something, who signs off on the expense?