HATCH: Taronga Accelerator Program

HATCH is a 14 week part-time development program focused on discovering and supporting innovative ideas to help address environmental and conservation challenges. The program consists of on-site immersive days at Taronga Zoo in Sydney and weekly online sessions, and is open to applicants from across Australia. Through the program HATCH supports participants with mentoring and support from a range of experts within and outside of Taronga.

The inaugural program last year successfully supported five start-up initiatives to develop and test their ideas and promote their initiatives at the HATCH Pitch Event. The winning team Good-Edi received a $50,000 grant and have gone on to achieve fantastic success in their crowdfunding campaign, and are on-track to launch their edible coffee cups by mid-2021.

We want to support Australians to drive innovative solutions to our conservation and/or environmental issues, and we believe that people from a range of disciplines have exciting, innovative ideas that could have significant positive impact. We would love to support them to grow these ideas into not-for-profit or social enterprise ventures through the HATCH Program.

The 2021 program schedule is:

  • Applications close Tuesday 11th May
  • Interviews for shortlisted applicants will be held on Monday 21st and Wednesday 23rd June
  • HATCH accelerator program runs from late July to mid-October 
  • Pitch event and winners announced late October