This week’s 1 Million Cups at the Kauffman Foundation featured pitches for a neighborhood events coordinator and an inquiry-based curriculum for high-school biology teachers.

First up was Grapevine Events founder Brock Likens, who said that his startup works with homeowner associations to coordinate block parties and other neighborhood events at no cost to the associations.

Corporate sponsors pay Grapevine Events to have their discount coupons and product samples included in party favor bags distributed at the neighborhood events, which serve as a promotional channel for companies to strengthen brand awareness and get feedback from consumer surveys. For every consumer who fills out and returns a survey, Grapevine Events will donate $1 to the school of the consumer’s choice.

Grapevine Events corporate sponsors have included Sonic, Sport Clips, Vintage Stock, Pearle Vision and Christian Brothers Automotive.

“At these neighborhood events, you’re going to hit everybody …” Likens said of the benefit to corporate sponsors. “We’d like to do at least 50 events next year.”

Biology Rocks at 1 Million Cups

Mother-and-son biology teachers Shannon Ralph and Michael Ralph were next up to talk about Biology Rocks, their high-school biology curriculum. It shows teachers how to work on specific inquiry-based lab activities outside of traditional teaching methods.

The second edition of Biology Rocks is now available exclusively online in a pay-what-you-want format, they said. It offers new content and lessons that will help students think for themselves and that “school districts are pretty positive about,” Shannon Ralph said. “This type of learning is very attractive to districts.”

Biology Rocks is ideally a for-profit business model, “but, really, we’re education first,” Michael Ralph said. “If we can break even … that would also work.”