Andrew Yang Founded Venture for America to Drive Entrepreneurial Growth. It Just Shut Its Doors

Venture for America, Andrew Yang‘s entrepreneur fellowship program, is closing for good.

The entrepreneur and former presidential candidate founded Detroit-based Venture for America in 2011 with a goal of creating 100,000 jobs by 2025. But on Tuesday, VFA leadership sent an email to staff that said the nonprofit was shutting down immediately, according to Technical.ly, which first reported the story.

In an emailed statement, VFA CEO Carrie Murphy said the closure is due to “ongoing fundraising challenges” resulting from a recent decline in funding for VFA’s company partners, as well as “economic headwinds and shifting priorities.” In VFA’s most recent public financial statement, the company reported nearly $5.4 million in revenue and $6.5 million in expenses in 2022, resulting in a deficit of $1.1 million.

Murphy also confirmed that the VFA fired 15 full-time employees, which represents “nearly all” of the nonprofit’s staff. She and Betsye Park, VFA’s chief operating officer, will stay on as contractors to wind down the nonprofit’s operations by October 31.

The VFA fellowship program included a month-long boot camp for recent graduates and young professionals, who were then granted access to a private job search portal populated by 950 startups and organizations across 13 “emerging ecosystems,” including Detroit, Philadelphia, and Miami, per the company’s website. VFA focused specifically on those areas to help spur entrepreneurial growth in mid-sized American cities, its website notes, and in the 13 years since Yang founded the organization, it has admitted more than 1,600 fellows.

Murphy says fellows still searching for a job are now no longer required to work for a VFA partner company or move to one of their designated cities, “though we will support the connection between hiring partners and our [f]ellows as best we can moving forward.”

“We are also exploring partnerships with other organizations that may be able to offer additional support during this transition,” she wrote in the email.

Yang headed the organization as CEO until 2017, when he left to pursue his presidential campaign, according to the New York Times. Amy Nelson, who previously served as a managing director at VFA, took over as CEO that year, VFA’s financial documents show. After she left in 2020, Eric Sommervile–a former YMCA executive–took the role. He departed two years later; Murphy was internally promoted to the top job last year.

The nonprofit’s future remains unclear, according to Murphy: “The Board of Directors is still in the exploratory phase of understanding all the various options for what a potential strategic restructuring could look like for VFA.”