Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Rally innovation conference creator Elevate Ventures says Rally will take place as planned this year, but organizers are not counting on the financial support that the Indiana Economic Development Corp. provided for the event in its first two years.
Elevate Ventures is a nonprofit organization that invests state and federal money into Indiana companies on behalf of the IEDC, but as the Governor’s Office investigates the IEDC’s relationship with Elevate, funds allocated for the nonprofit’s activities are frozen. Rally Innovation LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Elevate Ventures, is the entity in charge of the annual conference.
“We are ‘all systems go’ on Rally,” Muhammad Yasin, Rally host committee member and vice president of marketing at Elevate Ventures, told IBJ last month. “There is no state funding tied to Rally 2025, and we’re not going after any.”
Rally aims to advance the state’s innovation economy by bringing together innovators, investors, business leaders, academics and thought leaders from Indiana and beyond and from a variety of industry sectors. In each of its first two years, the event drew about 3,000 attendees from around the U.S. and beyond.
This will be the third year for the event, which is set to take place Sept. 24-25 at the Indiana Convention Center.
As was the case in the first two years, the 2025 Rally event schedule includes a pitch contest offering up to $1 million in prizes to each of five startups as well as discussion panels, networking opportunities and keynote speakers. Speakers announced to date are television personality and investor Kevin O’Leary, a regular on the ABC show “Shark Tank,” and Molly Bloom, an entrepreneur, speaker and author of the memoir “Molly’s Game.”
The IEDC was a sponsor of Rally during the event’s first two years. In 2023, the IEDC contributed $1.75 million toward the event’s $2.9 million budget. In 2024, the IEDC contributed $1 million toward the event’s $2.5 million budget.
Yasin said this year’s Rally budget is smaller than last year’s, but declined to share specifics.
Elevate Ventures has said previously that it always expected the IEDC’s contribution to diminish over time as Rally developed and attracted more revenue from ticket sales and sponsorships. When Rally planners created the 2025 event budget late last year, Yasin said, they did so with the assumption that the event would not receive any IEDC funding.
“This is something we really want to build as a key conference for the Midwest, and it needs to and will stand on its own,” Yasin told IBJ last month.
The ongoing planning is happening at a time of tension between Elevate Ventures, the IEDC and Gov. Mike Braun’s office.
At an April 24 press conference, Braun announced that he would hire an independent auditor to investigate the IEDC, the state’s economic development agency, and affiliated organizations.
Braun’s commerce secretary, David Adams, then announced that the “current funds that have been designated to Elevate Ventures are now frozen.”
Hours before that funding freeze was announced, the IEDC told IBJ that it had not yet made a decision on whether it would provide financial support to this year’s Rally conference.
Neither Braun nor Adams detailed the problems or concerns that led to the decisions but pointed to anonymous accusations reported in a political newsletter that raised questions about the relationship between the IEDC and Elevate.
Previously, Elevate CEO Christopher Day said the organization has been and will continue to be “transparent with the IEDC and the Governor’s office in both the work we do and our stewardship of resources.”
Reached via email this week, Governor’s Office spokesman Griffin Reid said he had no new information on the funding freeze or the audit. Reid did not respond to a follow-up email asking when an update might be forthcoming.
The IEDC did not respond to emails this week seeking an update on the situation.
Neither Yasin nor Elevate Ventures CEO Christopher Day responded to messages this week seeking updates.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Editor's note: You can comment on IBJ stories by signing in to your IBJ account. If you have not registered, please sign up for a free account now. Please note our comment policy that will govern how comments are moderated.