Local Startup PAL Experiences Named to Grant Thornton’s Purple Paladin Initiative

National Accounting Firm Makes Innovative Nonprofits More Sustainable by Providing Funding, Support & Resources

PAL Experiences is a local nonprofit that seeks to make every day experiences more manageable and enjoyable for individuals with autism and other non-visible disabilities, and it will soon be able to do so on a much broader scale.

Grant Thornton LLC, a national tax, audit and advisory service, has named PAL Experiences one of three organizations that will benefit from its “Purple Paladin” initiative, which seeks to help emerging nonprofits find the funding, support and business advice they need to become sustainable.

PAL Experiences Founder Melanie Isaacs created the organization after recognizing that, while museums, restaurants, sporting venues and similar attractions often have infrastructure and protocols in place to help those with physical disabilities, few of them make similar efforts to accommodate those with disabilities that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Now, the organization takes steps to make local communities more inclusive, and it also uses customized videos, digital guides and similar technological resources to help prepare sensory-sensitive individuals and others with disabilities for certain environments.

“Purple Paladins is all about helping promising and innovative nonprofits scale and grow,” said Grant Thornton CEO Brad Preber. “Pal Experiences is the ideal Purple Paladin. They already have many partner organizations serving as Pal Places — and Grant Thornton hopes to help them add more across the nation, while also helping them increase their use of technology to improve their services.”

Isaacs expressed her gratitude to Grant Thornton for helping PAL Experiences gain national notoriety, noting that it will help enable even more individuals with disabilities to get out and enjoy the world around them.

“We are so excited,” she said. “This will have a direct impact on our community creating inclusion for families with autism and related disabilities.”

For more on PAL Experiences and how it helps those living with disabilities, visit PalExperiences.org.