University of Michigan
Stephen M. Ross School of Business
700 E. University St., K3510 West
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234
Phone 734.763.4214
Email businessimpact@umich.edu
© 2021 Regents of the University of Michigan
Welcome new and returning students! We hope your summer was empowering and invigorating, because we have a lot of opportunities coming up for you. As part of our mission to make students aware of impact opportunities across campus, we welcome students to our 5th annual Business+Impact Showcase at Ross. Students will have a chance to meet with over 30 organizations and map out their U-M impact journeys. The event will also feature a “Mission & Mocktails Room,” a raffle, and lunchtime food.
The +Impact Studio at the Ross School of Business is a campus hub for impact creators and innovators. Launched within the Business+Impact Initiative in 2019, our mission is to bring impactful ideas to life using business knowledge, design tools, and research expertise. The +Impact Studio encompasses a collaboration space, an interdisciplinary graduate course, a design lab for impact-focused ventures and projects, and workshops and events. Our model activates the vast expertise and research insights from across campus to support the development and launch of powerful, impactful concepts.
180 Degrees Consulting is the world’s largest consultancy focusing on social enterprises, nonprofits, and international focused Fortune 500 companies. We provide organizations around the world with high quality and affordable consulting services. 180DC works with organizations to develop innovative, practical, and sustainable solutions for the challenges they face.
At the 180DC Michigan branch, we are driven by a passion to help these organizations solve unique challenges so they can make the greatest social impact in their respective communities. Our members share a common goal of taking part in consulting work that is not only challenging, but meaningful and rewarding. Finally, more than a student organization, we are a family that spends time together through a variety of social events throughout the year.
We accept applicants at the beginning of both Fall and Winter semesters. To learn more about joining, please visit our website!
BLUElab is a student organization composed of four active project teams that are united through a sustainable, socially engaged design process. We believe that design is about people, and that the best designs are sustainable, taking into account all social, economic, and environmental impacts. For these reasons, our project teams are multidisciplinary and emphasize collaboration with local and international stakeholders to ensure that identified needs (typically in the areas of agriculture, education, energy, resource management, and water) are appropriately addressed. We offer students the opportunity to hone their interpersonal skills, engage in social responsibility, participate in an interactive design experience, and develop as servant leaders.
Check out our website for more info, as well as the interest form and Instagram to stay in the loop with recruitment!
Blueprints For Pangaea is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing sustainable solutions to inefficient health care resource distribution. With the support of our supplier and distributor partners, we reallocate excess, unused medical supplies from U.S. hospitals to those overseas in need.
Through this sustainable, scalable model, we redistribute precious resources from areas of great surplus to areas of great need, minimizing domestic inefficiency while mobilizing accessible health care in emerging communities.
We accept applicants at the beginning of the Fall and Winter semesters. To learn more about joining, visit us at www.blueprintsforpangaea.org or reach out at contact@b4pglobal.orgAccordion Content
Michigan Ross seeks to build a better world through business. Business+Impact is the central hub for these efforts, providing ideas and solutions to address the global challenges of our generation. We aim to embed impact deeply into every core activity of Ross, including teaching, research, and outreach. As such, impact is not a silo, but an integral part of the DNA of our business school.
Ross already has a strong reputation for impact, with centers and institutes focused on worldwide challenges, and one fifth of incoming students expressing an interest in impact careers. But as we go forward, in addition to our existing programs and Impact Gateway, we will pursue the creation of a new +Impact Studio for coworking, a social innovation series to disseminate impact research, and deeper engagement with Detroit.
Business+Tech
is building a stronger and more connected tech community at U-M and beyond. We generate innovative context to expand tech literacy and curate action-based learning opportunities to advance tech competency. Open to students from all schools/colleges, our programs incorporate competitions, panels, speakers, and networking events that support those looking to pivot into tech or start a career at a tech company. Interested in learning more? Email Emilee Studley, Business+Tech Program Manager at studleem@umich.edu.
The Center for Positive Organizations is the leading global center for the science of designing and sustaining thriving organizations. Located in the Ross School of Business, we are the launchpad for those looking to build thriving organizations and careers. We offer world-class curriculum, learning experiences, and programs that lead to work filled with meaning and positive contributions. Our students gain the knowledge, tools, and resources to change the business world for the better. We are a Center of visionaries and revolutionaries.
To learn more about our student programs, visit the Students section on our website by selecting “Students” from the “Learn” dropdown menu.
Socially Engaged Design is human(ity) centered – not just user centered. We consider broad contexts through an equity-centered lens that impact the practice of engineering, including social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors that can completely change the design of solutions. Further, we push designers to analyze how their own identities and cultural context shape their approach. The Center for Socially Engaged Design provides students the necessary space and tools to think more critically about design. Whether you’re currently in a course, working solo, or on a co-curricular team — or you have an idea you’d like to explore, C-SED can help.
We are the UM student chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. CCL is a nonprofit, grassroots, international organization. Its mission is to create the political will to pass a federal climate action policy, Carbon Fee and Dividend, which we see as the best first-step to solving climate change.
The goal of our student chapter is to create the political will on campus for this climate change solution. We will accomplish this through grassroots outreach, education, partnerships, media, and lobbying. Our approach to advocacy centers around nonpartisanship, respect, and pragmatism.
Ultimately, we use these advocacy efforts to build positive relationships with our elected officials so that we can move the needle on climate action at the federal level.
So please, join us! As a member of this student group, you can be part of the solution to climate change.
Formerly Community Consulting Club, CCC provides pro-bono business experience to local non-profits through a case competition. Teams of 5-7 students will work through a 10-week engagement for their nonprofit partner. Their projects will culminate in a case competition in December judged by a panel of Strategy& consultants, with the winning team’s nonprofit receiving a monetary donation.
In addition to the consulting engagement, our club works to increase participants’ exposure to consulting firms that complete impact driven work. This year we will be bringing in a variety of firms for small group sessions with our members.
We believe in a work hard, play hard mentality! After the case competition is finished, we will hold a gala for our members at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)
Launched by Ross School of Business MBA students in 2010, the Detroit Initiative at Ross connects University of Michigan students with Detroit’s vibrant and evolving business landscape. Through on- and off-campus events, an annual Impact Conference, student-run consulting projects, and a mentoring program, DIR promotes the city’s assets and encourages University of Michigan students to experience, engage with, and commit to the revitalization of the Motor City.
The Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project is a program of the Ford School of Public Policy’s Center on Finance, Law & Policy. DNEP brings together neighborhood-based Detroit businesses with University of Michigan faculty-supervised student teams from Ross, Law, Stamps, and Information to provide a learning experience for students and solve business’ legal, financial, marketing, operational, design, and technology challenges.Through semester-long courses, an internship program, and year-round programs, we are supporting minority-owned businesses in changing Detroit neighborhoods.
The Erb Institute is a partnership between the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) at the University of Michigan. The institute’s mission is to create a socially and environmentally sustainable world through the power of business. We do that through research, teaching and business engagement—all focused on preparing and supporting bold business leaders who can adeptly transform companies, industries and entire economies for systemic sustainability.
The institute was founded 25 years ago as a dual-degree program in which graduate students receive their MBA from Ross and their MS from SEAS. In 2020, the institute expanded its educational programming to undergraduate students with the creation of the Erb Undergraduate Fellows program. Today, the institute has grown to include scholarly and applied research on business sustainability, as well as direct business engagement to turn ideas into action through on-the-ground projects with companies, social enterprises and nonprofits committed to business sustainability.
Ross is known for its collaborative culture and engagement in social impact. No other initiative exemplifies this better than the student-led Give-A-Day Fund. Launched in 2012, the Fund is a first-of-its-kind initiative among U.S. business schools. The Give-A-Day Fund engages Ross MBAs with the social impact community by providing financial assistance to students interning with impact organizations, which often provide interns with little to no salary. As its name implies, MBA students are asked to donate a day of their summer internship salary to make this support possible.
Since 2006, the Graham Sustainability Institute has worked to mobilize the passion of scholars, partners, and decision-makers, bringing world-class research to real-world sustainability challenges. Today, with a focus on climate change and water resources, we continue to facilitate engaged research, develop sustainability leaders, and inform policy and practice. Our emphasis on interdisciplinary, cross-sector partnerships leads to well-informed solutions that are practical, measurable, and widely applicable.
Graham’s Dow Distinguished Awards Competition provides student research funding of up to $30,000 over one calendar year for interdisciplinary graduate student teams to pursue applied solutions to sustainability challenges at the local, national, or global level.
The Graham Sustainability Scholars Program is a competitive sustainability leadership development program open to U-M undergraduates. Graham Scholars learn to incorporate sustainability into the campus, their lifestyle, their discipline, and the broader community through rich co-curricular experiences that include managing an interdisciplinary sustainability project with a local organization, honing leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, and completing a sustainability-focused summer field experience.
Graham will be accepting applications for both programs soon! Please contact ahaddad@umich.edu for details.
The Impact Investing Group is a 501(c)3 nonprofit and student-led organization at the University of Michigan providing financial & consulting services to local Ann Arbor and Detroit microbusinesses to empower entrepreneurs, aid in community revitalization, and foster inclusive and sustainable financing.
The Michigan Impact Investing Symposium provides Ross School of Business, School of Public Policy, Program in the Environment, and all other interested undergraduate students at the University of Michigan a space to learn about impact investing and the career opportunities that exist within it. For the past 2 years, we have put on a symposium featuring industry leaders to speak on panels, hold coffee chats, and provide other networking opportunities throughout the event. This year, in addition to the symposium, we aim to hold biweekly educational meetings to inform and empower our general members during the Winter semester.
MESA strives to promote student development and empower the campus community around issues of diversity and social justice through the lens of race and ethnicity.
Fun: We hope to weave celebration, laughter, and joy into our environment.
Collective Community: We build relationships with and beyond our circles so that we can work collaboratively to positively impact our environment, wherever that may be.
Trust: We trust individual and collective narratives and experiences. Some narratives sit in complement and other in contrast. Each engagement is an opportunity to extend and preserve trust by actively listening and demonstrating empathy and compassion.
Integrity: We will be honest, authentic and transparent; our decisions, actions and words will match what and who we say we are.
Intersectionality: While race/ethnicity is our foundation, we recognize that identities coexist to create a multi-dimensional person.
Transformation: We believe social change starts with the individual. We are committed to creating experiences and spaces that grow knowledge and take us to our learning edge.
Net Impact @ Ross
is a professional club and community for Ross students committed to driving social change. We are part of a broader international network of business leaders committed to responsible business models, policies and practices. Net Impact members seek to integrate this commitment into the mission, values, strategy and operations of organizations in which they are involved.
Net Impact Undergrad a collaborative, engaging club of diverse undergraduate students passionate about the intersection of business with social impact and sustainability. We hold weekly educational, professional development, and community-building events for our members and host university-wide symposiums and panels. Net Impact is a community of over 150 chapters and 30,000 changemakers, who are using their jobs and skills to tackle the world’s toughest problems. We are the University of Michigan’s Undergraduate Chapter, housed in the Ross School of Business, but open to all undergraduate students. Our aim is to put our education to work throughout every sector, showing the world that it is possible to make an impact that benefits not just the bottom line, but the people and the planet too. Using business as our vehicle, we’re pretty excited to change the world.
Open Road
is an established action-based social entrepreneurship program developed by Ross students and powered by Business+Impact and the Ford Motor Company. The aim of the program is to give small business owners extra hands in solving complex challenges and to help students gain real experience understanding the various issues social ventures face. Over the course of five weeks, students drive from state to state meeting socially-driven entrepreneurs. Students spend one week on-site in each location, working closely with the entrepreneur, to provide a solution or recommendation to a business problem they are facing. At the end of each week, students pack up the car and hit the road again to meet with the next entrepreneur!
optiMize is a student-led community that offers workshops, mentorship, and funding for students to work on projects that make a positive impact. optiMize is open to all U-M students, regardless of college or campus. Get involved at optimizemi.org!
Planet Blue
– In the lab, on campus, and in partnership with communities near and far, the University of Michigan is developing just solutions to society’s most pressing environmental challenges. Sustainability is a mindset and framework for ensuring that current and future generations have equitable access to the resources for a full and vibrant life without the exploitation of people, society or the environment.
Poverty Solutions
is a university-wide presidential initiative at the University of Michigan that partners with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty through action-based research. In confronting the challenges of poverty, we know scholars don’t have all the answers. Yet we have an important role to play. We can bring data, evidence, and analysis to identify critical issues and evidence-based solutions. Working in partnership, we can inform concrete action that empowers families to live healthy and productive lives.
The Program in the Environment (PitE) offers both a broad liberal arts education in environmental topics and the opportunity for students to pursue various lines of individual interest in considerable depth. Broadly speaking, PitE’s curriculum focuses on the complex interactions of human beings and their environment. To understand these interactions and learn how to create more rational and equitable forms of human habitation on this planet, PitE students develop a multidisciplinary perspective integrating the methods and approaches of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
It is our 20th Anniversary this year! Keep an eye out for special event announcements from us.
Propel’
s mission is to educate students at the University of Michigan on the intersection between positive business and social impact; and to work alongside local organizations, developing initiatives to maximuze their impact.
The Career Development Office (CDO) at Michigan Ross is charged with delivering world-best career services to its students. CDO partners with recruiters, academic programs, alumni, and clubs to help Ross students prepare for recruiting, develop connections, and leverage the power of the Michigan alumni network. Dedicated CDO Career Coaches are available to support students explore careers with impact and help them navigate and strategize for the internship and job search.
The Student Sustainability Coalition (SSC) promotes a sustainable campus culture at the University of Michigan by bringing people together to achieve social and environmental change. SSC is not a club or member organization—rather, we are a small group of students who work closely with the Graham Sustainability Institute, the Office of Campus Sustainability, Student Life, and the many student organizations across campus to advance sustainability. We are here to build connections, foster new partnerships, and amplify initiatives.
The Detroit Partnership
seeks to connect the students at the University of Michigan with Detroit-based community partners by facilitating service-learning opportunities and on-campus events. Beginning in 2018, The Detroit Partnership is now a student organization sponsored by the Ginsberg Center at the University of Michigan. Additionally, The Detroit Partnership is a government registered 501(c)(3) organization.
Our organization has two main service parts, our weekly programs and our major events. For weekly programs, we organize transportation for students to travel to Detroit once per week. Programs can range from tutoring children to teaching squash to helping adults get identification to apply to jobs! We have a program for everyone’s interests and aim to foster sustainable, educational relationships with our community partners. Our fall programs are now open!
For major events, we organize the largest single day of service at the University of Michigan. Detroit Partnership Day, also known as “DP Day,” occurs in late March or early April in second semester and brings hundreds of students and their respective clubs to Detroit to volunteer for a day. Additionally, we help put on “One Stop Shop” where we hold fundraisers to purchase toys and winter clothing for families in Detroit. While a member of the community shops, we help hold bags and guide them through the many sections of the store created inside of a Brightmoor church. Our internal planning team also participates in RCDC Day where we work on community revitalization projects such as weeding and gardening for one day.
The Law School launched the Problem Solving Initiative (PSI) in Winter 2017 to bring together students and faculty from law and other disciplines to actively apply creative problem solving, collaboration, and design thinking skills to complex, pressing challenges in a classroom setting.
Since 2017, students and faculty from a range of U-M units, including Nursing, the Campus Farm, Engineering, History of Art, Information, Sociology, SEAS, Medicine, and Business, have worked on a wide array of challenges as part of the Problem Solving Initiative.
PSI classes allow students to learn about topics such as sustainable food systems, connected and automated vehicles, human trafficking, “fake news,” firearm violence, and new music business models. At the same time, these classes allow students to learn about and apply tools, such as problem reframing, practicing empathy, prototyping, and more, that they will continue to apply in other classes, collaborative efforts, and the workplace.
The University of Michigan Solar Car Team is an entirely student-run organization that designs and builds solar electric vehicles. The team races both nationally and internationally. Since its establishment in 1989, the team has built 16 vehicles, won the American Solar Challenge nine times, placed in the top three in the World Solar Challenge seven times, and won one international competition. The team is recognized as the most successful team in North America, and one of the most successful teams in the world. The Business Division is responsible for fundraising, budgeting, and sourcing. Business division members work to develop and maintain sponsor relations with corporations around the world, large and small. The Communications division handles marketing, public relations, and produces media dedicated to generating interest in our team, solar racing, and renewable energy technologies.
Housed within the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, the Weiser Center for Real Estate connects the next generation of real estate professionals with the tools necessary to make a positive and equitable impact on built environments. The Center serves as a hub for all things real estate at the University of Michigan, providing students with educational and professional development opportunities, supporting applied research responsive to the needs of industry and policy makers, and serving as a catalyst for interdisciplinary collaboration at the University and beyond.
At the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, unlocking the power of business to provide lasting economic and social prosperity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is in our DNA. We gather the data, develop new models, test concepts and collaborate with partners to find real solutions that lead to new opportunities. This is what we mean by Solving for Business—our calling since the Institute was first founded as an independent nonprofit educational organization in 1992. We believe societies that empower individuals with the tools and skills to excel in business, in turn generate both economic growth and social freedom—or the agency necessary for people to thrive.
Women Who Launch
(WWL) is dedicated to creating a gender equal entrepreneurial ecosystem. Through hands-on workshops, speaker events, and networking opportunities we empower women to engage with entrepreneurship, whether as founders, funders, or team members. WWL hosts year-round educational and social programming that addresses topics significant to women in investing and entrepreneurship. Programming includes events such as a monthly speaker series,
industry-focused small group dinners, and a gender-focused investment research program.
The Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at Michigan Ross advances the knowledge and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation through academics, competitions, symposium, and global community outreach. The Zell Lurie Institute is the foremost resource for students as they pursue entrepreneurial endeavors and private equity careers.
University of Michigan
Stephen M. Ross School of Business
700 E. University St., K3510 West
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234
Phone 734.763.4214
Email businessimpact@umich.edu
© 2021 Regents of the University of Michigan