Business+Impact Announces the 2020-21 Board Fellows and Nonprofit Partners
Welcome to our 2020-21 Board Fellowship participants! This year’s Board Fellowship Program brings together 17 partner organizations and 22 students from seven U-M schools. The Fellows will serve on the governing boards of these partner organizations for the academic year.
Michigan Business Challenge – Seigle Impact Track Is Calling all Student Social/Environmental Ventures
Info Session
Mon, Oct. 19, 4-5 pm
Online
Application Deadline: Coming Soon!
Do you have an idea for a mission-driven business? Are you developing a social venture or interested in sustainability?
Discover the Michigan Business Challenge (MBC) and unleash your inner entrepreneur! MBC is a campus-wide, multi-round business plan competition where student teams have the opportunity to win cash prizes totaling over $100,000. MBC features three separate tracks. The Seigle Impact Track recognizes the business plan that best pursues a mission-driven goal. Student teams from across campus receive mentoring and coaching as they advance through three rounds to the finals in February.
The Michigan Business Challenge – Seigle Impact Track is sponsored by the Mark and Robin Seigle Entrepreneurial Innovation Fund and co-managed by Business+Impact, the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, and the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Majora Carter on Urban Revitalization Strategies
Fri, Nov. 6 @ 12-1:30 pm
Online
Business+Impact (B+I) is proud to co-sponsor U-M Poverty Solutions’ speaker Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow, and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. Ms. Carter’s work spans real estate and economic development, technology, green-infrastructure projects, policies, and job training and placement systems. She combines her corporate consulting practice focused on talent-retention and applies it to reducing “brain drain” in American low-status communities.
Student-Run Nonprofit Deploys Medical Supplies to Community Clinics
Blueprints for Pangaea, a student-run 501(c)(3) medical surplus recovery organization (MSRO), coordinated a donation of 700+ plastic face shields to community-based clinics such as Packard Health, Hope Clinic, Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County, and SafeHouse Center. This donation of PPE was from Crawford Industries and Systematics, Inc, and the UM chapter anticipates donating more than 4,000 masks to area organizations during the pandemic. In 2015, Blueprints for Pangaea won the Social Impact Track of Michigan Ross’ Michigan Business Challenge.
Ross Event Highlights:
Ross: Dean’s Panel on Race and Business Education |
Ross Alumni Relations: Race, Gender, and Rights: Histories of the Practice of Democratic Citizenship |
Ross Alumni Relations: Seven Last Words of the Unarmed Presentation with Dr. Eugene Rogers |

Gordon Scholarship Winners for 2020-21
Business+Impact (B+I) is pleased to announce that Claire Babilonia (MBA ’21), Tieranny Baker (MBA ’21) and Kevin Finnegan (MBA/MPP ’21) were chosen from nearly 30 applicants to receive the 2020-21 Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarships for outstanding commitment to solving complex social challenges. The award comes with $5,000 for each recipient. Gordon Scholars serve as B+I Student Ambassadors for the 2020-21 academic year.
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+Impact Studio Digital Student Open Houses
Tue Oct 27, 2020
5 – 5:20pm
Wed Nov 11, 2020
7 – 7:20pm
Mon Nov 16, 2020
12:30 – 12:50pm
We invite you to attend one of the three digital open houses for students and learn about the +Impact Studio! In each open house you’ll get a behind-the- scenes tour of how students in BA670 are designing for resilience to help local businesses and nonprofit organizations navigate the pandemic. You’ll also learn about the experience in the course, which recently received the Aspen Ideas Worth Teaching Award, and plans for the winter semester. Attend any of the times listed for a tour!
+Impact Studio Wins an Prestigious Aspen Award
The Aspen Institute — a well-respected education/policy organization — has again honored a course at the Ross School of Business with its prestigious Ideas Worth Teaching Awards. The Ideas Worth Teaching Awards are presented annually by Aspen’s Business & Society Program “to celebrate visionary faculty and the courses that tackle society’s largest, most embedded challenges of our time.” The +Impact Studio: Translation Research into Practice (BA 670) course, taught by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks.
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Impact News & Notes
- Study identifies how police violence contributes to mental health woes
- U-M awards more than $260,000 for research on confronting, combating racism
- Consumers’ race, income affect quality of financial services, treatment by lenders
- The right approach can turn times of crisis into times of growth
- Richard J. Smalling joins CPO Executives in Residence, says business can be a ‘force for good’
- Laura Morgan Roberts discusses women leaders on Better Life Lab podcast
- Ecology in the digital age
- U-M counts record startups, inventions in FY20
- Treating PFAS water contamination with cold plasma
- Support for racial injustice protests declines
- MICHIGAN IMPACT: Alternatives For Girls–Respectful help to reach goals

A Searchable Platform for All Things Impact at Ross and Across Campus
The Business+Impact Gateway provides you with a single location for all things impact. Here you’ll find all of the activities, people and key partners working to use their learning to make a real impact in the world.
At the University:
MICHIGAN ONLINE
Social Entrepreneurship Training
Are you are thinking about becoming a social entrepreneur? Michigan Online announces a new free course called “Becoming a Social Entrepreneur: Getting Started.” Taught by Michael Gordon, author of the book of the same title, this five-week online course, you’ll hear about 11 real-life social entrepreneurs, working around the world, and craft your own personal immersion plan.
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CENTER FOR SOCIALLY ENGAGED DESIGN
Innovation in Action
Innovation in Action at the University of Michigan is a campus-wide competition giving groups the opportunity, the tools, the people, and the room to take on the world’s biggest challenges. Through the course of this experience, you and your team will do a deep dive into a problem space and come out the other side with robust insights about complex issues, and the tools to synthesize that data into a solution.
View the world. Find a challenge. Create a better way.
The program will start in January 2021! Interested in learning more? Visit our website to fill out the interest form: innovationinaction.umich.edu
U-M DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION
DEI Summit
Mon, Oct. 26 @ 10 – 11:30 am
Online
The virtual DEI Summit provides an opportunity for the University to highlight the progress we’ve made over the previous year, the changes we’re experiencing across campus, and the opportunities of continued engagement with our community. This year’s theme, Arts+Social Change: Building an Anti-Racist World through the Arts, provides a time and space for the campus community to come together to demonstrate a collective commitment to anti-racism that this moment in our history compels.
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FORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
Policy Talks @ The Ford School
The Ford School hosts a diverse array of timely, meaningful events that engage our students, community, and public policy leaders. During the next month, the Ford School will host this wide-ranging and powerful series of talks on race, humanity and climate.
David Miliband on international politics, humanitarian needs, and the global significance of the U.S. election
Thurs, Oct. 15 @ 4 – 5 pm
Framing and Debating Climate Change and the Environment in Key African States
Thurs, Oct. 22 @ 11:30 am – 12:50 pm
Cecilia Muñoz on More than Ready: Be Strong and Be You…and Other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise
Mon, Oct. 26 @ 4 – 5 pm
Ford School Community Event on “John Lewis: Good Trouble”
Tues, Oct. 27 @ 4 – 5 pm
Race, Media and Political Attitudes
Thurs, Nov. 12 @ Noon – 12:50 pm
In the Impact Community:
Make Fashion Clean – Board Opportunities
Make Fashion Clean (MFC) is a nonprofit organization working to change how jeans are consumed and disposed of globally. They research fashion pollution, educate about denim dumping, and collaborate with artisans affected by disability at the MFI Founding in Ghana to create upcycled fashion. MFC is recruiting board members and advisors with expertise in fashion, finance, nonprofit management, marketing, environmental advocacy, disability rights, and artisan work.
Upswell
Upswell 2020 is about the two most important issues facing every changemaker in the United States: ending racism and recovering from the pandemic. So, Upswell is inviting you to show up. Because it’s going to take the very best you’ve got – and the very best the rest of us have got – to heal our nation and create a society where every person can thrive. Registration options are designed to ensure that every changemaker has the opportunity to participate.
Net Impact/SOCAP Conference
This year, join SOCAP Virtual: A Global Impact Summit, the leading virtual gathering of global changemakers addressing the world’s toughest challenges through market-based solutions. Net Impact is proud to partner with SOCAP 2020, the leading impact investing conference, on Monday, October 19 for a special day of curated content, networking, and connection opportunities. Net Impact Members get more than 35% off the Ticket Price by using the registration code “NETIMPACT20“.
Grinnell Prize
The Grinnell College Innovator for Social Justice Prize (the Grinnell Prize) honors individuals who have demonstrated leadership in their fields and who show creativity, commitment, and extraordinary accomplishment in effecting positive social change. Each prize carries an award of $50,000, half to the winning individual(s) and half to their related, nominated organization.
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Wege Prize
Wege Prize 2021 will again be open to undergraduate and graduate students from anywhere in the world, and will again be focused on the circular economy. When does it start? Well, right now! The Team Application period has been open since August, but final deliverables and team names are due next month.
OFN Virtual Conference
This year’s OFN Virtual Conference—the largest gathering in the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) industry—will feature four half-days of inspiring plenaries, energizing sessions, distinguished speakers, networking opportunities, and testimonials from CDFI-funded small businesses, affordable housing developers and residents, and community organizations across America. The theme for this year is finance justice.
More info