December 2025 Newsletter
Apply Now for DNEP Motor City Multipliers
Calling all Detroit small business entrepreneurs! Through long-term relationships and effective sequencing, the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project (DNEP) connects entrepreneurs with faculty-supervised student teams, who are enrolled in action-based learning courses at the University, to address entrepreneurs’ legal, financial, marketing, operational, design, and technology challenges.
Students gain valuable professional experience working with real businesses and come to know and love Detroit; business owners gain access to data and capacity that allows them to scale.
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Announcing 2025-26 Skip & Carrie Gordon Scholars
Business+Impact (B+I) is pleased to announce that Nate Fisher (MBA/MURP ‘26), Felipe Sahb Furtado, MD (MBA ‘26), Sunny Huang (MBA/MPP ‘26), and Jasmin Lopez (MBA ‘26) are the recipients of the 2025-26 Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarships for outstanding commitment to solving complex social challenges. The award comes with $7,500 for each recipient. Gordon Scholars serve as B+I Student Ambassadors for the 2025-26 academic year.
Join us for the Upcoming Nonprofit Lightning Talks Series
“Financial Oversight: The Board’s Role” with Vance Jackson
Fri, Feb. 13 @ Noon
Room TBA
Nonprofit Lightning Talks is a 2025-26 series, brought to you by the University of Michigan Golub Capital Nonprofit Board Fellows Program. This entire series is open to the campus community and aims to equip you with concrete examples and actionable tools within each of the content areas of nonprofit governance covered.
Warm Wishes from Business+Impact
As we bid farewell to 2025, we at Business+Impact warmly congratulate our students as they complete the semester, and as some graduate. There is much to celebrate and be grateful for, and we are so thankful for everyone in our impact community and the vital work they do as changemakers. Wishing each of you an impactful 2026!
2025-26 B+I Student Ambassadors
We are proud to announce our fourteen 2025-26 B+I Student Ambassadors — graduate and undergraduate students from the Ross School of Business and other peer schools who represent the student voice for the Business+Impact initiative. Many of these students have participated in our programs or received funding or scholarships from us, and have been actively involved in the numerous impact activities at U-M.
Impact Studio Founders and Fellows Pitch at BCG Detroit
Recently, the Fall 2025 Impact Studio Founders and Applebaum Impact Design Fellows visited Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Detroit, where they pitched their business ideas and received feedback from BCG reps.
Impact News and Notes:U‑M students take on Alaska with a mission to help conserve the Arctic Fighting poverty may require cultural wisdom, not just cash – featuring Catherine Thomas ‘We don’t even know all of what we have.’ Howard fights to preserve Black newspapers – featuring Callum Carr Rethinking work: Why human-centered collaboration beats return-to-office mandates – featuring Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks INSEAD Explains Entrepreneurship: The Journey of Transformation |
DMACS marks 10 years of listening to Detroiters for shared impact
Detroit Land Bank chief: Detroit is running out of derelict homes to rehab Trump’s anti-climate agenda is making it more expensive to own a car – featuring Greg Keoleian Investigating racism’s impact on birth outcomes – featuring Safyer McKenzie-Sampson 2025-26 CEW+ Scholar Montala Carruthers Detroit is back from the dead. But not everyone is feeling it – featuring Sam Stragand |
At the University:
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARIES
Anti-Racist Digital Research Grants
The intent of the grant and institute are to support early-stage digital scholarship projects with a focus on anti-racist praxis. We encourage applications for projects at every stage of development and levels of experience with anti-racist research and digital scholarship. We understand that projects like these are a continual process of learning and unlearning. Your project does not need to be fully conceptualized to apply.
GINSBERG CENTER
Community Engagement and Alternative Break Grants
The Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning seeks grant proposals from registered student organizations to support community engagement and civic participation. This grant program aims to strengthen partnerships between UM student groups, the Ginsberg Center, and external community organizations (i.e. non-profits, government agencies, etc.) to address community-identified needs. Funding supports existing and new partnerships between student organizations and external community partners, emphasizing sustainable partnerships. Applicants can apply for the Community Engagement Grant or the Alternative Break Grant through the same application and eligibility process.
WILLIAM DAVIDSON INSTITUTE
Entrepreneurship Exchange
The Entrepreneurship Exchange brings together students from the U.S., Morocco, Libya and Egypt in small teams to identify market opportunities and develop business concepts that address real-world needs. Through this virtual certificate program, you’ll gain practical experience in civic-minded entrepreneurship. The program culminates in a video pitch competition. Once all three cohorts are complete, the winning teams will also participate in four live group mentoring sessions with a University of Michigan entrepreneurship professor.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR INSTITUTIONAL DIVERSITY
Apply for UM’s Diversity Scholars Network
The Diversity Scholars Network (DSN) supports the professional success of scholars through academic, educational, and social connections and environments. We believe that success encompasses not only individual scholars’ professional goals but also their personal and professional development as whole persons.
Our network consists of over 1,300 scholars from 515 institutions worldwide, including tenured, tenure-track, clinical and research faculty (including lecturers), research staff, and postdoctoral fellows.
PACLSHR
Research Assistant Opportunities
The University of Michigan President’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights (PACLSHR) is now soliciting applications from students interested in working on a research project related to forced labor, human trafficking, etc. arising in different contexts. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the UM Law School Human Trafficking and Immigration Clinic.
SEMESTER IN DETROIT
Apply for Semester in Detroit
Apply Now for the Summer Program
Semester in Detroit accepts undergraduate students from all schools and departments at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, UM-Dearborn, UM-Flint and Grand Valley State University. All students, from First years to Seniors or Super Seniors are eligible to apply.
Applicants should have a strong interest in the city of Detroit and in questioning dominant narratives; engaging with challenging new perspectives on contemporary issues; and building community with students, SiD faculty and staff, and community members at internship sites and beyond.
OFFICE OF ACADEMIC MULTICULTURAL INITIATIVES
MLK Symposium Events Requested
The MLK Symposium encourages events spread out through the months of January and February, as the MLK Holiday itself is usually a very crowded programming day. OAMI provides support to student organizations to create events for the symposium through our SAMI grants program. OAMI does not have any funding sources for MLK Symposium events for units/departments/faculty.
ERB INSTITUTE
Join the Erb Fellows Program
We are excited to announce that the application for the Erb Institute Undergraduate Fellows Program is now live! This is a key program for rising juniors (Class of 2028) majoring or minoring in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business or the Program in the Environment (PitE). Fellows engage in customizable coursework and co-curricular learning, and graduate with the connections to build a career in sustainability.
CGIS
2026 Global Social Impact Internships Program
This program helps students earn academic credit while pursuing independent social impact internships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Internship fields include health, engineering, education, human rights, sustainability, and gender-based advocacy. Alongside your internship, you will engage in critical dialogue and reflection about the complexities of striving for justice while crossing differences of culture and power, and you will create a series of digital storytelling posts that document your experiences through lenses informed by our course themes.
MARSAL FAMILY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
James A. Kelly Learning Lever Prize
The James A. Kelly Learning Lever Prize is a competition designed to challenge University of Michigan students to invent digital tools with the potential to significantly improve student learning. This prize encourages a culture of innovation in education, and rewards the creative, interdisciplinary work of University of Michigan students.
In the Impact Community:
D-Prize
Can you design a new business or NGO that delivers a proven poverty intervention at scale? Submit your design for a new organization that solves one of our Distribution Challenges below. We will award the most promising teams with up to $20,000 USD to launch their new organization wherever extreme poverty exists. Challenges include Health, Water, Education Agriculture, Livelihoods, Energy, and Public Services.
Global Engagement Summit Delegates
Apply by Mon, Dec. 15
GES is April 23-27 in Evanston, IL
Apply to join us at the 2025 Global Engagement Summit, hosted at Northwestern University in April. The Global Engagement Summit is a social innovation conference that gathers young change-makers worldwide to collaborate, refine and promote their social ventures. Delegates have the opportunity to grow and scale their projects through tailored workshops, personalized mentorship sessions, and keynote speaker events.
Volunteer to Prepare Taxes
Apply Now
Work Now — April
United Way of Southeast Michigan sponsors volunteer tax preparers from December 7 through April 16. As a volunteer tax preparer, you can ensure that our clients get the best return on their taxes. No need to be an accountant: we arm you with tax law training and on-site expert support so that you can confidently complete accurate returns. With a minimum commitment of 30 hours, you can help us return millions of dollars to members of our community this season.