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Events with Impact: From Dodgeball to Thinkathon

Events with Impact: From Dodgeball to Thinkathon

With over 1,000 events hosted over this past year, our active chapter network never ceases to amaze us. From conferences to dodgeball tournaments to art exhibitions, our chapters host a wide variety of innovative events that make an impact. If you’re involved with a Net Impact chapter, look no farther for some inspiration for your next event. And if you haven’t gotten together with your local chapter yet, well, what are you waiting for?

Conferences and summits  

 The Net Impact Boston Career Summit is an annual collaborative effort by local chapters that brings together local professionals, job-seekers, and graduate students interested in a social impact career. This year’s theme was “Impact Across Industries” and featured panel discussions, workshops, and exhibitors from the nonprofit, for-profit, and public sectors.

The chapter at University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School organized FoodCon, a day-long conference focused on food, business, and sustainability. Events that revolve around a specific, pertinent social cause can be a fantastic way to bring together a cross-section of interested students, professionals, and community members.

Finding direction 

Chicago’s professional chapter sought to incorporate the wide variety of interests of their socially minded members into their chapter’s future by holding their first Thinkathon The Thinkathon format allowed their members, who come from a wide range of professional backgrounds, to come together and discuss how to shape a meaningful community for everyone in their chapter.

Awesome guest speakers University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business chapter invited Trish Wheaton from WPP, the world’s largest communications holding company, to talk about how brand marketing is measuring the impact of doing well by doing good, providing insight into how a new generation of socially conscious consumers is changing business.

London Business School’s Responsible Business Club stayed relevant by offering perspective on a timely issue. The club invited guest speaker Dr. Darren Williamson to share his first-hand experiences from spending three months in Sierra Leone monitoring the international response to the recent Ebola epidemic.

Meanwhile, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s College of Business chapter helped shed light on the current state of climate change by inviting Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Donald J. Wuebbles, who discussed how to mitigate and overcome climate change issues.

Getting creative  

The chapter at the College of William and Mary - Mason School of Business found a way of doing  good while having fun with EmpowerBall, a dodgeball tournament that served as a fundraiser for Empower Generation, a solar-based social enterprise in Nepal. John Hopkins University - Carey Business School’s chapter held their 4th Annual Mr. Carey Business School Pageant to raise funds for a local Baltimore charity, Sharp Dressed Man, which supports men who are reentering the workforce.

University of Virginia’s undergraduate chapter got creative and collaborative by co-sponsoring the Environmental Arts Activism Festival. This kind of partnership shows the importance of cross-sector collaboration to create new narratives that bring heightened awareness and understanding to important social issues, a topic that has also been featured a recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Our chapters really are at the forefront of the social impact movement! 

To keep up-to-date on the exciting events happening in our network and to see what's happening near you, check out our Events Calendar.