As another impactful year at Net Impact comes to a close, we thought it would be nice to look back over our collective milestones and success stories from 2016 with Net Impact’s Top 16 of 2016:

1. Chelsea from Boston University became Net Impact’s 100,000th member.

2. Aliza Garza, co-founder of BlackLivesMatter, moved the audience with her keynote at the 2016 Net Impact Conference. Watch it now:

3. Doug McMillon announced Walmart’s 2025 Sustainability Goals publicly for the first time on the 2016 Net Impact Conference mainstage. 

4. Over 2,400 current and future impact leaders convened in Philadelphia for the 2016 Net Impact Conference which provided three days of inspiration, networking, and impact.

5. Esther Kim, John Mathai, Ayush Singhal, and Niklaus Sugiri won our national Toyota Next Generation Mobility Challenge, and conceived of an innovative product to provide mobility for the blind. Watch their pitch:

6. Following the success of the Toyota Next Generation Mobility Challenge, Net Impact launched a second challenge series focused on promoting equity and opportunity through the innovation of products, services and technologies related to mobility.

7. Beating out over 140 responses, Foodfully won our Forward Food Competition which gave participants the chance to launch a new sustainable product or service within the food and beverage category. Their app is designed to both reduce global food waste and improve how people are consuming food, potentially saving individual consumers about $600 a year on their grocery bill. Learn more:

8. Nearly 100 students on 25 teams across 21 campuses took part in the Newman’s Own Foundation Challenge to improve nutrition on their campuses and in their communities.

9. Net Impact launched the Impact Race programming to increase racial equity awareness with over 90% of participants engaging more than 5 people in racial equity awareness activities or conversations.

10. Sruveera Sathi led her team from the College of William and Mary to win the 2016 Up to Us Campus Competition in partnership with the Clinton Foundation and the Peterson Foundation. Up to Us students on 50 campuses around the country raised awareness on why young people should care about our debt, and what they can do to act.

11. Net Impact launched the Net Impact Fellowship, a year-long leadership development program where Fellows implement action projects on their campus or in their community. Fellowships include the Healthy Food Fellowship, Racial Equity Fellowship, Criminal Justice Fellowship, and Impact Design Fellowship. 

12. Chapters around the world convened their communities around social and environmental issues through regional conferences as a part of our new event series, Net Impact Local.

13. University of Minnesota (undergraduate), Kellogg School of Management (graduate), Chicago (professional) and IIT Kharagpur (international) were our 2016 Chapters of the Year.

14. Annie’s, Inc. and Baxter International won our Impact at Work Challenge which required teams of co-workers to identify a need for sustainable change within their company, initiate a project, and collaboratively work towards a solution.

15. We completed the 2016 edition of our annual Guide to Business Schools for Social and Environmental Impact, the only publication for students, by students that ranks and highlights graduate schools at the forefront of social and environmental innovation.

16. Our cohort of summer fellows were an outstanding group of smart students and future impact leaders. 

Thank you for helping us ensure 2016 was another impactful year. We look forward to helping you turn your passions into a lifetime of world-changing action in 2017 and beyond!