Social Impact Hub

What does social impact mean to us? To have a profound impact on the way the world does business, and on the way business impacts the world.

Empower yourself to make a positive difference

Use our expertise and resources to realise the powerful potential of business to address the world’s most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges.

Build social impact into your studies:

Study social impact through your core curriculum
Spend a week immersed in the realities of what social impact means to business
through your Global Experience. Apply your learning to support a real-world micro-
entrepreneur and change lives through the Johannesburg GBE (MBA).
Use your London Project (Graduate Masters and MBA) to work on social impact challenges
Read our cutting edge research on social impact through our faculty, such as Ioannis
Ioannou or the Wheeler Institute of Business and Development

Join our Social Impact Club and Impact Consulting Club:

Meet like-minded students interested in pioneering business activity that makes a
real difference in the world.

Attend the Social Impact Club Conference and take part in Social Impact Week:

Meet world-leading organisations involved with social impact
Access professionals, academics and students to discuss hot topics connected with
social impact.

Join teams of students from other London Business School degree programmes:

Complete real-world strategy consulting projects for not-for-profits and non-
governmental organisations
Past clients include the United Nations, the British Red Cross and Ashoka, a global
social entrepreneurship accelerator
Work with smaller social entrepreneurs looking to hone and scale their impact.

Push your entrepreneurial spark to the limit or test your mettle as a potential impact
investor by entering one of the challenging international business school competitions we
offer:

Compete with future innovators from the world’s top business schools to win the
CleanTech Challenge, an LBS initiative
Find out what it’s like to be an analyst in an investment fund by entering the MIINT -
MBA Impact Investing, Network and Training (MIINT) programme – competition and
fight off rivals to secure an investment in your chosen social enterprise.
Source and invest in social enterprises through our Student Impact Investing Fund
(SIIF). The first of its kind impact investing fund in the UK.

Hear our students talking about what social impact means for them

“Social impact is how organisations, businesses or individuals’ actions affect the surrounding community. LBS students achieve this through a broad range of careers, using their skills to make significant positive change to communities both locally and internationally. Our top talent drives real impact. We support a range of organisations, including for-profit businesses and their CSR teams and foundations, Certified B corporations, government organisations, charities and NGOs.”

Be inspired. Develop strategies to tackle the issues that matter most. Learn how to promote progressive ecological and social agendas on a global scale.
Get your business on board: Wherever you work, whether it’s a corporate, tech firm, financial institution or multinational consultancy, you can raise awareness and align business goals to make a positive change.
Learn about the industries that focus solely on social impact: We’ll help you connect to companies focusing on renewable energy, the circular economy and impact investing, as well as showcasing how for-profit roles can have a greater impact.
Network with organisations where social impact is the main measure of success. The Hub and Careers Centre will help you gain the skills you need to find a role and succeed in this sector.
Become a social entrepreneur. Draw on the expertise of faculty, alumni and LBS institutes to start your own initiative or business.

Initiatives with impact

Advance social, environmental and economic goals. Many core LBS social impact activities are delivered by our students, for our students.

Our student-led initiatives

Aasha

Theory: Social entrepreneurship

Learning method: Practice consultancy - implementation

Skills developed: Strategy and implementation challenges of delivering poverty alleviation
Board Associates programme

Theory: Governance; strategy

Learning method: Through practice

Skills developed: Governance; strategic challenges faced by the not-for-profit sector
CleanTech Challenge

Theory: Innovation

Learning method: Competition

Skills developed: Technology solutions to environmental challenges
Club events

Theory: Various

Learning method: Co-curricular

Skills developed: Breadth and depth on social impact topics
Conference

Theory: Various

Learning method: Knowledge - networking

Skills developed: Breadth and depth on social impact topics
Impact Consulting projects

Theory: Strategy

Learning method: Practice consultancy

Skills developed: Strategic, analytic and consulting skills and an understanding of social impact challenges
Impactathon

Theory: Social entrepreneurship

Learning method: Practice consultancy

Skills developed: Strategic, analytic and consulting skills and an understanding of social impact challenges
MIINT

Theory: Impact investment

Learning method: Competition

Skills developed: Impact investing skills and knowledge; networking across business schools

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The Social Impact Club

Explore projects that combine academic excellence, social consciousness and an enduring commitment to helping others. Encounter the NGO and NFP sectors’ greatest challenges and use state-of-the-art analysis to develop solutions.

Find out more

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The Impact Consulting Club

Evolve strategic understanding from a global outlook. Share professional skills on immersive consulting projects and operate in teams that contain a dynamic range of professional experience, sectors and standpoints.

Find out more

Social Impact case study

Aasha Initiative is a social impact project in Bangalore where students work with social entrepreneurs for 6 months to alleviate poverty.

Julia Metzner and Patrick Plikat (MiM 2017) wanted to discover more about the social impact sector during their studies. Through the LBS network, the two connected with alumna and Head of Global Action on Poverty at Head Held High, Manisha Dahad (MBA97). Head Held High is an accelerator programme for social entrepreneurs and activists in India.

With the help of the Social Impact Hub, Julia and Patrick established the Aasha Initiative. This involved two groups of MiM students volunteering as consultants for an NGO or social entrepreneur for six months, 2 to 3 weeks of which was spent in Bangalore.

In 2017/18, our MiM students worked with and supported two separate organisations - Liter of Light and Estah.

Liter of Light is a global grassroots movement that works with local NGOs and other initiatives to provide remote and off-the-grid communities with low-cost solar lamps. The Aasha project supported Liter of Light over the course of the six months to:

Define a growth strategy to scale up the organisation and find sustainable sources of sponsorship and suppliers
Enable impactful communication by improving communication materials and building a brand identity
Improve the core product through simplifying design, making it easier to build and sturdier.

Estah is a farming cooperative that empowers farmers to engage in natural food production and enables direct sale to end consumers. The Aasha Initiative supported Estah over the course of six months to:

Write a compelling storyline and develop an impactful communication business model to pitch to investors
Define the organisational structure and collate all available resources for farmers to easily access in order to strengthen the organisation
Define KPIs and introduce an impact measurement tool to showcase impact to investors.