Capital for Good: Experiential Learning & Fellowships

Affiliated with the Social Enterprise Club at Columbia Business School, the Microlumbia Impact Fund is the student-run impact investment fund that supports financial inclusion in underserved communities around the world, while educating and inspiring the next generation of impact investors.

Founded in 2007, Microlumbia provides debt investments and pro bono advisory services to social enterprises and institutions focused on financial inclusion; offers due diligence assistance to impact investment funds and their portfolio companies; and hosts educational and networking events for their student members and broader Columbia University community.

The Neuberger Berman ESG Investing Challenge (2020, 2019), in conjunction with Columbia Business School, seeks to empower MBA students to incorporate sustainability within robust investment processes. Participants identify investments with the potential to meet a dual objective: positive impact and financial performance.

Pangea Advisors is Columbia Business School’s pro bono, international consulting organization, which aim to improve lives in the developing world by helping nonprofit and for-profit social enterprises address challenges.

Each semester, teams of students work with clients spanning countries and industries, including on impact investing and philanthropic strategies and initiatives. The team, supported by a faculty or professional mentor, completes a consulting assignment, advising clients on innovative and impactful practices.

The Nonprofit Board Leadership Program at Columbia Business School cultivates the next generation of nonprofit board leaders while providing a valuable service to alumni and the nonprofit organizations on whose boards they serve. The program was created in response to the high level of student interest in nonprofit board service and nonprofit organizations’ growing need for board members with business training and experience. Projects that students work on include topics related to philanthropic capital and initiatives to maximize the size and impact of these financial resources.

The Tamer Fund for Social Ventures provides seed grants of up to $25,000 to nonprofit, for-profit, and hybrid early-stage social and environmental ventures.

Columbia students work on due diligence projects to assess the social or environmental venture applicants who are working to solve a social or environmental problem. In general, social and environmental for-profit ventures produce products and/or services that either focus on addressing the needs of low-income communities or customers with an explicit purpose of increasing the welfare of these groups, alleviate a market failure and create significant public goods or benefits that are not wholly captured in the price charged by the business, or have attracted funding for the business by investors or grant makers who are seeking measurable social or environmental impacts.

The Three Cairns Climate Fellowship at Columbia Business School provides support to MBA and EMBA students who complete semester- or year-long projects at the intersection of climate change and business. Students may apply individually or in teams for projects that work with Columbia research faculty, or any type of organization, or business including venture capital, private equity, impact investing, or philanthropic fund, in the U.S. or abroad that is addressing sustainability and climate change issues. Projects should focus on using markets and business knowledge, skills, and tools to identify and implement solutions to mitigate, adapt to, or reverse climate change and its impacts. The Three Cairns Climate Fellowship was endowed by Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86. Their recently established family office, Three Cairns Group, has a core commitment to making investments in decarbonizing the world economy.

The Sustainable Investing Fellowship is co-managed by the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change and the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing and offers a select group of Columbia students the opportunity to design and implement efforts that seek to drive capital toward investments that promote sustainable economic growth.

The institute supports the Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship Program, a unique and exciting opportunity for students to apply what they’re learning in the classroom with an organization making social change in the world.

This fellowship provides financial support to MBA students engaged in summer internships that create social and environmental value, including social impact capital funds, and Columbia and Barnard undergraduate and graduate students working at early-stage social ventures (in operations for seven years or less).