Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact

The Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact invests in community builders who turn individual generosity into collective energy. By sharing ideas, nurturing leaders, and scaling what works, we help everyday changemakers forge stronger connections, illuminate new paths, and turn local sparks into bright, enduring beacons of positive social progress.

Community and connection matter more than ever. Without them, people around the world face isolation, polarization, and the decline of communal institutions that anchor everyday life. Yet when communities have the tools and resources they need, they create durable change themselves. That’s why we invest in the capacity of local change leaders, sustain their connection to one another, and scale the networks that emerge to unlock sustainable, positive change.


Since our founding in 2013, we’ve worked to build a world where thriving communities collaborate to create solutions to the problems we face.

  1. 20 initiatives launched that collectively have reached 100+ million people
  2. 50+ organizations, corporations, and social impact investors who support our work
  3. GivingTuesday, our largest initiative, raised $3.1 billion in 2022 alone for organizations and individuals

Our Guiding Principles

These principles help us make choices about how and on what we work.

We Work Toward a Better World.

Our canvas for change is large, allowing us to dream and act expansively.

We Innovate in Service of Impact.

We focus on initiatives with the potential for outsized impact in a given field.

We Honor Wisdom and Agency Beyond Ourselves.

We ground our solutions in wisdom beyond our own, actively seeking outside perspectives and collaborations.

We Invest in People.

We lead in service of change leaders who aspire to create impact beyond themselves.

We Embrace Evolution.

We evolve, expand, and contract solutions as the world — and our understanding of it — changes around us.

Current Initiatives

Share Our America is on a mission to reduce polarization by forging unlikely relationships and unlocking trust across differences.

Women inPower is a fellowship that provides senior-level women+ across professional sectors the resources needed to advance to the top levels of leadership in their fields.

Newmark Civic Life Series offers lectures and conversations with leading experts exploring pro-democracy efforts at this critical moment in the US and around the world, supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

92nd Street Live brings 92NY’s digital programming to senior living communities across the country, creating opportunities for seniors to experience world class arts and culture programming and build community.

Previous Initiatives

The LessLonely Project is a campaign to destigmatize and combat loneliness among Gen Z.

#GivingTuesday unleashes the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving with donations, by volunteering, through acts of kindness and connection, or advocacy.

The Social Good Summit is a conference that brings together leaders, philanthropists, activists and entrepreneurs from around the globe to explore how we can use innovations in media and technology to make the world a better place by the year 2030.

7 Days of Genius was a global festival of creativity to advance the common good from 2014 to 2019. For one week each year, communities around the world came together to create and celebrate new genius solutions to some of the world’s most pressing social issues.

CultureSwap, matches participants across the arts and cultural sector with peers at other institutions, accessible online so that anyone can start their own CultureSwap.

In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s mutual-improvement club, Ben Franklin Circles gives anyone, anywhere the tools to convene their own “junto” and spark discussions about virtue, ethics, leadership, and community in the 21st century to improve ourselves and the world around us.

Connect with Us

We’re excited to hear from you! Please email us to start the conversation.