$50M for Change

$50M for Change is a Social Impact exercise built by Professor Megan Kashner from Northwestern University. This digitally-based gamified case assigns each student to one of five roles – impact investor, state director of commerce, foundation president, retired entrepreneur, and corporate VP. Each student has the responsibility to deploy a total of $10 million over the span of five years with the goal of addressing the challenges inherent to the issues of opportunity-youth (NEETs). The case is set in the fictitious state of Bontas. Students are responsible for determining the best use of these funds given the specific parameters and context of their role, data and details about the state and city context, workforce, industry, educational outcomes, demographics, and more. In this exercise, students determine their own capital deployment choices first, and then revisit and revise those decisions in collaboration with the other five characters. This experiential learning exercise invites students into the collaborative and fraught negotiation and decision-making inherent to deploying capital for social impact and engaging in the practice of public-private partnership and blended capital.