Our Portfolios
Gathering people who don’t ordinarily collaborate to share great ideas on solving seemingly intractable problems.
We build new tools, frameworks, and practical guides for those doing the tough work of creating social change.
Data + Digital
Scaling responsible data practices and digital service delivery to support the relationships and responsiveness between governments and the people they serve.
Fair Finance
Investing for outcomes often means shifting incentives and addressing systemic inequities to achieve lasting change. We aim to right the rules of the game for shared prosperity.
Sustainable Student Impact - NEW
Accelerating holistic social impact training, we develop student programs and tools centered on experiential learning while fostering collaboration to scale the impact of our work.
• Scale
Responsible Data Practices
many government agencies are also experiencing the pains of governing how that data is shared, resulting in practices that are unsustainable, ineffective, and not forward-thinking. There is a fundamental need to evolve these practices into a governance approach that balances the need to protect people’s data with the need to uncover opportunities to better serve communities through data.
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• Incubation
State Chief Data Officers Network
Data is a strategic asset and states have great potential to unlock it for public good. While several states have established Chief Data Officers (CDOs) to advance the use and management of data, many still lack the senior technical leadership to leverage the data they already have to better target services, and use ongoing data collection to test different strategies and scale what works. The State Chief Data Officer Network will provide expert support for state efforts to utilize data to deliver better outcomes.
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• Scale
Digital Census Project
The Census provides our nation’s foundational dataset, the basis upon which so much other data is based. It is used in research, algorithms, journalism, business, and infrastructure planning among other things. In many ways it creates the reality upon which our institutions, our lives, and our futures are built. It is the people’s data: a shared public asset that is becoming increasingly important in a data-driven world.
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• Incubation
Social Impact Navigator
The Social Impact Navigator defines social impact leadership skills, provides students with a self-diagnostic to identify strengths and areas for development, and maps social impact opportunities to specific skills for development, enabling students to create an action plan for growth.
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• Exploratory
Financing Immigrant and Refugee Integration
Financial tools can help bring ideas to action by aligning interests and marrying different streams of capital. We’ll engage a diverse group of stakeholders and experts including investors (both traditional and impact), policymakers, corporations, community leaders, academics (from both national universities and community colleges), and representatives from the immigrant and refugee communities, to identify the most promising (and most scalable) approaches to financing economic integration.
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• Incubation
Reimagining Community Investing for the 21st Century
Now more than ever, we need informed policy-makers who are able to utilize comprehensive research in the legislative process. Reliable research can bolster a more comprehensive and inclusive approach that sparks vital conversation amongst all stakeholders. The policy briefs will be published public resources that can be accessed via digital platforms for use. Their digital format will allow interactive information dissemination and usage for anyone seeking to inform themselves on community investing.
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• Incubation
Delivering Better Outcomes through User-Centered Policy Making
The future of improved service delivery requires a strategy that includes user-centered policy making and creates space for experimentation and piloting.
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• Exploratory
Improving Foster Care
This project has the ability to markedly improve the states’ processes, reducing the time it takes for foster families to be vetted and matched with children, and impacting the lives of thousands of foster children and serve as a national model.
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• Exploratory
New Digital Service Teams
Government teams are pioneering new approaches and learning from their experiences and we have much to learn from those implementing innovative methods.
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• Exploratory
Upskilling the Government Tech Workforce
In recent years, governments have increasingly begun approaching service delivery through approaches with modern technology, software development, and service design principles. This has led to creation of digital service teams in government such as the U.S. Digital Service, Digital Services Georgia, and the San Francisco Digital Service, and the need to designate specialized technologists to fulfill the work of these teams, such as developers, human-centered designers, user-experience researchers, data scientists, and more.
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• Exploratory
Social Safety Net Benefits Research
The need for assistance for core financial, housing, nutrition, healthcare, family care, and transportation support can lead to significant challenges for millions of American workers seeking to find and sustain employment that will offer upward mobility and economic security.
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• Scale
GU Impacts Fellowship
GU Impacts is a 7-month fellowship program guiding students through an immersive and transformational experience. While the fellowship is centered around a 10-week independent summer project with one of our social impact partners, the Beeck Center wraps fellows’ summer experience with robust on- and off-boarding.
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• Exploratory
Equitable Access to Capital Markets
The Equitable Access to Capital Markets team is conducting field work to advance the access, growth, and success of minority-led and women-led financial services firms, including a survey of current initiatives, a stakeholder convening, and recommendations for moving the needle to create access.
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• Exploratory
State Software Collaborative
Government hasn’t kept pace with advances in technology. Only 13% of major government software projects succeed, and the successful and failed ones alike cost 5–10 times more than they should. When these projects fail, so too do the public policy initiatives that depend on them — unemployment insurance, DMVs, healthcare exchanges, paid family & medical leave, etc. — leaving behind the millions of Americans who rely on those programs. We’ve seen in the response to the COVID-19 crisis that even if lawmakers move quickly to pass legislation to get money to laid-off workers, small businesses, and hospitals, those policies can’t be implemented effectively when the technology tools used to apply for, distribute, and track funds can’t be easily modified or don’t work.
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• Incubation
Data + Justice Project
Conducting innovative qualitative and quantitative research into prosecutorial decision-making with a goal of reducing incarceration and racial disparities and improving effectiveness and fairness of justice in their jurisdictions.
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• Incubation
Inclusive Community Impact Investing
The bipartisan passage of Opportunity Zones (OZs) legislation in December 2017 created a new incentive for investment of capital into low-income communities across the country, and helped catalyze multi-stakeholder conversations on the topic.
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• Incubation
Digital Service Collaborative
The Beeck Center is working in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation to provide expert support to government digital transformation efforts. As governments increasingly focus on delivery of public services, the Digital Service Collaborative will provide tangible resources to scale successful practices and will cultivate the community of digital service leaders.
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• Exploratory
Modernizing Congress
Here at the Beeck Center, we envision a 21st century where Americans leverage technology and data to renew democracy. To that end, the Beeck Center has been conducting research on the potential for crowdsourcing expertise from communities to inform what happens in Congress.
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• Exploratory
The Blockchain Ethical Design Framework for Social Impact
In June 2018, we launched the Blockchain Ethical Design Framework, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to ensure that privacy and ethics are incorporated into blockchain applications. The Framework provides an actionable tool for decision makers and practitioners to drive positive social impact and ethical intentionality into the design and implementation of blockchain technologies.
View ProjectOur Projects
We take on a select number of projects, ideally with learning partners, that are focused on delivering outcomes. Knowing that scale is critical for success, our projects fall into one of three stages that show our intentionality toward accelerating these efforts.
Stages for Scale
A three-pronged approach to scaling social impact.
We want to test, incubate and scale what works. We believe failure is just as important as success.
Exploratory
We surface leading-edge ecosystem ideas and scout for models that can achieve positive outcomes for stakeholders.
Incubation
The bulk of our work is in this stage, where we proof ideas, build networks, raise awareness, and ready models for adoption
Scale
We identify and collaborate with partners through our networks to accelerate adoption by the mainstream or transfer the next stage of work to larger institutions outside the Beeck Center.