The IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge is MIT’s 20+ year-old social impact incubator housed in the PKG Public Service Center. Since its founding in 2001, IDEAS has enabled MIT student-led teams to apply their education and expertise in collaboration with community partners to address social and environmental challenges around the world. Through IDEAS, MIT students recruit a team from anywhere in the world and develop a creative solution in partnership with impacted stakeholders. IDEAS teams benefit from a supportive body of reviewers, mentors, and funding ranging from $1,000 – $20,000.
IDEAS is first and foremost an experiential learning program, boasting learning outcomes within Teaming and Collaboration, Systems Thinking, and Impact Measurement. Teams must be led by current MIT students, but can have alumni and people unconnected to MIT as team members or collaborate as community partners. Teams are evaluated on a rubric based on the following criteria:
Innovation in context
Feasibility of implementation
Impact potential
2024-2025 Timeline
Applications open Tuesday, September 10, 2024 and close on Monday, November 25, 2024. Take a look below at this year’s annual cycle of deadline and opportunities to grow as a social innovator.
| September | Application portal opens on Tuesday, September 10, 2024Funding: Apply to Sandbox for initial seed funding to start testing your hypothesis Events: Explore MIT’s entrepreneurship festival t=0, a month-long celebration at the start of the school year Workshop: Systems-Change Social Innovation 101Workshop: Finding an unmet need through systems awareness Workshop: How to develop community partnershipsDrop-in advising is available and encouraged |
| October | Events: Find a team to join or recruit teammates at Pitch2Match Social Impact co-hosted with the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship at MIT Workshop: Designing Equitable Interventions Drop-in advising is available and encouraged. |
| November | Application portal closes on Monday, November 25, 2024 at 12:00 PM Noon ESTWorkshop: How to write a successful application Drop-in advising is available and encouraged. |
| December | A group of reviewers provide feedback and evaluate your proposal based on the IDEAS Rubric |
| January | Feedback and interview times are distributed to each teamIDEAS staff conduct interviews and extend offers to selected teams |
| February – April | IDEAS programming kicks off! Programming includes but is not limited to: alumni dinner, weekly workshops, workshop deliverables, mentorship, team progress check-insApril: Judge interviews to determine grant funding and IDEAS Awards Celebration |
| May – August | Virtual summer monthly meetings with previous cohort |
| September + | Teams who receive Amazon Prizes for Social Good continue to receive programming support until next summer |
Prepare your IDEAS Application
- September Workshops:
- Systems-Change Social Innovation 101
- Finding an unmet need through systems awareness
- How to develop community partnerships
- October Workshops:
- Events: Find a team to join or recruit teammates at Pitch2Match Social Impact co-hosted with the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship at MIT
- Workshop: Designing Equitable Interventions
- November Workshops:
- How to write a successful application
Looking for inspiration? Meet the 2024 Cohort of Social Innovators.
The 2024 IDEAS teams were colorfully celebrated at the end of spring at the MIT Museum. Five teams received inaugural Amazon Prizes for Social Good to implement their projects. These teams were selected by a group of experts across a variety of industries who volunteered as IDEAS judges. For the fourth year, IDEAS partnered with MIT Solve to present two additional teams with Crowd Favorite Awards. The 14 teams in the 2024 cohort included:
- $20,000 Amazon Prize for Social Good: Lyme Alert
- $15,000 Amazon Prizes for Social Good: My Sister’s Keeper
- $10,000 Amazon Prizes for Social Good: Sakhi – Simppl
- $7,500 Amazon Prizes for Social Good: BendShelters
- $6,000 Amazon Prizes for Social Good: PuntoSalud
- $2,500 Crowd Favorite & $4,000 Seed Grant: ONE Community
- $2,500 Crowd Favorite & $4,000 Seed Grant: Mudzi Cooking
- $4,000 Seed Grant: Amapola
- $4,000 Seed Grant: Build X
- $4,000 Seed Grant: Chronolog Health
- $4,000 Seed Grant: Culture Crate
- $4,000 Seed Grant: FOODres.ai
- $4,000 Seed Grant: TOPPA
- $4,000 Seed Grant: Xingu
Volunteer with IDEAS
Are you a social impact expert or an IDEAS alum eager to contribute? Here are some ways you can get involved with IDEAS:
- Reviewer: Reviews initial IDEAS applications in December and provides feedback.
- Mentor: Serves as a mentor for IDEAS finalists and grantees. There are levels to mentorship depending on time availability.
- Expert / Speaker: Serves as a one-time social enterprise subject matter expert.
- Judge: Serves as a judge on a 1-day Saturday judging session in April, evaluating teams to determine grant awardees.
Indicate your interest in serving as a volunteer for our next program cycle here and we will be in touch with you.
Additional Program Offerings
Resource Connector: We continue to share opportunities and resources for MIT and non-MIT student social innovators and entrepreneurs via our Resource Connector linked here.
MIT Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (SE+I) Ecosystem Institute-wide Slack Workspace: Connect with students, faculty and different program administrators to learn about the various other programs across MIT here. Be sure to search the Slack workspace name ‘mit-se-innovation’ to locate and join. This is an MIT community-only resource. Once you have joined, you may invite any member of the MIT community.
