Our Supporters

Institute for Business & Social Impact

IBSI builds upon Haas’ historic commitment to excellence in research and public education to design and test innovative, impactful, and evidence-based solutions for policymakers, private sector, and nonprofit to tackle social and environmental challenges. The institute leverages Haas faculty and their research to develop courses and experiential learning opportunities, and fosters partnerships focused on the role of business to achieve a more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive society.

Center for Effective Global Action

CEGA is a hub for research on global development. Headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley, our large, interdisciplinary network–including a growing number of scholars from low- and middle-income countries–identifies and tests innovations designed to reduce poverty and promote development. CEGA researchers use rigorous evaluations, tools from data science, and new measurement technologies to assess the impacts of large-scale social and economic development programs. Through careful matchmaking, competitive grantmaking, and research dissemination activities, CEGA ensures that the scientific evidence we produce improves the lives of people living in poverty.
The CEGA-led Digital Credit Observatory (DCO) was established in 2016 with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support a coordinated portfolio of rigorous research on the impacts — both positive and negative — of digital credit products in emerging markets. Since then, the DCO has supported seventeen studies in twelve countries throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Blum Center for Developing Economies

The Blum Center for Developing Economies supports LIFT innovation, education and experiential learning efforts. The Center leverages energy and talent of the UC Berkeley community to address challenges in low-resource areas. The Center leads an undergraduate minor in Global Poverty & Practice program, one of the most popular minors on the Berkeley campus; a graduate PhD minor in Development Engineering, the first in the nation; and a Master of Development Engineering, a professional degree committed to solving complex global challenges across the corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors. The Center also manages the Big Ideas Contest, the University of California’s premier annual social entrepreneurship competition and ecosystem, serving thousands of students across all ten UC campuses. Big Ideas includes a special track focusing on how fintech and blockchain technology might create social impact in areas relating to financial inclusion, health, education, supply chain management, insurance, sustainable finance, and philanthropy.

Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence

The Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI) is a new multi-disciplinary campus-wide initiative, focusing on advancing the science, technology and education of decentralization and empowering a responsible digital economy. The RDI Center currently includes faculty and students from computer science, finance/economics, and law, and will support 3 pillars: research, education, and community / entrepreneurship.

Research areas include foundations for next generation decentralization technologies including scalability, usability, provable security guarantees, auditable privacy, incentive compatibility, systemic stability, and decentralized systems and intelligence, decentralized governance, and responsible innovation / regulation guidance, etc.

Besides advancing the science, technology and education in this space, responsible innovation is a key aspect of the Center’s mission and goals, where the Center will explore new approaches for analyzing and understanding the societal impact of decentralized systems, and help ensure that decentralization technologies will be used in a responsible way to help protect the welfare of individuals and society, protect privacy, level the playing field and empower innovation, promote fairness, inclusiveness, ethics, and explore legal frameworks to support innovation and regulation compliance.