In most academic courses, students end the semester with an exam, a paper, or a presentation. In the Impact Lab course at Reichman University, they were required to tackle a much more complex task: To decide which non-profit organizations and social initiatives would jointly receive a budget of NIS 500,000.
The program, now in its second year, is led by the monday.com Foundation – the philanthropic arm of monday.com – in cooperation with the Student Dean’s Office at Reichman University. This year, the Shashua Family Foundation and the Rashi Foundation also joined the initiative, which was conducted under the leadership of Ira Friedman, an expert in strategic philanthropy.
The underlying idea of the course is that the business leaders of the future will need to know not only how to build companies or decide how much money to donate, but also how to allocate social resources, evaluate solutions, and measure the impact they create.
The students learned about the world of philanthropy
Corporate social responsibility has become a significant part of the operations of large companies in Israel in recent years, with corporate giants investing extensive amounts annually in donations, social partnerships, and community projects. However, alongside the desire to help, a complex question also arises: How can one know that the money indeed creates a measurable change and helps the social organization achieve its goals?
Impact Lab seeks to transform donating from a decision based mainly on good intentions into a strategic process relying on data, methodologies, and impact measurement. The course is open to students from all fields of study who are interested in social action, awarding them academic credits.
During the semester, participants learned about the world of philanthropy and the ways to create and measure social impact. They met with senior figures from the worlds of philanthropy and social action, were exposed to existing challenges in the field, and acquired tools for evaluating donation requests and making decisions regarding resource allocation.
This year, the course focused on social mobility. As part of a call for proposals published by the monday.com Foundation, more than 120 applications were received from non-profit organizations active in the field. The students evaluated them in accordance with the tools and methodologies they learned, spoke with representatives of the organizations, and ultimately decided how to distribute the donation budget.
The selected non-profits
The decisions were presented at the course’s closing Demo Day event, which took place at the offices of monday.com with the participation of representatives from the partner foundations and senior figures from the Israeli philanthropy and high-tech worlds. Following the presentation of the initiatives, some of the participants at the event decided to explore collaborations and additional donations to the selected non-profits.
Among the initiatives that received support is the Hadasim Darom 2026 program of the Atida Association, which trains ultra-Orthodox women for technological development roles in IDF units in the Negev. According to the data presented in the course, the average salary of the program’s graduates rises from approximately NIS 8,200 to approximately NIS 29,500 per month.
Additional support was granted to the Ofanim Association, which will establish three mobile artificial intelligence labs to provide technological training in peripheral communities. The rate of eligibility for a technological matriculation certificate among participants in the association’s programs stands at 25%, compared to an average of about 6% in those areas.
The Unicorn project of the Machshava Tova Association was also selected to receive a donation. The project is expected to expose about 650 fifth and sixth-grade students to artificial intelligence and virtual reality tools, with the goal of strengthening their sense of capability ahead of the transition to middle school. The Yacholot Association, which helps students who failed core subjects complete a full matriculation certificate within a single semester, also received support. According to the presented data, the success rate in the program stands at 97%.
“The responsibility was heavy”
Noam Murdoch, a second-year student in the honors business administration and psychology track who came to the course with experience in social action at Krembo Wings, says that this was the first time she was exposed to the world of philanthropy behind the scenes.
“The experience in the Impact Lab was truly exceptional in the academic landscape,” she says. “The course staff guided us through a process that took us completely out of our theoretical comfort zone and into the real world.”
According to her, meeting the representatives of the non-profits was one of the most significant moments in the process. “Reading donation requests is important, but hearing the people in the field and understanding their experience face-to-face is what allowed us to make much more informed decisions, connected to reality and not just to paper.”
That same human connection also made the decision more difficult. “When you sit in front of organizations where everyone is doing sacred work, where everyone deserves it and everyone is so worthy of support, the understanding that the responsibility and power to direct the budget are in our hands is heavy,” she says. “We didn’t just learn about social impact, but we received the genuine privilege of creating one ourselves.”
Source:
www.jpost.com
