About SIFF

The Social Impact Fellowship Fund (SIFF) was created to help recipients accelerate and advance their venture creation in social impact sectors.

• The Social Impact Fellowship Fund at the Harvard Innovation Lab was established in 2019 through the generosity of Alexander Navab, in honor of The Harvard Business School Campaign.
• It was Mr. Navab’s hope that support from this fund would help recipients accelerate and advance their venture creation in social impact sectors.

SIFF is meant to support Harvard social entrepreneurs in three ways:

1. Grants of money to help propel your venture
2. Connecting with judges who offer valuable feedback
3. A group of fellow alumni SIFF winners who are also forging their social venture paths

How much funding is available?

• The Social Impact Fellowship Fund awards $200,000 in grants annually, over the course of three Pitch Days (fall, spring, and summer with $60-75k distributed per semester).
• Multiple teams can be funded each round. Grants average between $4,000-15,000.

Who is eligible?

• The fund supports both for-profit and nonprofit startups.

• It is available to teams that include at least one matriculated, degree-seeking undergraduate or graduate Harvard student, Harvard postdoctoral fellow or clinical fellow. While we encourage collaboration with entrepreneurs, scientists, and executives from industry, we require that a Harvard student be a founder and a committed leader of the venture.

• Ventures are expected to have achieved material traction with their venture.

  • Ventures usually have at least one of the following:

    • A good number of active users (usually 300+ for direct to consumer, or 2+ for businesses)
    • Written partnerships
    • External funding (investment or donations from arms-length funders) or
    • Intellectual property

  • Ventures selected must be able to show some concrete early impact from it (eg data that what you are doing works—this might be user retention, user satisfaction, or any of your impact metrics, and supplemented by testimonial)

  • Ventures selected usually can also articulate a path to scale (e.g., via government partnerships, market penetration etc)

• Ventures who do not get selected to pitch in one of the rounds can reapply for future rounds, especially if they have achieved significant traction since the time of the application.

• Ventures that get selected to pitch are no longer eligible to apply for future rounds.

How to apply?

Apply online by the deadline.

• You should not include confidential information in your application. By submitting an application, you consent to the release of information contained in your application to The Social Impact Fellowship Fund.