Launched in 2017, the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship is a global leader in the fields of law and social entrepreneurship. The Grunin Center is advancing a global movement that creates new ways for law and lawyers to drive positive change in the world.
The mission of the Grunin Center is to enhance the community of lawyers and legal institutions purposefully engaged in social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development, and to accelerate their effective participation in these fields.
To fulfill this mission, the Grunin Center is uniquely positioned to bridge the gaps between legal practitioners, scholars, educators, and law students, as the Center:
Educates students and lawyers about legal issues in the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development;
Leads path-breaking conversations (in person, in social media, and on the page) and provides thought leadership about how legal innovations and new approaches to law, policy, and legal education can advance the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development;
Invests in the success of students who are interested in applying their legal skills to the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development by, among other things, supporting extra-curricular activities, providing research and fellowship opportunities, and awarding scholarships and internships related to these fields; and
Celebrates the contributions of legal practitioners, scholars, and students to the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development by drawing attention to their contributions and distilling and sharing learnings from those contributions with others working in these fields.
Our Founding Story
The Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship was established through the strategic vision, fortuitous timing, and collaborative efforts of dedicated individuals.
The idea for the Center arose out of the work done by Jay and Linda Grunin, their son Jeremy, and the team at the Grunin Foundation, as they sought to develop a groundbreaking initiative that would drive sustainable change and align with their Foundation’s mission to foster innovative solutions and community impact. Foundation President Jeremy Grunin and Executive Foundation Director Tara Cunningham (a former Ashoka Fellow) then began to explore the possibility of partnering with the Ashoka Foundation, a pioneer in the field of social entrepreneurship.
This partnership soon expanded to include NYU Law School. Jay and Linda, who met as classmates at NYU Law, understood the power of law to make societal changes. They quickly realized that bringing NYU Law into this dialogue with Ashoka would strengthen the impact of this initiative, so they decided to approach their alma mater to see if NYU Law might be interested in creating a Center dedicated to law and social entrepreneurship.
Following many substantive discussions between the Grunin team and NYU Law in 2016, including faculty champions Professor Deborah Burand, Professor Emerita Helen Scott, and then Dean Trevor Morrison, NYU Law agreed to launch the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship, the first Center of its kind in a law school.
In the year leading up to the Grunin Center’s launch in 2017, NYU Law worked closely with the Grunin Foundation team, in particular Jay and Tara, and Ashoka, specifically Jonathan Ng, then Global Legal Director of Ashoka, to identify a vision and initial strategic goals for this unique Center. Jonathan and Tara also joined with Jay and Jeremy on the inaugural Grunin Center Advisory Board and helped provide strategic direction to the newly founded Grunin Center, including, among many other things, the establishment of the Grunin Prize.
The Grunin Center is grateful to the Grunin Foundation, Jay and Linda, Ashoka, Jonathan, Tara, and the entire NYU Law team for the important roles they each played in its launch.
When the Grunin Center was officially launched on May 23, 2017, Jay Grunin said, “it is the audacious hope of Linda and myself that social entrepreneurship can become a major sector of the law, with elements combining both public and private law, which would increase the scalability of sustainable solutions to some of the world’s largest and seemingly intractable challenges.”
Today, the Grunin Center has become a major thought leader on the role of the law and lawyers in the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development.
For more about Linda Grunin's legacy, please click here.