The world has problems.
We help you make a real impact.
Change is a skill grown over a lifetime.
From wildfires to food insecurity and beyond, we help you find meaningful work that solves some of the biggest problems in the world.
Our resources our free and can be used online by motivated individuals, or embedded into existing services offered by economic or workforce development groups, businesses, nonprofits, schools, libraries, and anyone who supports job seekers or employers.
Our Process: Finding Meaningful Work
The world is messy and in great need of a re-design. Communities across Nebraska are struggling through wildfires, supply chain disruptions, a persistent opioid crisis, rising housing and energy costs, and an overwhelming number of big, pressing problems. There is no shortage of people who care and want to help, but most don’t know how, or where to find the organizations already collectively working towards a solution.
The Meaningful Impact Hub offers a framework for exploration to find meaningful work that works for you. Here are the goals for this framework:
Understand the Process
Understand the baseline recipe for finding meaningful work so you can define a path that works for you, in your life.
Exploratory Tools
Uncover methods to explore careers, experiment with technology and innovation, and explore how change happens.
Support Organizations
Connect with support organizations across Nebraska that can help you build an action plan and get where you want to go.
Understand the Process
There is no one, right way to change the world. Some may view raising healthy, strong kids as changing the world. Others may advocate for solar energy through policy work, or join a nonprofit distributing diapers, food, and basic cleaning supplies to families in need.
All these paths are right, and all are forms of meaningful work. To help you find what works for you, we use a modular approach:
- The World’s Problems: Broadly explore problems facing Nebraska. Look to your past and your community to find what you care about enough to take action in the long-term.
- Pathways to Help: Explore big problems systemically to understand how nonprofits, businesses, government agencies, and more work together to be part of the solution. Explore to find where you fit.
- Technology, Innovation & Change: Learn how technology tools and methods for innovation can be used to create change, improve existing solutions, and create new solutions. Expand your toolbox.
- People Who Care: Connect with support organizations and resources to find where you fit, build skills, and achieve your goals for meaningful work that makes an impact.
Exploratory Resources & Services
Meaningful Work Crash Course
Start with our Meaningful Work Crash Course to learn how the world of work is changing, explore new opportunities, and define a version of meaningful work that works for you.
Resource Hub
Use our resource library to explore new technology and innovation tools, understand systemic problems, better understand yourself, and accelerate your search for meaningful work.
Meaningful Life Accelerator (BETA)
There are too many options in life. Use our Accelerator guide to rapidly iterate and test life paths. Explore broadly for free so you can invest resources wisely when the time is right.
Meaningful Work Crash Course
The Meaningful Work Crash Course is designed to help you take control of your life in a rapidly changing world of work. To find or create meaningful work, we ask a simple question: How does work make the world better? What are the problems facing our communities, and which organizations are truly motivated to help? Uncover the problem you care about, connect with the right organizations, and build the skills to get the job done.
In today’s world, we also focus on finding resilient organizations that can leverage new technologies and aren’t afraid to innovate policies, beliefs, and organizational structures that no longer serve the community. Your goal is to find meaningful work that makes the world better. Our goal is to provide you with the best information possible to make an informed decision, and connect with the right resources to realistically change the world.
Note: The full course is under construction, but a preview of some helpful, existing frameworks to find meaningful work is available now!
Meaningful Work 101
Learn how to use our resources and guided course to find meaningful work.
Explore Systemic Problems
Learn to look at problems systemically to expand your career opportunities.
Tech, Innovation & Change
Understand how the world of work is changing, and how you can help shape the future.
Iterate & Test
Choose a few different career options and test them out in real life to find what works best.
Make an Action Plan
Choose the combination that works for you, and make a plan to get where you want to go.
Build a Support Network
Connect with people and organizations that can help you along the way.
Resource Library
Library of Problems
Use our curated collection of problems to brainstorm opportunities for impact.
Self-Exploration & Growth
Try this collection of activities to grow personally and define who you are.
Navigate Pathways
Understand options and connect with organizations to pursue your path to impact.
Technology Toolbox
Learn to do good with the technology that is shaping the future of work.
Meaningful Work Frameworks
Explore a wider variety of meaningful work frameworks and activities.
Want to Contribute?
Please email [email protected] if you would like to contribute a resource.
Meaningful Life Accelerator
- Explore Problems: Use our curated collection of problem topics to brainstorm opportunities for impact from different perspectives. Choose a few categories.
- Understand Pathways to Help: Learn how systemic problems are being addressed from multiple perspectives. Narrow focus to up to five potential life paths.
- Experiment & Test: Choose from our menu of activities to rapidly test career options before you commit. Explore freely, rank your options, then choose a path to pursue.
- Make an Action Plan: Use our template to set goals and build a feasible plan to achieve meaningful work.
- Technology & Innovation Exploration: Use our collection of resources to build your technology and innovation toolbox to make a stronger impact in your chosen pathway.
Our Version of Meaningful Work
Generically, people find meaning and purpose by contributing to something greater than themselves, and making life better for others. The world has plenty of big, systemic problems that are far greater than any one person. Poverty, access to food and healthcare, you get the idea.
When a problem is big enough, businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and other organizations are created to help solve the problem. Systemic problems like poverty, the growing wildfire crisis, and climate action are systemic problems that require a broad network of organizations to solve the problem from multiple perspectives.
Organizations create jobs to sustain existing solutions, but innovation is necessary to remain competitive in the industry, and develop the solutions that do not yet exist. Technology is a tool used to improve workplace safety, and make life better for both customers and employees.
Each individual spends a third of their life at work. So when searching for meaningful work, you’re really looking for the problem(s) you want to devote a third of your life to help solve, in an organization that treats people well, and is willing to change with the times. Skills, interests, and experience can be built over time as you learn what you want in life.
This is somewhat of a ‘best case scenario’ in meaningful work. You probably know from experience that not all jobs treat employees well, and sometimes technology is not used with the best intentions. More importantly, not all businesses, nonprofits, or organizations see themselves, or behave as a tool to do good in the world. Some are all about bottom lines and profits.
Part of finding meaningful work is accepting that any industry you enter needs to change, and change often happens slowly. Sometimes begrudgingly. The world needs to change, but the life of an impact-driven innovator and change-maker is not easy. When you choose a problem, make sure it hits close to home to stay motivated. Whether you are making change within an existing organization, or choose to start something new, prepare to experiment and fail fast to find what works in the world of innovation and change. Connect with people who can help.
The Meaningful Impact Hub is a library of tools, resources, and support organizations designed to guide you through the process of finding or creating meaningful work that positively impacts the world.
Our resources our free and can be used online by motivated individuals, or embedded into existing services offered by economic or workforce development groups, businesses, nonprofits, schools, libraries, and anyone who supports job seekers or employers.