The idea of this center came to Teri Schwartz in 2003, then a university dean; in 2007 she shared the idea with Jeffrey Skoll who was starting Participant Media at the time, and in 2014, once Schwartz had become the Dean of UCLA's film school, he donated $10 Million to create the center. The Producers Guild of America launched its own initiative in the summer of 2018 - the PGA SIETF (Producer's Guild of America Social Impact Entertainment Task Force). The task force concentrates on educating the PGA membership in impact matters as well as organizing interdisciplinary events for producers working with impact-oriented projects in the fields of film, television, gaming and interactive media. During the PGA's flagship Produced By conference in 2019, the SIETF hosted a sold-out panel featuring Michael B. Jordan and impact producers, focusing exclusively on Social Impact Entertainment. SIE has a different approach to generating impact when compared to Social and behavior change communication (SBCC), namely putting story and characters first, and shaping the impact around an existing intellectual property - rather than creating it from scratch for the sole purpose of impact.