Our vision
A film industry where generosity and creativity are designed in. A New Jersey that proves it. And a wider culture learning to meet material abundance with a generosity of spirit equal to it.
Who we are
About Social Effects NJ.
People, principles and a shared purpose: making filmmaking a gift to the communities it touches.
Values & Vision
The purpose behind the practice.
Our mission
Bring research, education, entertainment and practical services together to design generosity and community social impact into filmmaking.
Our future profits are intended to support mental health reformation and the Moonshot: a feature film whose making leaves lasting community infrastructure.
How we work
Human first. Technology forward. Relationships, accountability and community priorities guide the work. AI and other tools support the people carrying it out.
How we’re buildingFoundation in development LLC in development
A foundation and an LLC. One shared mission.
We’re developing a charitable foundation and an operating business to support the same body of work.
Social Effects NJ Foundation
The foundation is being developed to support research, public education, storytelling and community programs. The Ledger records and shares what we learn.
Social Effects NJ LLC
The planned business will deliver production services, paid presentations and labs, and practical support for reuse and community partnerships.
Explore Production ServicesResearch informs the teaching. Practical work adds experience and evidence. Business activity is intended to help support the wider mission, with clear responsibilities as each entity takes shape.
Meet the people
Advisory Team · The Council
Meet the people.
Bret Warshawsky
Founder & Chief Filmanthropist
Bret Warshawsky is a writer, speaker, futurist and the founder of Social Effects NJ. His work brings together filmmaking, evolutionary and spiritual philanthropy, whole-systems design and mental health reformation, with a practical question at its heart: what can we build that helps people and communities thrive?
Over more than a decade of international collaboration, he worked with the late futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, helped develop the holonic software project Noomap, and co-created Synergy Hub 1.0 in Rotterdam, a living experiment in gift economy and collective intelligence. His approach draws on Buckminster Fuller’s comprehensivism: finding connections across disciplines and testing them in lived experience.
At Social Effects NJ, Bret is developing Filmanthropy by Design and Regenerative Filmmaking, supported by the research and conversations gathered in the Filmanthropy Ledger. His wider work includes The Syntony Times, the Mental Health Reformation and the developing docuseries Unbreakable Spirit, continuing a personal story he first shared in Lisa Nichols’s 2011 book of the same name.
Andrew Alan
Creative and Strategic Narrative Advisor
Andrew Alan is a network weaver, storytelling strategist, writer, director, producer, and editor working across moving images, sound, words, and ideas. Born and raised in Berkeley, California and based in Europe, Andrew brings a transatlantic creative perspective shaped by a decade of concepting and visioneering across documentary, narrative, and strategic communications work. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Film Production, Screenwriting, and Directing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. For Social Effects NJ, Andrew brings the rare combination of someone who understands how stories get made and how they land in communities, the connective tissue between a production's creative intent and the real-world relationships that make Filmanthropy possible to execute.
More to come soon.