Deadline: 14-Feb-22
The Open Society Foundations is inviting applications for Soros Equality Fellowship to support emerging midcareer professionals whom they believe will become long-term innovative leaders impacting racial justice.
About the Fellowship
The aim of the Fellowship is to be flexible and open—a space to incubate new ideas, promote risk-taking, and develop different ways of thinking that challenge and expand the existing assumptions.
Through this Fellowship, Open Society aims to provide a network of leaders, representing the diversity of experiences, with the resources to address racial inequality and the space they need to imagine a more equitable future.
The Soros Equality Fellowship seeks to support individual leaders influencing and transforming the racial justice field.
They understand the unique role an individual can play in rejecting old paradigms and presenting a new vision for the United States they hope to become. They invite applicants to be bold, innovative, and audacious in their submissions.
A successful project should identify a challenge and propose a critical intervention that will meaningfully address the systems that reinforce inequities and discrimination in the United States.
Award Information
- Fellows will typically receive a roughly $130,000 stipend over the 18 month fellowship to support expenses related to the project.
- These award amounts are all-inclusive and are are intended to cover a fellow’s living expenses, project-related expenses, travel, conference fees, health insurance, etc. They currently do not provide additional funds beyond the fellowship award.
What types of projects is the Fellowship seeking to fund?
- They are looking for a diverse array of projects across different fields of study influencing racial justice in the United States. To that end, they have intentionally been broad to encourage the creativity and innovation they seek to foster.
- While each year’s cohort will be different, they encourage applicants to review previous year’s cohorts as well as the application guidelines to get a better understanding of the types of projects that have been successful.
Eligibility Criteria
- Fellowship Term and Time Commitment
- Applicants must be able to devote at least 35 hours per week to the project if awarded a Fellowship; and the project must be the applicant’s only full-time work during the course of the Fellowship.
- Projects Based Outside the United States
- Applicants may be based outside the United States, provided their work directly pertains to a U.S. racial justice issue and is able to demonstrate a proficiency in spoken and written English.
- Joint Applications
- Up to two individuals can apply jointly for a Soros Equality Fellowship. However, joint applications will share one fellowship award. A joint application should be completed together as a single submission. For joint applicants, the “full-time work” requirement does not apply to each applicant. All other restrictions associated with an individual application still apply.
- Lobbying
- Projects that include electioneering, lobbying, or other activity that does not fall within IRS 501(c)(3) guidelines will not be funded.
- Please carefully review the Tax Law Lobbying Rules before submitting an application.
- If awarded a fellowship, applicants are required to attend a training session on the tax law lobbying rules, conducted by the Open Society Foundations’ General Counsel’s Office; and must agree to refrain from engaging in restricted lobbying and political activities during the term of the Fellowship.
For more information, visit https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/soros-equality-fellowship
