GRANTS Soros Equality Fellowship
Source: www.opensocietyfoundations.org
The Soros Equality Fellowship supports emerging midcareer professionals who will become long-term innovative leaders impacting the racial justice field.
The fellowship award includes $80,000 to $100,000 over the course of the fellowship period, accompanied by the requisite skill building, mentorship, and support to ensure a fluid leadership pipeline between early-career promise and later-career expertise.
We seek a diverse cohort of applicants and finalist pool, including activists, artists, journalists, and organizers, to produce projects with meaningful impact. This approach recognizes the power of individuals to use a variety of tools, from traditional advocacy to the arts, to impact change and uplift the mission and values of an open society.
We are looking to fund projects that align with the U.S Programs’ Equality team’s approach to racial justice. This approach:
- rejects the 21st century postracial myth, which claims that by acknowledging race and ethnicity, we promote racism and xenophobia; it instead embraces the value of acknowledging the discriminatory impact that certain seemingly race-neutral policies can have on immigrants and communities of color;
- believes that documenting this disparate impact and the ongoing role of discrimination provides a platform for others to question the legitimacy of structures that limit access to democracy, justice, education, and the economy;
- recognizes the enduring power of language, image, media, the arts, and public opinion to combat or perpetuate discrimination against immigrants and people of color in the United States and across the globe; and
- prioritizes the dismantling of structures that perpetuate discrimination and limit access over the targeting of individual actors who engage in discrimination.
All projects must, at a minimum, relate to one or more of the following U.S. racial justice goals:
- building the capacity of the racial justice field to combat structural racism and xenophobia
- creating sustainable organizations capable of empowering the communities they serve
- changing the racial narrative to one that removes the distortions of racism and xenophobia as a barrier to equal opportunity
The program does NOT fund the following:
- enrollment for degree or nondegree study at academic institutions, including dissertation research
- projects that address racial justice issues outside the United States (applicants themselves, however, can be based outside the United States, as long as their work directly relates to a U.S. issue)
- lobbying activities
Those interested in the fellowship should first download and review the complete fellowship guidelines. Before submitting a full proposal, all interested applicants must submit a CV or resume and a one-to-two-page, single-spaced letter of inquiry, which outlines the topic of the project, proposed work product, and relevance to the fellowship guidelines.
Letters of inquiry are due by November 16, 2016 (11:59 p.m. EST), and may be submitted online. Within two weeks of the November 16 deadline, we will invite approved applicants to submit full proposals.
We will not consider any uninvited applications for the fellowship. Invited full proposals are due by December 19, 2016 (11:59 p.m. EST), and must be submitted online (the online system will begin accepting applications on November 28, 2016).
Applicants who are uncertain about the parameters of the fellowships guidelines may submit a brief email inquiry to: [email protected]. Please do not submit an email inquiry before reviewing the appropriate documents.