#ShiftThePower Fellowship 2024/5: Empowering Communities Through Philanthropy

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The GFCF is inviting applications for the third cohort of the #ShiftThePower Fellowship, an experimental programme aimed at strengthening the #ShiftThePower movement by supporting and elevating thought leadership and network connectedness among civil society and movement practitioners in the Global South who are deeply immersed in social change at the local level. The Fellowship will focus specifically on the role, potential of and emerging practices associated with community philanthropy as a strategy for shifting, sharing and building power.

The Fellowship will be “light-touch” in terms of structure. To that end, Fellows will be highly motivated and curious in terms of their own individual learning objectives, and ready to work with the rest of the cohort towards any collective outcomes. A written output (research paper) will form part of the final output of the Fellowship, to be presented at a Symposium on community philanthropy in the second half of 2025 (details of which to be confirmed). A secondary role of the Fellows will be to help weave the supportive architecture that underpins the global #ShiftThePower movement, through participation in and co-creation of movement activities such as webinars, meetings, production of blogs, etc.

#ShiftThePower Fellowship Benefits

The programme will run from November 2024 to July 2025. Successful applicants will be asked to commit two days a month to the Fellowship, including monthly meetings.
Fellows will be supported with stipends (normally in the form of grants to their organizations), mentorship and support from the GFCF team and other resource persons and allies within the global #ShiftThePower movement.

#ShiftThePower Fellowship offers:

Focus on Community Philanthropy: Dive deep into the role, potential, and emerging practices of community philanthropy as a strategy for shifting, sharing, and building power.
Hands-on Learning: Engage in monthly meetings, participate in webinars, and contribute to the creation of blogs and other movement activities.
Networking and Mentorship: Build connections with other Fellows and receive mentorship from the GFCF team and other experts within the #ShiftThePower movement.
Practical Approach: Apply your learning through real-world projects and contribute to a research paper presented at a Symposium on community philanthropy in 2025.

Eligibility Criteria for #ShiftThePower Fellowship

#ShiftThePower Fellows will be individuals, ideally but not necessarily, based within an organization in the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe) that shares the values and ambitions of the #ShiftThePower movement.
They will be grounded in practice in their context, but curious and eager to connect with others and to weave relationships and strengthen networks.

Fellows should be:

Comfortable with ambiguity and embrace the challenge of engaging change and driving change within complex systems.
Ready to think conceptually and apply big ideas, breaking them down into everyday tools, processes, relationships and plans.
Excited by the possibility of challenging and exploring power dynamics and imagining new ways of doing development.
Proficient in English. The global nature of the Fellowship requires a common language for Fellows to be able communicate with each other.