Programs

Social Innovation Fellowship

The Social Innovation Fellowship provides meaningful community engagement and social innovation experiences for undergraduate students at Brown. Focusing on local partnerships and social impacts through the lens of innovation, this two-year developmental program offers students the opportunity to explore modes of social innovation and the tools required for starting successful ventures or for making transformational changes within existing organizations. Additionally, students’ work enhances the ability of nonprofit community organizations to use student talent effectively helping build organizational capacity while exploring ideas within the local social innovation ecosystem.

The Fellowship endeavors to build a learning community of students, faculty and community partners who are engaged in thinking about the nature of social innovation, the dynamics of sustained community change, and the connections between academic, community work, and active citizenship.

The Social Innovation Fellowship is possible thanks to the generous support of Kenneth Cole through the Kenneth Cole Foundation.

Applications for the Social Innovation Fellowships are available on UFunds.

meet the Social Innovation Fellowship Cohorts
Structure

Led in partnership with the award-winning Social Enterprise Greenhouse, the Social Innovation Fellowship is a two-year developmental program that places the community at the center with SEG staff providing fellows with training while partners within the SEG network offer students coaching and hands-on social innovation experience. Fellows also benefit from inclusion in the Swearer Center ecosystem of faculty, advisors and students. In addition to instruction, hands-on training, and mentorship, fellows are provided with an annual stipend of $2,000.

In year one, fellows participate in regular workshops led by SEG and embed within an existing member of SEGs network of social innovators. In year two, fellows have the option to (1) develop and launch a venture of their own, write a sustainability plan, and secure funding as needed or (2) complete a substantial project within a SEG-supported social venture. 

BrownEngage
Kenneth Cole Foundation
The Altman Family Fund
Eligibility/Timeline

The Social Innovation Fellowship is a two-year program and thus is open to first-year and second-year undergraduate students.

Apply

Applications for the Social Innovation Fellowship can be found on UFunds.  The application deadline for the 2022 cohort is March 9, 2022. Interviews for the finalist pool will be held during the weeks of March 14 and 21. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by Friday, April 4, 2022.  

Apply
Contact

Steve Pokorny, Program Manager, Student Development: [email protected]

See All Social Innovation Fellowship Stories

meet the Social Innovation Fellowship Cohorts