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Translating Innovative Ideas for the Public Good (TIIP) Awards
Innovate Carolina’s unit of Design and Innovation for the Public Good is investing in innovative projects with the clear goals of co-creating, testing and scaling desirable, feasible and viable human centered solutions. The Translating Innovative Ideas for the Public Good (TIIP) Awards are open to any UNC faculty, staff or venture that is developing an idea, project or company that will translate the University’s best ideas to benefit the state of North Carolina and beyond.
1789 Student Venture Fund
The 1789 Student Venture Fund provides financial support for UNC-Chapel Hill students to use to build commercial and social startups. Too often, the promising ideas that students have for building ventures are never given the opportunity to take off because they lack the early-stage funding needed for initial testing, development and growth. This fund provides you with the seed funding you need to ideate, create ventures and move startups from concept to reality.
UNC Health Enterprises
UNC Health Enterprises aims to accelerate innovation and diversify income within UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine by developing and managing a portfolio of new businesses and strategic partnerships, while also supporting internal innovation efforts. We also manage the UNC Center for Health Innovation, which is home to the annual Innovation Pilot Awards.
If you have an innovative idea that addresses current challenges facing our nation’s health care delivery system, reach out to us.
KickStart Awards Program
The KickStart Awards Program provides funding of up to $50,000 to UNC-Chapel Hill startups that are founded on University intellectual property. The awards help early-stage companies meet commercial milestones either on the technical side (prototype development, animal studies) or on the business side (regulatory pathway, freedom to operate). If you are a faculty founder who would like to be considered, you may participate in the quarterly request-for-applications process.
Technology Development Grants
The UNC Office of Technology Commercialization offers technology development grants to help faculty and researchers develop unlicensed UNC technologies and move them to commercially relevant endpoints. Successful projects create technologies that are prepared for commercial engagement and, preferably, licensing. To be eligible for consideration, your technology must be one that you can patent or license as copyright or tangible property. Most grants range from $5,000 to $25,000, and your grant will be based on your technology and proposal.
Research, Innovation and Global Solutions for Public Health
Research, Innovation and Global Solutions empowers faculty members, students and staff at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health to solve local and global health problems through research, innovation and practice. It provides guidance and support in the areas of research, innovation and entrepreneurship, and global health. It also manages and provides support for several Gillings programs and initiatives, including programs funded by the Gillings gift.
Patent Landscape and Market Research Service
Wondering if you’ve got the next great invention? Is it really novel? Who would buy it as a product or a service? What funding opportunities exist that may help get your invention from lab to market? The Patent Landscaping and Market Research Service is available to current UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, staff, and students at no cost, and to organizations outside the University for a fee. This service helps you assess your technology, the marketplace and potential investment funding.
Carolina Research Ventures
To ensure that startups and other University-sourced companies have the opportunity to fully develop and deploy technology generated at Carolina, UNC-Chapel Hill launched Carolina Research Ventures (CRV). CRV has created an early-stage investment fund (the Fund or CRVIF) to provide critical discovery and development capital. The goal of the CRVIF is to unlock the potential of UNC-Chapel Hill technologies and advance the commercialization of these technologies by providing early-stage capital and industry expertise, as well as ongoing capital and support.
If you are a full- or part-time UNC-Chapel Hill employee (faculty, trainees or staff), you are eligible to apply. You must be seeking to develop or commercialize a technology or invention created at the University or through the use of University resources.
Carolina Angel Network
The Carolina Angel Network (CAN) is the only official angel investor network for startups and ventures associated with UNC-Chapel Hill. CAN brings together the UNC-Chapel Hill entrepreneurial community, University alumni network and innovative private companies to help fill the early-stage funding gap and empower the businesses that drive our future. As a CAN investor, you will have visibility into the best UNC startup deals. Or, if you are an entrepreneur affiliated with Carolina and are building a high-growth company, please explore how you might apply to be part of the network.
E(I) Lab
The E(I) Lab is a six-month experiential program that brings together graduate students, professional students and postdocs from diverse disciplines across UNC to conceive, develop and test innovative solutions to unmet needs in health care. Teams will be given generous financial support to develop the necessary prototypes, be inventors on patents, and be trained in various aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation. The top teams receive monetary prizes in addition to potential seed investments.
Robert E. Bryan Fellowship
The Robert E. Bryan Fellowship is designed for aspiring social change-makers who are interested in providing a significant contribution locally, nationally or internationally by creating an entrepreneurial project that addresses a community issue or need. As a fellowship recipient, you will enroll in a one-credit service-learning course in the UNC Department of Public Policy.
Gillings Innovation Labs
The Gillings Innovation Labs focus on achieving fundamental breakthroughs in public health. If you’re a faculty member who has a primary appointment in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, you are eligible to apply for one of the annual awards offered by the program. The award will allow you to engage in cutting-edge research, translate interventions to high-impact settings, and develop novel technologies or methodologies that improve public health, locally and globally.
As a principal investigator (PI), you are encouraged to involve Gillings or other UNC-Chapel Hill students in your project. Your proposal may also include a co-PI from another department or school at Carolina.
Carolina Center for Public Service
The Carolina Center for Public Service connects the energy and expertise of both the University and the community to provide students, faculty and staff with deep and transformative experiences, while meeting the needs of North Carolina and beyond. The Center strengthens the University’s public service commitment by promoting scholarship and service that are responsive to the concerns of the state and contribute to the common good. If you’re interested in getting involved, you can participate in a variety of engaged scholarship and service programs offered by the Center that allow you to collaborate with others and find interdisciplinary solutions to local and global challenges.
Center for Health Innovation Pilot Awards
The UNC Center for Health is a small resource center managed by UNC Health Enterprises that promotes the development of patient-centered innovations designed to address the current challenges facing our nation’s health care delivery system related to cost efficiency, quality of care, innovative health care delivery, and alignment of incentives among industry participants.
The Center administers the Innovation Pilot Awards program, which annually seeks proposals from UNC Health and UNC SOM employees for novel ideas with potential to transform healthcare. To learn more about the program visit the Center for Health Innovation’s website.
Shuford Program Funding Opportunities
The Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship supports students through funding in various ways. Once accepted to the program, you can apply for funding for the following purposes: internships, student-led ventures, startups, study-away experiences and professional development. Available funding support has helped students accept internships in New York City, travel with the program to Shanghai, and receive patents for products.
Davis Projects for Peace Award
The Davis Projects for Peace Award is open to all undergraduates at the 76 institutions (including UNC-Chapel Hill) that are part of the Davis United World College Scholars Program. The program is made possible by the late Kathryn Wasserman Davis, an accomplished internationalist and philanthropist, who celebrated her 100th birthday in 2007 by committing $1 million for 100 projects for peace. As a student participant, you are invited to design a grassroots project that you implement during the summer. Davis Projects for Peace selects 100 projects judged to be the most promising and feasible, and then the program funds the projects at $10,000 each.
Community Engagement Fellowship
The Community Engagement Fellowship awards a maximum of five fellowships of up to $2,000 each year. These awards help graduate students develop and implement engagement or engaged-scholarship projects that involve innovative, sustainable approaches to complex social needs and that have an academic connection. The fellowships run from March to October, and fellows primarily work during the summer to implement their projects.
Development Finance Initiative
The Development Finance Initiative (DFI) at the UNC School of Government partners with local governments in North Carolina to attract private investment for transformative projects by providing specialized finance and development expertise. If you work in local government, you can collaborate with DFI on a variety of projects that require private investment and will benefit your community: building reuse, community development, downtown revitalization, economic development, neighborhood redevelopment and small business finance.
C. Felix Harvey Award
The Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost encourages faculty to submit proposals for the C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities: Applied Innovation of Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarly Expertise. The award recognizes exemplary faculty scholarship that reflects UNC-Chapel Hill’s commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation via the successful implementation of a novel, valuable idea. If you are a full- or part-time faculty member (excluding adjuncts) at Carolina and have a proposed project that applies humanities and/or social sciences methods or approaches to directly and positively impact constituencies outside the University, you are eligible to apply. One award of $75,000 will be given to support a project of up to 15 months.
Institute Fellowship at Eshelman Institute for Innovation
The Institute Fellowship was created as a two-year post-doctoral training program based in the Office of Entrepreneurial Development at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. As a fellow, you gain experience assisting with the identification, protection and commercialization of intellectual property, while helping to educate and train faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows. You’ll also support faculty inventors and pharmacy-founded startup companies, collaborate with on- and off-campus entities involved in innovation and entrepreneurial development, and provide oversight of the Eshelman Institute for Innovation MicroIncubator, including facility use agreements.
Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars
The Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars program brings together selected faculty from across campus to engage in a two-year experiential, competency-based curriculum designed to advance their engaged scholarship. As a scholar in this program, you will participate in sessions in community settings to learn from other Carolina faculty and your community partners. While developing individual projects, your class of scholars will form a learning community along with the faculty and community course directors to support one another’s projects and community partners.
Acumen Global Fellowship
The Acumen Global Fellowship is a 12-month program that trains the next generation of social impact leaders. The fellowship offers you the chance to gain world-class leadership training and serve in the field with a social enterprise. To be eligible for the fellowship, you need to have a minimum of four years of work experience.
Fulbright Fellowship
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the US government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually. Roughly 1,600 U.S. students, 4,000 foreign students, 1,200 U.S. scholars, and 900 visiting scholars receive awards, in addition to several hundred teachers and professionals. If you have a strong academic background, leadership potential, a passion for increasing mutual understanding among nations and cultures, and the adaptability and flexibility to pursue your proposed Fulbright project successfully, you may consider applying for the program. There are opportunities for you to apply the Fulbright Fellowship to an entrepreneurship initiative.
Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship
The Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship supports visionary leaders by giving them boundless space to turn an inspired idea in the field of social justice into a world-changing reality. The fellowship awards three individuals up to $150,000 each to pursue an innovative project that seeks to address a challenge related to climate change or inequality – or within the intersection of these two major issues. To be eligible for the fellowship, you must be a US citizen whose project is focused on work within the United States.
Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship
The Skoll Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship each year to a select group of social entrepreneurs whose innovations have already had significant, proven impact on some of the world’s most pressing problems, and invests directly in the promise of even greater impact at scale. Each Awardee receives a $1.25 million, three-year core support investment to scale their work and increase their impact. Awardees are selected with a focus on one or more of the following issues: Environmental Sustainability, Education, Economic Opportunity, Health, Peace and Human Rights, and Sustainable Markets.
NC IDEA Seed Grant
Twice a year, NC IDEA provides seed grants of up to $50,000 to startup companies based in North Carolina. If your startup receives one of these grants, you can use the funds to support business activities that validate potential markets, reduce risk of early failure and advance projects to the point of self-sustainability, at which time they are suitable for private equity investment. If you have technology-based business with the potential to become a high-growth company, you may be eligible to apply for an NC IDEA seed grant. Additionally, you may also be able to take advantage of the NC IDEA Ecosystem Partner Grant of up to $250,000, which is available to both nonprofit and for-profit organizations in North Carolina with new or existing initiatives and innovative ideas.
Forbes 30 Under 30
Each year, Forbes welcomes nominations for the world’s greatest roll call of young entrepreneurs and game-changers. Tell Forbes who should appear on the annual 30 Under 30 list by submitting nominations. Once you apply, Forbes will evaluate your application based on a set of metrics, such as funding, revenue and the number of people you’ve reached. It also considers other qualities, including your inventiveness and the social value you’ve provided.
The Stevie Awards
The Stevie Awards are the world’s premier business awards. They were created in 2002 to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. The Stevie Awards include multiple award categories, including the American Business Awards, the International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service. As an award entrant, you will have access to the comments about your nomination made by the panel of judges, who include many of the world’s most respected executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and business educators.
Entrepreneur 360 Awards
Entrepreneur.com looks for the best privately-owned businesses founded by entrepreneurs in the US. These awards celebrate the grit, passion and success of top entrepreneurs in front of the world. To be eligible, your business must be a privately owned, US-based company and cannot be a franchisee or franchisor. In addition, one of the original founders must still be involved in the day-to-day operations of your business. These awards provide you recognition as a thought leader in the entrepreneurial community and offer you exclusive networking opportunities and media coverage.
Strowd Roses Awards
The Strowd Roses awards are grants to qualified nonprofit organizations based in Chapel Hill or Carrboro or organizations devoted primarily to benefiting those communities. The Strowd Roses foundation awards an average of 55 grants per year totaling $260,000. As a grant recipient your organization may, at the board’s discretion, use the funds for operating support, as well as capital expenditures, seed money and matching grants. As an individual recipient, you may use the grant for a scholarship or fellowship; to produce a report or similar product; or to improve or enhance a literary, artistic, musical, scientific, teaching or similar capacity, skill or talent, which you will use to benefit the life of the Chapel Hill or Carrboro communities.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Awards
Each year, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce unveils the recipients of 10 Business of the Year award categories and a dozen People’s Choice categories. The Business of the Year Awards include these categories: university-born business, new business, micro-enterprise, Chapel Hill Young Professionals Under 40, midsize business, business woman of the year, large business, community impact, nonprofit, and innovation. In addition, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce unveils additional community service, citizen, and partnership awards to the community. As a winner, you’ll be invited to a red carpet ceremony complete with a cocktail reception, awards ceremony, entertainment and after party.
Triangle Business Journal Awards
Each year, the Triangle Business Journal unveils multiple innovation, business and leadership awards. These awards are given based on nominations from local companies and individuals as well as submissions from third-party committees made up of local industry leaders. The awards include the Fast 50 Awards, the 40 Under 40 Leadership Awards, the Life Sciences Awards, the Leaders in Diversity Awards, the Health Care Heroes Awards, the CIO Awards, and the Women in Business Awards. Once you submit your award application, a panel of judges will review it among the pool of nominees and vet and score each one, ultimately selecting a winner for each category.
Do Something Awards
Since 1996, DoSomething.org has honored the nation’s best young change-makers, ages 25 and under. Do Something Award finalists have made a significant difference in furthering their causes. If you are chosen as one of the five finalists, you will receive a $10,000 grant to continue your work. You will also benefit from media coverage and the support of the team at DoSomething.org. If named the grand prize winner, you will be awarded a $100,000 grant to take your initiative to the next level.
Camelback Ventures Fellowship
The Camelback Ventures Fellowship offers funding and support to new leaders with promising ideas, empowering them to enact change within their communities. As an entrepreneur and fellow participating in the six-month program, you receive coaching, capital and connections. You also benefit from dedicated one-on-one coaching related to strategy, accountability and support. The fellowship can also provide you with specialized coaching in key areas (such as budget management and pitch deck design), along with peer mentorship within your purposefully chosen cohort. As a fellow, you’ll receive an investment of up to $40,000 in your venture (capital) and have the chance to engage in in-person summits to develop technical skills, as well as to deepen your relationships with tech talent, investors and other partners.
Impact Assets
Impact Assets 50 is a resource guide showcasing all of the impact investment fund managers. When using it, you can filter search results by sector including: clean technology, education, fair trade, global health, health and wellness, housing and community development, media, technology, and mobile, microfinance and financial services, natural resources and conservation, sustainable agriculture, small and medium business development, and water and sanitation. Assets of these fund managers range from less than $10 million to more than $250 million.
River Cities Capital Funds
River Cities Capital Funds is one of the most active and experienced growth equity funds in health care and information technology. With nearly $500 million under management and more than 100 investments made, River Cities has established itself as a preferred partner among the entrepreneurial and private equity communities. It targets companies generating more than $5 million in revenue and provides an initial investment of $5 million to $15 million. If you are a progressive and proven leader with a company that has a disruptive solution in a large, established market, Rivers Cities may be an outstanding partner for you to contact.
Rex Health Ventures
Rex Health Ventures (RHV) supports the discovery and development of new treatments, tools, products and services that foster innovation and positively impact the provision of health care. RHV invests in and partners with companies and entrepreneurs to help bring their products and services to the health care marketplace. If you have an early-stage idea or a mid-stage company, consider contacting RHV to discover the opportunities that may be available for your organization.
Pappas Captial
Pappas Capital is a Durham-based venture capital firm that invests exclusively in the life sciences industry – biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, drug delivery, medical devices and related ventures. It evaluates more than 700 investment opportunities in a typical year. With longstanding relationships throughout the industry, it can help you find talent for your team. Its in-depth knowledge of the drug development process also enables its management teams to provide you with insightful guidance and help you craft effective clinical and regulatory strategies. Working with Pappas Ventures also allows you to tap into its extensive professional network, which can further advance your company.
Intersouth Partners
Based in Durham, Intersouth Partners seeks a broad range of investment opportunities in the technology and life science sectors. Intersouth manages $780 million in seven venture capital limited partnerships, making it the largest venture capital fund in North Carolina and one of the largest in the Southeast. It invests in seed and early-stage companies that have the potential to become market leaders by creating breakthrough technologies in their respective sectors. Its strong preference is to participate in the first institutional round of a company with an initial investment between $500,000 and $6 million and with an average total investment in a single company of $12 million.
IDEA Fund Partners
Based in Durham, IDEA Fund Partners is one of the most active seed and early-stage venture investors in North Carolina and throughout the Southeast. It typically provides the first institutional money for the companies in which it invests. IDEA Fund Partners likes to make small initial investments and set aside plenty of follow-on capital for future rounds. It has invested as little as $100,000 and as much as $750,000 in a round, and can invest up to $1.5 million over the life of a company. IDEA Fund Partners looks for several investment criteria: You must demonstrate great management, and your company should have the potential to become a leader in the field through the application of unique and defensible technologies and business models. In addition, it will look for you to have a technology that’s disruptive to existing markets or that can enable an entirely new one.
Hatteras Venture Partners
Based in Durham, Hatteras Venture Partners is a venture capital firm formed to invest primarily in early-stage companies (typically in the Research Triangle Park area) with a focus on biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, health care IT and related opportunities in human medicine. If you have a new biomedical company, your organization can benefit from working with the firm’s experienced team, which has a broad and complementary skill set that is particularly relevant to building successful companies in the life sciences sector. The Hatteras team can bring your company operational experience, a successful track record, and a proven ability to enhance the value businesses with which it works.
Golden Pine Ventures
Golden Pine Ventures is a venture capital company that seeks out biotechnology and biomedical opportunities developed by leading researchers and grows them into valuable businesses. It is focused on opportunities in the Research Triangle Park region that have the potential to yield a substantial return within a three to five-year period. As it evaluates your company as an investment opportunity, the management of Golden Pine Ventures will look for you to meet the following criteria: technical feasibility, favorable market prospects, multiple unique products or services, strong intellectual property and the active participation your scientific champion.
Excelerate Health Ventures
Based in the Research Triangle Park area, Excelerate Health Ventures invests in groundbreaking companies that change the way health care works. Its unique advantage includes its ability to assemble and apply the domain expertise and contacts of its network of providers, payers, and strategic partners to select, validate, mentor and grow its portfolio companies. Excelerate Health Ventures typically invests in early-stage companies that are raising their seed or first institutional round. If you have a pre-seed or seed-stage startups, it can provide you with consulting and advising services regarding new venture creation, help prepare your company for angel and/or venture funding, and assist you with a go-to market strategy. Your company may benefit from a variety of the firm’s services: mentoring, networking, business planning, marketing, event planning, branding, sales channel development, organizational planning and recruitment.
Piedmont Angel Network
The Piedmont Angel Network (PAN) is a committed capital angel fund that focuses on investment opportunities in early-stage companies that present high-growth opportunities. Since 2002, PAN has invested in numerous companies, focusing primary on the life science, technology, software and advanced materials fields. While the fund prefers to invest in companies from the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, PAN has made investments across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. The first investment from the fund is between $250,000 and $350,000, with possible add-ons from individual PAN members or other investors. To introduce your company to PAN, you will first submit an executive summary to the fund executive. If your plan has potential for funding, the fund executive will request a full business plan from you to see that your plan is complete.
Triangle Angel Partners
Triangle Angel Partners (TAP) is an experienced group of angel investors who invest their time, analysis and money into early life cycle companies in the high-tech and life sciences industries. TAP members, who are executives, PhDs, successful entrepreneurs and professional investors, can give your company more than just capital; they can also provide you with counseling, mentoring and access to an extensive network of potential investors, customers, strategic partners and management talent. TAP is also unique because it shares deal flow with other venture capital affiliates throughout North Carolina, southern Virginia and northern South Carolina.
Investors’ Circle
Investors’ Circle (IC) is the largest and most active early-stage impact investing network. Together with hundreds of angels, venture capitalists, foundations and family offices, IC has propelled over $200 million into more than 300 enterprises dedicated to improving the environment, education, health and community. If your company chooses to apply, IC will screen your application and make it available to its member network. If your company is located in one of IC’s local network network regions (CO, DC, MA, NC, NY, or PA), or you have a presence/specific connection to a local network region, you will be considered for upcoming pitch meetings.
SJF Ventures
With an office based in Durham, SJF Ventures’ experienced venture capital investors have been at the forefront of impact investing since 1999. SJF invests in high-growth companies that create a healthier, smarter and cleaner future. It is looking for companies with proven customer validation and typically more than $1 million in annualized revenue. It normally invests $1 million to $10 million during the period in which it is involved with a company. Beyond the capital SJF can provide your business, its principals draw from a wealth of sector expertise, personal networks and investment experience to help your company develop growth strategies, recruit talent, obtain future capital, execute company acquisitions and navigate other business dynamics.
Techstars
Techstars is more than a three-month mentorship-driven accelerator program. It makes entrepreneurship accessible by opening doors to capital, mentorship, marketing, business development, customer acquisition and talent recruitment. The program’s global ecosystem of founders, mentors, investors and corporate partners work together to create a network of support that lasts throughout your entrepreneurial journey. Once your company is accepted in the program, you will automatically be offered a $100,000 convertible note, $20,000 in exchange for 6 percent common stock with an equity-back guarantee, and 400 perks worth over $1 million. You can also connect with founders, mentors and investors at local alumni events, the program’s annual founder celebration and at other meetings.
Y Combinator
Twice a year, Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($120,000) in a large number of startups (approximately 100). If your startup is selected for the program, you will move to Silicon Valley for three months, and Y Combinator will work intensively with you to get your company into the best possible shape and refine its pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day, when your startup will present to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.
ThinkImpact Fellowship
ThinkImpact connects college students and recent graduates in the US with partners in Rwanda, Panama, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana to work on social entrepreneurship through ThinkImpact’s Global Development Internships and Fellowships. ThinkImpact operates in-country year-round and runs institutes anywhere from seven days to eight weeks. With ThinkImpact, you become trained in design thinking, social entrepreneurship and fieldwork, while starting or contributing to a real enterprise that can generate incomes, promote health, reduce hunger, empower community engagement or provide education.
Leadership exCHANGE Fellowship
Leadership exCHANGE seeks to empower the next generation of change agents. Join students from more than 80 different countries who have participated in its various fellowship programs that run throughout the year in Prague and Raleigh. You can benefit from a variety of study abroad programs, including academic courses, workshops, leadership training, community service and cultural activities. By living and learning alongside young people from around the world, you will have the opportunity learn about country where you are studying as well as a wide range of cultures. Studying in this environment gives you the chance to learn the true meaning of global citizenship.
Kairos Society Fellowship
Kairos North Carolina is dedicated to promoting an entrepreneurial spirit among university students in North Carolina. To become a member of the Kairos Society, you must receive an invitation and a formal recommendation from one of the organization’s many advisers or partners. To be eligible, you need to be an entrepreneur, scientist, engineer or designer under age 25. When nominated as a prospective fellow, you are invited to submit an application for review. Once accepted as a fellow, you are given a unique membership number and credentials to the organization’s private social service. You also receive access to regional Kairos events and the organization’s international summits in New York City and Den Haag.
University Innovation Fellows
The University Innovation Fellows program empowers students to become leaders of change in higher education. Fellows are creating student innovation spaces, founding entrepreneurship organizations, hosting experiential events, and working with faculty and administrators to develop courses. They range from undergraduates to PhD students and study a wide variety of disciplines. By becoming a part of this program, you serve as an advocate for lasting institutional change with academic leaders and represent UNC-Chapel Hill at national events. As a fellow, you may choose to work independently at Carolina while collaborating with faculty and peers, or you may opt to work as part of an on-campus team of up to four fellows called a “Leadership Circle.”
Ashoka Fellowship
Ashoka pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship more than 35 years ago, and today it engages the world’s largest and most powerful network of social entrepreneurs by searching for and selecting Ashoka Fellows. As a fellow, you receive a tailored stipend for up to three years, if needed, to dedicate yourself full time to the advancement of your idea. You also benefit from customized engagement opportunities that accelerate the impact of your idea, increased visibility, and the ability to connect with a global community of peers.
Echoing Green Fellowship
As an Echoing Green Fellow, you receive an individual stipend of $80,000 (or $90,000 for two-person partnerships) paid in four equal installments over two years as well as a health insurance stipend and yearly professional development stipend. You also join a community of like-minded social entrepreneurs, public service leaders and industry leaders, including the Echoing Green network of more than 700 fellows working in 60 countries around the world. You benefit from leadership development, peer mentorship, networking opportunities and the assistance of a dedicated Echoing Green portfolio manager who facilitates access to technical expertise and pro bono partnerships. The signature Global Fellowship is open to any social entrepreneur, from anywhere in the world, with an innovative solution for any issue. The Black Male Achievement Fellowship supports leaders dedicated to improving the life outcomes of black men and boys in the United States. The Climate Fellowship was launched for leaders committed to mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Venture for America Fellowship
Venture for America is a fellowship program that places recent graduates at startups in cities with emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems, forging a community of entrepreneurs committed to building companies that matter. As a fellow, you will spend five weeks at Training Camp, learning the hard and soft skills you will need to excel at a startup; work for two years at a high-growth company in one of our 17 cities, learning the ins and outs of entrepreneurship; join a tight-knit community of like-minded builders; and gain access to the resources that will help you build something of your own, from community initiatives to startups.
Global Student Entrepreneur Awards
The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) is the premier global competition for students who own and operate a business while attending a college or university. As an award nominee, you’ll compete against your peers from around the world in a series of local and/or national competitions to qualify for the GSEA finals. If you’re an undergraduate student who has owned and operated a business for at least six months, you’re eligible to participate.
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