A fellowship is typically defined as a competitive, short-term funding opportunity for graduate study, scholarly research, or professional development. Fellowships exist in all disciplines and at all career levels, from undergraduate study to late-career leadership development for executives.
A fellowship is a competitive award for an individual that is:
- Funded- it provides a stipend or grant, and sometimes other benefits;
- Competitive- it has an application process and only some applicants are selected;
- Merit-based- fellows are selected based on the strength of the application and proposal, and not based on financial need;
- Short-term – the length of the fellowship period ranges from a few weeks to a few years but is often one year in length)
- Exceptional, because fellowships provide you the opportunity, resources, networks, and funding you can’t typically get elsewhere!
People often believe fellowships only serve academic endeavors – this is a myth! It’s true there are many fellowships for students and scholars to complete a degree or conduct research. But academic fellowships are just one category of awards we call fellowships.
On the other hand, a “research grant” isn’t a specific type of grant. Rather, grants that fund or support research can be awarded through a discretionary grant, block grant, or any of the other types of grants. Research grants are made available by various institutions to help fund research efforts made by individuals, universities, and other groups.
Research can encompass many subjects, such as literature, medicine, and the environment. The grants can vary greatly in the amount they offer, from small grant awards, to full, multi-year fellowships.
Research grants can be applied to research that is already taking place or pave the way for completely new research in a field. The money public or private agencies put toward research provides a significant boost to groups working in a certain field. The money can be unrestricted or allow only for a certain amount to cover limited expenses—it all depends on the guidelines of the grant.
Spend less time managing fellowships and research grants in spreadsheets and emails, and more time making a difference with CommunityForce’s fellowship management platform. Streamline your fellowship process and effortlessly collect and review diverse applications, automate workflows, and focus on what matters most – selecting the best candidates and maximizing their impact.
Create focused, automated workflows
Looking to free up some time in your process? Manage your fellowship application process from end to end using one account. Automate tedious and repetitive steps like assigning projects to save time, and focus on what matters – finding and inspiring the right fellows.
Create a seamless application, review, and funding process
Create a process that’s polished and painless for everyone involved. With our powerful and intuitive applicant, reviewer, and administrator portals, CommunityForce’s platform makes your tasks simple, fast, and efficient.
Monitor your impact in real-time
Don’t be left in the dark. Access all your application and funding data in real-time with our Business Intelligence tool, and create powerful custom reports so that you can monitor your impact and ensure a seamless process every step of the way.
Community Force’s Fellowship Management is an all-in-one solution encompassing all your needs, so you can carry out your fellowship mission of any size seamlessly on one platform.
For Administrators
View Assignments Dashboard
Find all the information you need for your assigned tasks on a single dashboard. Analyze the review progress and scores and filter accordingly to save wasted time spent searching for relevant information.
Comprehensive evaluation progress
Review applications at a glance with the same screen display functionality. Use an online scoring rubric along with comments from other committee members and recommended funding to reach a well-rounded and unbiased decision
Collaborate and Communicate
Collaborate with admins and other reviewers for a seamless review process. View comments and communicate with committee members and determine the outcome all on the same platform – say goodbye to multiple apps to communicate, collaborate, and review.
Whether you’re a startup organization or a leading corporation, CommunityForce provides fully customizable, all-in-one online grant management solutions to maximize your efficiency, simplify complex processes, and improve collaboration so you can focus on increasing your impact. We’ve helped organizations streamline their entire grant-making process no matter the size and scope of their giving.
We enable organizations to reduce the amount of time spent on administrative burdens and focus on what matters: increasing their impact.
