Henry Arnholds Fellowships Grant

Henry Arnholds Fellowships Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Mulago Foundation
Amount: US $100,000
Last Updated: July 17, 2025

Summary

The Henry Arnhold Fellowships, offered by the Mulago Foundation, seek innovative leaders with impactful conservation and climate solutions. This one-year fellowship provides $100,000 in funding, workshops, and a community of experts to help fellows scale their initiatives. The program emphasizes designing high-impact strategies and building sustainable organizations, aiming to create significant environmental change. Applications are open until August 7, 2025, encouraging recommendations for promising candidates.

Overview

NOTE: There has been a growing demand for an open application process, and we’ve decided to launch one. You can now either recommend a fellow or share the open application directly. Aug.7,2025 is the deadline to recommend a fellow. We read all recommendations and link them to any eventual applications. We’ll invite them to apply through the full proposal deadline above.Henry Arnhold Fellowship Through our Henry Arnhold Fellowship we find leaders with promising conservation and climate solutions and help them to design and deliver them at scale. We’re impact and scale-obsessed. Each year we select 8-10 leaders and help them (1) design high-impact scalable solutions and strategies for better, faster, bigger outcomes; (2) build the organizations to deliver them at scale; and (3) become part of a growing community of innovators in conservation and climate. The one-year fellowship is bookended with a design retreat, comes with $100,000 in funding, and ongoing support from our team and network. Here are the components of the fellowship in more detail: Design and Strategy ‍The fellowship is bookended by an intensive week-long workshop to dive in on design for impact and strategy for scale. It’s a rare opportunity to focus completely on new ideas and a systematic way to apply them. Community and Connections We bring together a cohort of leaders committed to social justice and ending extreme poverty, alongside some great experts, consultants, and our team. Fellows join a growing community of fellows at the forefront of climate and conservation work. Resources and Support The fellowship comes with $100K. Learning resources are regularly shared to keep everyone informed on the latest thinking and doing. We also hold open office hours year round. What We Look For We look for innovative leaders with a conservation or climate solution that works and has potential to go big. We look for impact-obsessed people pioneering effective ways to: protect nature and ecosystems (forests, rivers, oceans, mountains, grasslands) slow down climate change (drop emissions, use energy efficiently, capture carbon) or adapt to the new climate reality. Their solutions focus on everything from tropical forests in the Amazon Basin to methane emissions in the Arctic, from grasslands in Africa to fisheries in the Indian Ocean and from sustainable finance in Australia to dam removal in Africa. Design For Impact Our Approach to Design All our fellows have great ideas. And want to create big change for the better. Our design tools take them all the way from a great idea to impact at scale. Scale for us doesn’t simply mean growth, nor is it just a big number. And it isn’t about an organization “scaling;” it’s about scaling the impact you want to see in the world. We’ve found that for an organization to get to “scale” and make a big dent in a big problem it has to go through some stages 1) smart R&D to arrive at a scalable model, 2) replication by your own organization to prove scalability, and finally 3) scale via replication by others that creates the exponential growth of impact. The first part of the fellowship focuses on how to turn an idea into a systematic and replicable model. It takes them through a series of steps to get to a detailed impact model, and then serves as the vehicle of an ongoing process of iterative redesign. And then we dig into how to shepherd it through the stages to scale. It’s a systematic approach to go all the way. You can take a look at some of the design content here. The Workshop The main event is usually a week-long workshop on the coast of California where fellows have the opportunity to think deeply about their path to create meaningful impact at scale. We bring together founders, experts, experienced doers, and our team. It's fast-paced, interactive, and fun. The engagement also helps Fellows work through the organizational and financial models – how to deliver the impact model and how to pay for it. Fellows work directly with our team to incorporate new information, lessons, and ideas into their model. Fellows get to listen, learn and support each other through: Design & scale sessions that build on pre-work Iteration on design for impact and strategy for scale Honed communications Small group topical conversations A series of curated one-on-one conversations They emerge with more clarity on the dream and a roadmap to help get them there.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Henry Arnhold Fellows have:A widely-applicable solution (could be replicated and paid for at big scale) to a big conservation or climate problem An open mind and big ambition! An organization up and running — nonprofit or for-profit — even if very small or very early. A leadership role (usually an ED or CEO) at the organization, perhaps even a program within a big NGO.