Skoll Awards Grant

The Skoll Awards for Social Innovation, presented by the Skoll Foundation, recognize social innovators addressing root societal problems. Each awardee receives $2 million in unrestricted funding and joins a global community of leaders dedicated to significant social change. The foundation focuses on key areas such as health systems, effective governance, inclusive economies, racial justice, and climate action. Nominations are made through a multi-year sourcing process, ensuring that candidates align closely with the foundation's mission.

The Skoll Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Innovation each year to a select group of social innovators whose work targets the root causes of societal problems that are ripe for transformational social change.
At the Skoll Foundation, we view social innovation as the quest to solve a societal problem by applying a novel or reimagined solution that effectively contributes to lasting and systemic social change. Through the Skoll Awards, we aim to highlight social innovators whose work has already had a significant impact on some of the world’s most pressing problems and who are poised to act as critical catalysts of transformational social change. By investing in social innovations ripe for accelerated, system-level impact, the Skoll Awards help unleash the full potential and reach of social change leaders.
Each Awardee organization receives $2 million in unrestricted funding to scale their work and increase their impact. Awardees also gain leverage through their long-term participation in a global community of visionary leaders and innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems.
Nominations
The Skoll Foundation employs a multi-year sourcing process for the Skoll Awards. Our goal is to save organizations’ valuable time and effort while identifying the most highly aligned candidates. To that end, we identify candidates through direct engagement, referrals, and nominations from our network of partners.
If you have been asked to refer and/or nominate an Awardee, please review the Skoll Award criteria closely to determine whether the organization would be eligible. Please note that fewer than 10 Awardees are selected annually. Not all organizations that meet the eligibility requirements and align with our criteria will receive the Award.
The Skoll Foundation focuses on five priority systems: pandemics and health systems strengthening, effective governance, inclusive economies, racial justice, and climate action. We look for Skoll Awards candidates who are driving impact within–and across–those priorities.
Organizations will be evaluated against the following criteria found here.

Eligibility

To receive a Skoll Award, an organization must be a legally incorporated entity. Skoll will consider nonprofits, for-profits, as well as hybrid structures. Organizations that do not have 501(c)(3) public charity status, including organizations based in other countries, will be asked to submit additional documentation at the appropriate time.

Ineligibility

Individuals, either through scholarships or other forms of financial support
New or concept-stage business plans or ideas
Programs promoting religious or ideological doctrine, such as those principally sectarian in nature
Lobbying (beyond that allowed by law for charitable organizations)
Public schools and school districts
Institutions that discriminate on the basis of race, creed, age, gender, or sexual orientation in policy or practice
Political campaigns
Organizations whose missions and work focus on a single municipality, province, or state
Local offices of parent organizations or specific programs within organizations