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The 21st Century Fellows Program

The 21st Century Fellows Program is a year-long program for people of color managers currently working at national and international LGBT human rights, service and advocacy organizations that are current grantees of the Arcus Foundation, the Gill Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, which together are funding the different components of the program during its inaugural year.

thepipelineproject, in collaboration with the Flexible Leadership Investments Program of the Haas, Jr. Fund and Rockwood Leadership Institute, manages the program.

For the inaugural cohort, over 40 nominees were vetted for 20 domestic slots. The 2009-10 Cohort also includes 2 international fellows.

Read more on the program by downloading Advancing the Next Generation of LGBT Leaders: An evaluation of the first pilot cohort of the 21st Century Fellows Program.

The program's primary goals are three-fold:

Individual Goals

The provision of leadership development support for people of color managers within LGBT organizations coupled with opportunities for those managers to connect with and learn from each other will:

  • Support individuals to build their hard and soft leadership skills;
  • Foster lasting professional networks often missing from the professional development lives of people of color; and
  • Contribute to sector-wide people of color retention efforts resulting in more people of color advancing to executive positions within LGBT organizations, which will then be better equipped to advance rights and opportunities for all LGBT people.

Organizational Goals

By supporting the leadership development of LGBT organizations' key staff members, the program will strengthen those organizations by:

  • Bolstering programming objectives and increasing levels of programmatic success and impact;
  • Providing an additional element of support for organizations' strategic planning, and succession planning goals and efforts.

Movement Goals

The program will strengthen the LGBT movement in the short-term by facilitating leadership, advancement and connections between and among people of color within LGBT organizations.

The program also seeks to address longer-term movement leadership needs by sustaining the advancement of people of color by better preparing them for higher positions and building supportive professional networks of peers.