What is a Churchill Fellowship?

The Fellowship promotes social change through grants for UK citizens to go and learn from the best in the world about a practical problem, and bring that learning home.

How does it work?

Fellowships are open to all UK citizens, regardless of their background, qualifications or age, selection is based on the potential of the person and the strength of the idea. Each year the organisation awards a limited number of fellowships across a framework of universal themes. These offer a life-changing opportunity to gain practical insights from the world’s experts in every aspect of society.

Fellows spend roughly four to eight weeks learning from the people doing the most interesting work in their field, anywhere in the world. That research can now be done overseas, online from the UK, or as a mix of both. The real benefit is access to time with people and organisations you would rarely reach otherwise.

The expectation is that you come back and put what you have learned to work, sharing your findings openly, influencing your field, and making a tangible difference to your community or profession. Every Fellow publishes a report and is actively encouraged to spread what they have found.

Why This Matters for the Charity and Social Sector

So much hard-won knowledge stays locked inside individual organisations, or inside individual countries, simply because no one has the time or remit to look outward and carry the best of it back.

For example, UK charities are developing promising approaches to challenges such as youth mental health support, community climate resilience, or reducing food insecurity every day. Yet equivalent or complementary work happening in other countries often remains invisible to us. Without dedicated time and funding, even the most curious practitioners rarely get the chance to explore what’s working globally and adapt those insights for UK contexts.

A Fellowship removes those barriers and gives permission, resource, and structured time to step outside our usual silos, learn directly from leading practitioners and innovators worldwide, and bring practical, adaptable ideas home.

It is a deeply practical kind of opportunity, and it sits very close to how I believe the best sector work happens: learn from others, test it honestly, and share what works to help create even greater collective impact.

What's next?

In my next post I will share my own Fellowship project and the specific problem that sits at the heart of it. As the work progresses, I’ll also publish regular field notes here as Fellowship Dispatches starting with reflections before I begin the learning phase later this year.

You can read more about the project on my dedicated Churchill Fellowship Project page.

If you’d like to follow the journey, connect with others exploring similar opportunities, or simply stay in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Find out more about the Churchill Fellowship at churchillfellowship.org.