Digital Civil Society Lab’s Non-Resident Fellowship for Social Sector Leaders

Applications are open for Digital Civil Society Lab’s Non-Resident Fellowship which supports social sector leaders to dedicate some of their time working on ideas that apply to broad swaths of civil society.

The goal is to provide enough time, space, expertise, and financial support to help turn ideas into prototypes or action. Previous fellows have built online tools for understanding privacy regulations, drafted new data governance mechanisms, and incubated a digital security exchange.

For the 2019 Fellowship year they are recruiting a cohort of three to five fellows. Within this cohort, they are recruiting one fellow to work specifically on a project designed by the Lab to focus on digital policy issues and civil society infrastructure.

Fellowship projects should be designed to:

• address a challenge of safe, ethical, and effective digital data governance or practice that is common to nonprofits and civic associations globally
• produce a prototype, draft or complete product in one year
• benefit from access to scholarship and researchers
• have a plausible plan for post-fellowship implementation and support
• be shareable and open for discussion, adaptation, promotion and reuse during and after the fellowship period

Focus Areas

• Social norms and practices that promote safe and ethical data collection, generation, and use
• Software and hardware designed for the values and interest of civil society actors
• Organizational practices that align with civil society missions and protect institutional independence from markets or governments
• Legal practices and regulatory frames that protect the building blocks of civil society, including free association, speech, and privacy

Benefits

Fellows will receive:

• A $20,000 stipend, paid at the beginning of the fellowship, to support work on a year-long project.
• A weeklong in-person convening of the cohort on the Stanford campus in January 2019.
• Travel support up to $5,000 over the course of the year-long fellowship to support travel to the January 2019 weeklong cohort convening, as well as additional campus visits, conference presentations, or other project-related trips as appropriate.
• Access to the Digital Civil Society Lab’s network of partners.
• Promotion of the project via the Lab’s public-facing communications channels, including Digital Impact.
• Mentorship from Lab directors and access to Fellowship alumni from previous cohorts.

Guidelines

• Each fellow, except the Policy Fellow, will pursue a project or set of activities of their own design over the course of the fellowship. Applicants pursuing projects that are already in progress, as well as projects that may not be fully completed within one year, are eligible to apply.
• Fellows are expected to engage as a cohort with the other Non-Resident Fellows as well as with the Lab’s postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and student researchers. Beyond this core team, Fellows will also have opportunities to connect with the broader Stanford research community as well as with fellowship alumni.
• While the fellowship welcomes applications from outside the United States, it is currently unable to support the acquisition of visas. If applicants are applying from outside the United States and are accepted, they will need to secure their own visa.

Eligibility Criteria

The Non-Resident Fellowship at the Digital Civil Society Lab is open to applicants 18 years of age or older who meet the following conditions:

• . Meet all submission deadlines and submit the application in English;
• Commit to spend twelve months undertaking a project addressing one or more of the Four Codes of Digital Civil Society outlined above;
• Commit to contribute a final written report, video or audio interview, and at least two submissions to the Lab’s public-facing content channels including the Digital Impact blog, virtual roundtable series, public event series, or resource toolkit;
• Commit to attend a week-long convening of the fellowship cohort at Stanford University in January 2019; This week involves an introduction to the Lab and its research goals and activities, opportunities to meet other communities on campus, independent time to interact with scholars and research institutes on campus and in the area, and the development of individual year-long work plans. Fellows are encouraged to engage with and imagine/identify additional collective activities for their cohort.
• Applicant’s initiative can not involve a political campaign or legislative lobbying efforts

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