Barr Fellowship

Sector Effectiveness | initiative

Celebrating, connecting, and advancing extraordinary leadership

Every few years, starting in 2005, Barr Foundation has invited a diverse group of civic leaders to become Barr Fellows. Over seven cohorts, the Barr Fellowship has recognized, supported, and connected 80 exemplary leaders from many backgrounds, organizations, and fields. After helping the 2019 class navigate a fellowship experience extended by the pandemic, we engaged in a strategic review of the program to better understand new opportunities and challenges, and how best to support civic leaders going forward.

Leaning into what we learned worked and what we heard from leaders about what they need in today’s rapidly changing context, the Barr Fellowship aims to create opportunities for leaders from nonprofit organizations – 501(c)3 public charities – across the Commonwealth to cultivate trust, connection, and relationships with one another; strengthen collaborative leadership skills; and build social capital.

The Barr Fellowship Today

Nonprofit organizations and their leaders across the social sector have been working under increased pressure with ever-shrinking resources. The most recent strategic review of the Barr Fellowship begins by observing, “…with the global pandemic, racial uprisings and a DEI backlash, a more visible climate emergency and other challenges, much more is being demanded of leaders, and can make what were already isolating roles seem less doable or sustainable. Leaders and their staff are calling for greater self-care and collective renewal.”

These challenges continue unabated, and pressures on the sector are increasing in intensity. Unsurprisingly, nonprofit leaders and their teams are actively contending with exhaustion, burnout, and fear, while also recognizing the need for rejuvenation, collaboration and solidarity.

It is with this in mind that Barr Foundation is refreshing and relaunching its Fellowship Program in 2026. The intended impact is to enable more leaders to experience increased resilience, renewal, and sustainability in their role; to expand networking among social change leaders that can be activated in service of shared goals; and to strengthen the quality and depth of relationships among leaders across sectors, within, and beyond established networks.

We are pleased to invite applications for the 2026 class of Barr Fellows.

Program Components

Cohort connection and learning opportunities provided via scheduled programming (approximately 16 days over 15 months).
A $75,000 grant to the organization with the dual purposes of supporting the well-being of the individual Fellow and the organization — $25,000 to support the Fellow’s personal well-being and development and $50,000 to support the organization’s work to enhance resilience and well-being for its staff.
50 hours of coaching, which includes executive coaching for the Fellow and organizational coaching to support identifying and advancing key resilience goals.
Opportunities for continued engagement with the Fellow’s cohort and the larger Barr Fellows Network as Alumni.

Program Goals

The Fellowship aims to enable more social sector leaders across the state to:

experience increased resilience, renewal, clarity of purpose, and sustainability;
cultivate additional collaborative leadership capacities and skills;
develop a healthy operating culture in their organization that recognizes and invests in leadership at all levels; and
grow the networks that they can rely on and activate in service of shared goals.

Our measures of success will include:

The Fellows are largely from, and working in, communities most impacted by challenging social and economic policy, and represent the rich diversity of the Commonwealth.

Fellows and their organizations emerge from the experience with:
- A sense of increased renewal and possibility, less isolation in their role, new practices to support overall wellness;
- Clear purpose, a greater sense of personal agency, and capacity to envision, build, and sustain healthy organizational cultures and collaborative teams;
- New practices to support overall wellness and resilience across their organization, and/or new capacities that advance their organizational mission; and
- A larger, deeper set of relationships with leaders across the Commonwealth that support mutual aid and exchange, and sow the seeds for collaboration and a thriving leadership ecosystem.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicant organizations must:

Be a nonprofit 501(c)3 public charity or an organization fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)3 public charity of any discipline headquartered and significantly serving Massachusetts, i.e., at least roughly 75% of the activities, services and/or programming conducted by your organization occur in Massachusetts.
Have an operating budget between approximately $500,000 and $5 million with adequate staffing and resources in place to continue operations without significant interruption while the nominated individual participates in Fellowship activities.
Demonstrate an organizational commitment to:
- Developing a field that is rooted in justice and belonging, in which all staff can thrive and contribute to organizational missions.
- Cultivating a healthy operating culture that recognizes and invests in leadership at all levels.
Organizations that are fiscally sponsored are eligible.
Government agencies, hospitals, K-12 schools and higher education institutions are not eligible to apply.
Organizations with a primary function of re-granting to other organizations are not eligible to apply.

The Organization’s individual candidate for the Fellowship must:

Be a CEO, Executive Director, or Co-Director in a nonprofit organization, who have been in their current role for at least three years.
Have between approximately three and ten years’ total experience in a paid role as a nonprofit CEO, Executive Director, or Co-Director, and intend to remain in the sector for the foreseeable future.
Be a full-time resident of New England with professional life and work significantly focused on Massachusetts.
Demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to developing a field that is rooted in justice and belonging and contributing to organizational culture that supports staff to show up as their full selves, unique in their cultures, experiences, and perspectives.
Have availability, capacity, and commitment for full participation in the Fellowship.

Read The FAQ

Application Timeline

The following reflects the current timeline for the Class of 2026 Barr Fellows application process and is subject to change.

Application opens – May 14, 2026
Information Sessions – join us for one of the following sessions:
- June 11, 2026, 3-4pm ET
- June 16, 2026, 1 – 2pm ET
Application closes – June 30, 2026
Advancing candidates notified – August 2026
Calls with advancing candidates – August 2026
Finalist candidates notified – Early September 2026
Finalist Interviews – Late September to Early October 2026
Cohort and Awards Announced – November 2026