Overview
Why the Innovation Fellowship?
Civil society’s ability to build a more inclusive, just and innovative South Africa hangs on the quality of its leadership. To realise civil society’s potential, we need to invest in building its next generation of leaders.
These young people are often middle managers at NGOs. They have passion, vision and work ethic, but are often lonely, isolated and overworked. While plenty of learning can happen on the job, they also need opportunities to step outside of their daily pressures and job titles to nurture their growth and development.
The Innovation Fellowship identifies young people in the early stages of their leadership trajectory, and offers a transformative one-year journey that encourages lifelong learning around leadership and innovation and creates a connected new generation of civil society leaders.
It creates a space where Fellows can;
- Share knowledge, create new knowledge and pool collective wisdom with peers
- Experiment, make mistakes and challenge their assumptions, and build muscle for risk-taking and courage
- Play, rest and refuel – which creates the spaciousness that unlocks creativity and innovation
- Learn how to work with resistance, which often arises when driving change
- Recognise and acknowledge themselves as leaders and strategic champions in their own right
- Build bonds and connections early in their careers that endure into the future
- Cultivate a sense of deep belonging in their organisations, sectors and broader civil society
The Fellowship’s approach is unique in that it:
- Focuses on young people leading change in civil society organisations
- Invites two people from each organisation, so they can support each other’s learning and more effectively catalyse reflection and innovation in their host organisations
- Adapts its curriculum to meet each cohort’s needs
- Structures each Fellow’s journey around an innovation question they feel responsible and accountable for
- Provides extensive coaching and support – as individuals, pairs and within organisations
- Creates a space of intelligence, sensitivity and kindness where young people can rest and be seen, heard and held by their peers
With this approach, the Fellowship is building a generation of grounded, capable and connected and civil society leaders.
The Innovation Fellowship develops young civil society leaders across South Africa
Our Strategy
Our strategy for contributing to this vision is threefold;
- ADevelop: Build young leaders’ understanding of the context in which they work, and the practices, approaches and relationships that can help them wield influence in this context.
- AConnect: Create a community of Alumni who continue to grow and learn together, and who support one another’s growth and development as leaders and innovators.
- ACommunicate: Share NGOs’ and Alumni’s work with a broader audience to showcase their contribution to change in South Africa.
"The Fellowship helped us build the capacity of our team in a very focused way, which in turn impacts our beneficiaries."
Organisational Leader
Overview of Alumni network
The Alumni Network aims to grow members’ leadership skills and practices, to communicate their work to a broader audience, and to harness and align their efforts towards broader societal goals. Members are invited to connect through a range of online platforms, including exclusive LinkedIn and Whatsapp groups.
On completion of the 12-month programme, Fellows automatically graduate into the Alumni Network
12 month learning programme
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5 one-on-one individual coaching sessions
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3 coaching sessions as a pair of fellows
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3 organisational mentoring sessions
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5 one-on-one individual coaching sessions
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3 coaching sessions as a pair of fellows
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3 organisational mentoring sessions
DGMT covers all Fellowship-related expenses during the year.
The Innovation Fellowship is funded by DGMT. It falls under the first of DGMT’s ten strategic opportunities to uplift South Africa: to drive public innovation by reigniting civil society.
LATEST STORIES
Read the latest stories from past and present fellows on their journey
South Africa’s nonprofit sector is often praised for its resilience. It survived apartheid, helped build democracy, and continues to support millions of vulnerable citizens. However, beneath this resilience lies a quieter problem that is becoming increasingly visible:...
It’s a tense moment as the DGMT Innovation Fellowship’s eighth cohort prepare the final presentation they must make to a gathering of interested parties this Friday before they graduate. Each of the nine organisations that make up Cohort 8 began this journey by...
This year’s World NGO Day 2026 had a theme “Restoring Dignity Through Inclusion,” this was an invitation rather than our normal reflection. It asked us to look closely at who is still left out, and what it would take to bring them meaningfully in. Within the DGMT...