Listing fellowships on ProFellow is a bit different than traditional fellowship and scholarship databases so we thought it might be helpful to provide tips on how to do it. We’ve designed ProFellow to be a discovery platform: a place where fellowship organizations provide a brief overview of their opportunities, matching criteria and a link to their website. In turn, fellowship seekers can discover fellowships that match their background and interests, read pertinent details about each opportunity at a glance, and visit fellowship websites for more information.

Fellowship Name, Organization and URL

These fields are fairly self explanatory, however there are a few things you can do to ensure that listings are searchable, easy to maintain, and relevant to candidates. For fellowship and organization names, include commonly used acronyms inside parentheses when applicable. This ensures that if candidates search using those acronyms they’ll find your fellowship.

Also, avoid including date specific information in the fellowship name (i.e. 2012-2013). If there is specific information that relates to the current year only, it’s best for candidates to find this information on your website.

Third, in the URL field, include the direct link to the fellowship page on your website rather than a link to your website home page. This ensures that candidates find the fellowship details with ease. It’s also important to paste the full link, including the http://. The best way to do this is to copy and paste straight from your browser.

Here’s a good example of fellowship and organization titles:

Fellowship Types and Disciplines

These fields are also fairly straight forward. For each, select all that apply. For example, if the listing is for professionals and is offered only during the summer months, then selecting both “Professional” and “Summer Fellowship” is ideal.

As for Fellowship Disciplines, the disciplines selected should describe the focus of the fellowship, rather than the background of potential applicants. For example, a teaching fellowship like Teach for America may allow applicants from many different backgrounds and disciplines. However, we would define the disciplines of the Teach for America program to be “Education” and “Public Service”. To ensure users don’t miss out on great fellowship opportunities, we encourage them to be open-minded and look at fellowships categorized in different disciplines.

Keywords

Keywords are the extra details about a fellowship, the type of things that usually exist in a detailed description. Keywords should be used to describe things such as subdisciplines (i.e. adding aeronautical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, etc. to an engineering fellowship), specifics regarding fellowship locations (i.e. Berlin, Munich, Germany, United States, Washington, DC, Los Angeles), eligibility requirements (i.e. minority, Jewish, African American, etc.) and other meaningful information that candidates will likely consider when seeking a fellowship (i.e. young professionals, scholars, U.S. Congress, etc.).

You may have noticed that we don’t use the keywords for search  - yet.  We are gathering feedback from beta users now about how they like to search and find fellowship opportunities that best match their interests and eligibility. Once we get all that feedback we’ll updating ProFellow with new search and matching features.

Here’s a good example of keywords for the Ogilvy Fellowship UK:

Fellowship Locations and Citizenships

For these fields, select all that apply. For the fellowship location, select all of the continents where the fellowship can be performed. If the fellowship can be performed anywhere in the world, then select all continents. If the fellowship can only be performed in Germany, then select Europe. Use keywords to identify specific countries and cities.

For citizenships, select all from which candidates are eligible to apply. If the fellowship is for all graduate students currently attending U.S. universities, then select United States as the citizenship and check the box “Open to U.S. residents”. If candidates from any country are eligible then select “Any”.

Work Experience, Gender and Application Deadline

No surprises here. If your fellowship requires 10 or more years of work experience, is only for men or women, or has an application deadline, then it’s important to fill out these fields on the form.

For the fellowship deadline, if you have multiple deadlines (i.e. Spring and Fall), then enter in the nearest upcoming deadline. If you have a rolling deadline, then leave the field blank. In any case, we encourage users to check your website for the most accurate information.

Fellowship Description

The fellowship description is your opportunity, in as few a words as possible, to tell candidates exactly what they want to know about your fellowship. We’ve intentionally limited this field to 650 characters so it’s easy to maintain, and includes only the most pertinent information about a fellowship. We’ve also found that short descriptions make it easier for users to skim information and quickly find fellowships that match their background and interests.

An ideal fellowship description includes a brief overview of the program, the length of the fellowship, the stipend amount(s), and additional eligibility information that is not already accounted for in other fields. Please avoid including date specific references (i.e. info only relevant for one year), additional links, contact info, etc. Candidates can gather these details from your website. Here’s an example of a great fellowship description:

We hope this is a helpful overview for how to create effective fellowship listings on ProFellow. If you have any questions or would like to provide us with feedback, please see the recently added feedback link in the beta website.

Thanks for your participation on ProFellow! We look forward to hearing from you.

If you are not yet participating and would like to list your fellowships on ProFellow, please sign up.