Seeding Power Fellowship – FAQ

This is a good question, and one we were interested in answering ourselves. You should leave yourself plenty of time to work on the application, and to take breaks and then return to it later.

It is true that the Seeding Power application is more involved and requires more self-reflection than many applications to similar programs. We believe this is a good primer for the type of thinking you will be doing as part of the Fellowship, and provides enough information for our selection committee to put together a balanced and diverse cohort.

We collect optional feedback as part of the application. For the 2025-2026 cohort, 43 people chose to answer the question asking how long the application took them. Here are thier answers:

• Less than 1hr:  2 people
• 1-2 hours: 5 people
• 2-3 hours: 6 people
• 3-4 hours: 7 people
• 4-5 hours: 8 people
• 5-7 hours: 12 people
• 7-10 hours: 5 people
• 15+ hours: 1 person

All applications are read and evaluated by an outside selection committee. That committee then meets to select approximately 20 finalists to advance to second round interviews. Those interviews are scheduled based on answers to questions in the application about the applicant’s availability. The selection committee then meets again to choose the 12 fellows who will be invited to join the next cohort. 

The CFF Director facilitates this process but is not a voting member. The selection committee consists of Seeding Power alumni, CFF steering committee members, and other partners/experts from the leadership development and movement building fields. A different selection committee is formed for each application cycle. 

The cohort will be selected by the end of June 2026; an announcement will follow soon after.

Seeding Power will have twelve fellows: at least nine from the larger food movement and no more than three from the philanthropic and/or government sector.

Your work must be primarily located in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, and focused on improving some aspect of the food system. You also must have significant experience and influence. This work can be done as part of a nonprofit organization or philanthropic institution, but that is not a requirement. Other positions such as unaffiliated organizers, private sector actors such as farmers, and government employees are also among those eligible. The ideal fellow has many years of experience, and can articulate their goals for this fellowship in terms of its impact on themselves and possibly their organization and/or community.

All organizations and networks have different structures and cultures, so there is no hard and fast rule here. Seeding Power is not designed for early career or entry-level participants. Fellows should be able to think strategically about themselves and their organizations or communities, and be in a position to implement any changes necessary. They should arrive having devoted meaningful time to food systems change, so that they can contribute to and benefit from the types of conversations happening as part of the fellowship. 

Yes. The issues faced by our communities are not confined by political boundaries, and we don’t expect that all of your work is either. The person applying should spend a significant portion of their time however working in New York, New Jersey, and/or Connecticut.

Food touches everything, so this is a very broad category. Seeding Power is looking for leaders whose work focuses heavily on some aspect of the food system: whether that is part of the food chain (growing, processing, transporting, selling, consuming, or disposing), or the set of policies, structures, and other forces that impact the food chain. This work does not have to be the sole focus of the organization, but it should be a significant part of the applicant’s work.

No. We have broadened our criteria from when we formed the inaugural cohort. You can work for a nonprofit, for profit, government entity, philanthropic institution, or none of the above. You simply must have significant experience working on food system change, and the desire to participate in a pilot experience like the one we are offering.

The goal of this cohort is to connect folks who work primarily in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. So long as this region is where you do most of your work, you are eligible. Our application does have a space to give information about your organization, if you are affiliated with one. If you are affiliated with more than one organization, pick the one where you spend most of your time, and you can let us know about the others in the questions that ask you two write about your organization and your role.

Each movement fellow will receive a $5,000 stipend, split into two payments at the beginning and end of the fellowship. The philanthropic fellows will be asked to make a financial contribution. More importantly, a fellow gets nine months to learn and strategize about their own growth, the growth of their organization or community, and the growth of the larger food movement. Towards this end, there will be three in-person retreats, 13 virtual sessions, three hours minimum of individualized coaching, and a collaboration team of other fellows to dream and ideate with.

All selected fellows that are not from philanthropy will receive a $5,000 stipend, paid as individual income, and will be issued a 1099 at the end of the year. This money is unrestricted and can be used towards anything. The stipend is intended to compensate for the time each fellow will spend as part of the fellowship.

The short answer is no. The Seeding Power Fellowship will uplift the work of the individuals and organizations involved, and funders in the Community Food Funders network will certainly receive updates and highlights about what is happening in the fellowship, but there is no guarantee that this exposure will lead to any grants to your organization. If your primary motivation for applying to Seeding Power is to receive more grant funding, or to network with funders, you probably should not apply.

The inaugural Seeding Power cohort did not include funders, and upon reflection and evaluation we realized this was a missed opportunity, especially as CFF is a philanthropic-serving organization. We include funders (and government) now in acknowledgement of the influence funders exert in the food movement, and to allow for more meaningful examination and dialog for the potential of this influence. We see the improvement of communication, relationships, and power dynamics between funders and grantees as a critical ingredient for movement building and systems change. This was a decision made after careful deliberation, and the program designers are prepared for the many challenges and opportunities that this inclusion presents.

Read more about this specific element in a PNY Insights piece published in April, 2025. 

This 9-month fellowship requires four to six hours of work per month, which includes program time and any outside prep-work. These hours go up in the months where there is an in-person retreat, but there will be no other work during those months outside of the retreat.

The cohort will be split up into three to four groups or teams, decided on by the program facilitators. These teams will work together over the second part of the fellowship to design some type of collaboration or project that incorporates each of the team members’ interests and utilizes some of the skills and lessons developed during the fellowship. The project may be fully executed and completed during the fellowship, or it may be a design for future work to be initiated later, or just a concept never intended to be fully realized. Accordingly, a fellow is not expected to start the fellowship with a project in mind. Each collaboration team will have a facilitator guide to support agenda creation, project management, communication, technical support, and scheduling.

You can read more about the 2023-2024 collaboration teams here.

Yes, attendance at the in-person retreats are a mandatory and conditional part of the fellowship experience. They are key to the relationship- and culture-building component of Seeding Power. If you will not be able to attend any one of them, then you should wait until future years when it will be possible for you. The exact timing and locations of retreats will be posted to the main Seeding Power webpage when they are confirmed.

The virtual sessions will be scheduled with the participation of all fellows at the start of the fellowship. The in-person retreat dates are being scheduled now and the main Seeding Power webpage (as well as this FAQ) will be updated when that process is complete.

• July, 2026: Introductory webinar for new cohort
• September 30 – October 2, 2026: 3-day in-person kickoff retreat @ The Watershed Center
• February 7-10, 2027: 4-day in-person midpoint retreat @ Trinity Retreat Center
• May, 2027: 2-day in-person culminating retreat @ TBD

Absolutely! Seeding Power is active on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter, and we have some sample posts and images you can use on those platforms or in your newsletter. You can also download a handout to circulate. We appreciate the help!

Funds for the Seeding Power Fellowship have come from the Community Food Funders Steering Committee, in the form of grants made to North Star Fund. Additionally, the Angell Foundation and Robert Sterling Clark Foundation support the Seeding Power Fellowship but do not participate on the CFF steering committee.

The first Seeding Power cohort ran 2019-2020, but the ending was cut short due to Covid. While the overarching goals and purpose of Seeding Power remains the same, this iteration was wholly redesigned and reimagined with a new curriculum by our program designers from Emerging Equity. This new iteration was then implemented for the 2023-2024  and 2025-2026 cohorts. The bulk of the program remains unchanged, but we are always making tweaks and updates based on the feedback of each cohort. You can read about the original design on an archived page on our website. The changes are too numerous and detailed to fully outline here, but some of the key ones include:

• Shortening the duration from 18 months to 9 months
• Including funders as part of the cohort
• Shifting to a hybrid format with online sessions as well as in-person retreats
• Removing all expectations and requirements outside of the fellowship meeting times
• Broadening the geographic scope to include all of NY, NJ, and CT
• Accepting applications from all self-identified leaders (including government and private sector); not just those in the nonprofit sector

Here are pages for

• The 2019-2020 cohort
• The 2023-2024 cohort
• The 2025-2026 cohort

And you can read about the 2023-2024 experience here.

Yes, we run evaluations as part of every cohort so that we can continuously learn what works and what doesn’t, and how best to improve the experience. Surveys are collected before the fellowship begins to create a baseline for the assessment, and then again at the mid-point and after the conclusion of the program. Surveys are also collected after each in-person retreat.

We also hired an outside evaluator for the 2019-2020 program, but because of the Covid crisis that work was never completed. For the 2023-2024 program. Emerging Equity conducted an evaluation led a member of their team with a PhD and deep experience in qualitative methods. You can read that evaluation here, selected quotes and excerpts of which were used for this 2023-2024 fellowship recap.