The Evolution of the Weitz Fellows Program

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The Weitz Family has a deep and long connection to Carleton College in Fairfield, Minnesota. This was where Barb and Wally met as students and where their three children, Katie, Roger, and Drew, attended college. The Weitz Fellows program began with Jack Becker’s vision in 2011 to bring a Carleton alumni to Omaha for a one-year fellowship to experience working in a nonprofit. You can read more about the history of the program in Katie’s blog two years ago.

At the time, organizations who received a fellow were individually selected. Realizing that we wanted to live more fully into our values of transparency and accessibility, we decided to take a pause for the 2024-2025 year to listen, learn, and reimagine what the future of the program might look like. I spent time talking with Weitz Fellows alumni, current Fellows, and the organizations who presently partnered with us and hosted a fellow. I also had the opportunity to visit Carleton with Jack to talk with faculty and staff across the campus about students’ needs and interests. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to meet with me to share their feedback and experience.

One major change we have made is to implement an open application process for organizations interested in having a Weitz Fellow. We want to have a transparent process to ensure all of our grantees are aware of this program. We will be looking for organizations who meet the following criteria:

• Is a current 2024 grantee of our foundation.
• Has multiple departments a Weitz Fellow could shadow to experience the different aspects of what it takes to run a nonprofit, from development to programming to communication, etc.
• Commit a supervisor to supporting the Fellow through regular meetings and check-ins.
• Ensure the Fellow has specific projects they work on, but create enough flexibility to allow the Fellow to take on projects they are passionate about. Overall, this fellowship is not meant to fill a permanent staff position for the organization.
• Commit and demonstrate ongoing internal growth in their equity work as an organization.

The application opened on May 1st and will close May 31st. We will be holding drop-in office hours for anyone to join and ask questions about the program or application. You can view those times and a link to the application here. If selected, organizations will recruit and interview potential Weitz Fellows for the program in the fall and winter of 2024/2025, with a Fellow starting in June or July of 2025.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at  emily@weitzfamilyfoundation.org.