Building Bridges with the Fellows Program

About the CCC Fellows Program

This 18-month program provides funding, training, and a community of practice. A cohort of students, practitioners, and faculty plan and implement on-the-ground projects. During the program, Fellows learn and apply the practices that are the hallmark of successful collaborative conservation.

A unique strength of the CCC Fellows Program is the diversity within each cohort. This interdisciplinary, multi-national community fosters cross-cultural learning, and the mix of perspectives enriches everyone’s experience and makes their
conservation work more impactful.

Join the fellows Program

Becoming a Fellow is a competitive process, requiring the submission of a project proposal (proposals due by October 10, 2025). These proposals are then reviewed by a committee of CCC staff and partners with expertise in collaborative conservation. We typically are able to fund about five projects in each cohort.

Past Fellows projects have included:

Working with a group of stakeholders to do on-the-ground conservation, such as a restoration, social science, or citizen science project.

Building the capacity of a group of stakeholders to collaboratively address a conservation issue. This type of project might include convening, training, planning, creating tools (such as an app, social network map, photovoice, etc.), doing outreach, or other activities.

Co-produce research that sheds light on how to do collaborative conservation.

Program Resources

Download documents about the program.

Cohort 16 Request For Proposals

Project Proposal Guidelines

Project Proposal Review Criteria

Budget Template

Foundations for Practicing Collaboration Conservation: a Theoretical Framework & the CC Fellows Learning Modules

Collaborative Conservation: CCC “How To”

The CCC How To resource page

FAQ’s

Meet the Fellows

Cohort 14

$77,750 awarded to 22 Fellows working on 5 projects in Colorado and the Southwest USA, Mexico, Mongolia, and Brazil. Meet the Fellows and read about the projects here.

Cohort 15

$73,100 awarded to 14 Fellows working on 5 projects in Colorado, Brazil, Honduras, and Kenya. Meet the Fellows and read about the projects here.

Hear From Our Alumni

Interested applicants can learn more through virtual Information Sessions

Applicants can also schedule a 45-minute meeting to ask questions, discuss project ideas, review proposal format and content, and address other concerns. These proposal support meetings can be scheduled here.

Questions? Contact Allison Brody: allison.brody@colostate.edu

Testimonies from Our Fellows

95% of CCC Fellows Program alumni reported that their fellow’s project had been useful to them professionally.

96% reported that the Fellows Program had increased the collaborative nature of their project.

80% indicated that both their Fellow’s project and the Fellows Program had improved their ability to work with a diversity of people.

100% indicated that they had worked across cultural, disciplinary, administrative, or linguistic boundaries in their Fellows’ project.

“Being part of the CCC Fellows community was a defining moment in my professional development… Thank you!”

“I feel that the CCC played a really essential role in shaping me as a conservationist.”

“As a graduate fellow who now works in conservation, having a much better grasp on the idea of collaborative conservation has been really important in the way that I now view the world.”

“I never thought of collaboration as something that was teachable because it feels amorphous and ambiguous. The Fellow Program helped me see that there is pedagogy and evidence-based best practices for effective collaboration.”