Love Ethic Social Innovator Fellowships

Program Details

Eligibility

Social Innovator Fellows should be members of the leadership team of a non-profit organization with significant responsibility for public facing leadership, designing and directing projects, initiatives and/or programs, or be practitioners seeking to launch a new organization or venture.

Fellows seeking to start a new organization will identify an established nonprofit organization or leader and/or a formal collaborator to serve as a cosigner to the application. The established organization will commit to guiding leaders through the launch phase and across the life of their project.

Candidates should be available to participate in a residential program on the campus of Notre Dame for four weeks in February 2027.

Candidates should have a defined work project to undertake during their fellowship, and their project or supporting organization should have a clear connection to love-based ethics. We are happy to respond to questions related to the development of a project prior to application submission. Please contact Adam Gustine (agustine@nd.edu) if you have questions.

What Is “Love-Based Ethics”?

“Love-based ethics” refers to an ethical tradition that holds that a widespread, non-merit-based feature like dignity or humanity is what grounds moral significance for each one of us. Such a system is built around principles that situate interpersonal love at the foundations of our ethical reasoning. These systems are meant to inspire and guide us especially as we deal with a host of complex and divisive issues in applied ethics.

Love-based ethics has a long and diverse history, with roots in many major religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, and Buddhism, among others. Independent of religious traditions, prominent contemporary moral theorists like Iris Murdoch have also explored ways of situating interpersonal love at the core of ethical theory, and social theorists like bell hooks have inspired generations of modern scholars to apply a love-based ethics to critical race and gender studies.

Just as there are a diverse array of theoretical foundations for love-based ethics, there are also a host of pressing and highly visible use cases:

• Civil Rights. Martin Luther King Jr. referenced the ethic repeatedly in his defense of nonviolent resistance in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, saying “it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation: the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love.” Likewise, Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha movement in India rooted its theory of social change and civil rights in a philosophy of unlimited compassion. Contemporary civil rights leaders continue to build around these applications of love-based ethics.
• Migration. On the U.S. Southern Border, there is currently heated debate about the moral obligations to provide humanitarian aid to individuals crossing the border, and these debates are often framed in terms of the acceptable bounds of “good samaritanism” and love of strangers. On a global scale, as war, political instability and climate change lead to unprecedented migration, there is increased emphasis on migrant-serving nonprofits to develop and extend ethical ideas about the love of strangers.
• Disability. Aspects of love-based ethics have also featured prominently in major nonprofits aiming to address the care for individuals with cognitive disabilities. For example, organizations like L’Arche are founded on the principle that encounter, attention, and cultivated loving friendship across cognitive differences are crucial to promoting broader social flourishing. This has become a model for mixed ability community centers globally.
• Political Polarization. Aspects of love-based ethics have recently been applied to contemporary political polarization and the degradation of civic life. For example, organizations like Braver Angels apply therapeutic principles that help restore loving intimate relationships to efforts to heal partisan divisions. Concepts like “civic love” play a powerful role in efforts to build coalitions around divisive topics like the public housing crisis.

This is by no means an exhaustive list: Love-based ethics appears in numerous contemporary issues and debates, and it functions as a guiding principle for many social organizations.

We invite proposals for projects that put love-based ethics into action—examining how these frameworks can inform, shape, and improve responses to pressing social, political, and moral challenges across diverse contexts.

Fellowship Expectations

Social Innovator Fellows are expected to reside in the South Bend area and/or to remain in residence at the University of Notre Dame during the period of their fellowship (except for vacation periods, holidays, and University breaks).

Fellows are expected to be free of their regular commitments and to have their primary office at the institute so they may devote themselves full time to the work outlined in their proposal and participate fully in the engaging and cooperative community of scholars at the institute.

Fellows are also expected to attend weekly seminars, present their project once during these seminars, and attend ECG community gatherings and academic events. They are also expected to participate in two workshops and two conferences on love-based ethics organized by the ECG. If these events take place after the fellowship period, the ECG will provide travel support and accommodations for fellows to return to campus to participate.

Social Innovators’ projects will be evaluated annually by the ECG staff, including in-person site visits. Fellows will be responsible for a summative report and presentation at the conclusion of their project.

Project Support

Each fellow’s home organization will receive $35,000 to help offset the costs to the organization of the four-week sabbatical. 

ECG will also provide fellows with a $1,500 housing stipend and support to relocate to South Bend for the month-long residency.

At the conclusion of the residency, each fellow’s organization will receive up to $100,000 in subgrant funds to pilot the project designed during the residency. These funds will not support merely enhancing love-based practices in these organizations—the funds will be subgrants to develop and pilot new projects within the organization. For Fellows starting a new organization with the fellowship, this fund will be applied to support the new venture.

Note that ECG does not provide health insurance or other benefits with this fellowship.

Fellows will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with faculty, Ph.D., and undergraduate fellows at ECG who are pursuing their own research projects on love-based ethics during the year, as well as with faculty and staff from across the Notre Dame campus.

Throughout the year, ECG will organize robust programming to further the study of ethics and cultivate collaboration, such as work-in-progress seminars, guest lectures, book clubs, film viewings, and social events. Social Innovator Fellows are invited to participate in the full life of the institute while in residence with the program.

Application Requirements

Applications for Social Innovator Fellowships must be submitted through Interfolio and should include the following:

• Completed online application form
• Cover letter
• Resume
• Project proposal (no more than six pages double-spaced). In the proposal, applicants should provide an explanation of the project they intend to work on at ECG, including:
  • How it connects with love-based ethics
  • Potential outputs or objectives for the project (i.e., whether it might result in a journal article, strategic plan, policy proposal, etc.)
  • The proposed work plan (including what work has already been accomplished, what will be done during the fellowship period, and the organization of the work)
  • A description of the collaborators (both inside and outside the organization) who will be involved in designing and implementing the project.
    • Note: We are happy to respond to questions related to the development of a project prior to application submission. Please contact Adam Gustine (agustine@nd.edu) if you have questions.
• An itemized budget for the project, detailing the use of the $100,000 subgrant
• Letter of support from the candidate’s direct supervisor or board. This letter should indicate that the candidate has approval to participate in the fellowship and carry out the proposed project.

Finalists may be asked to be available for a brief Zoom conversation with committee members during the final stage of the selection process.