In order to be eligible to apply for a Howard Fellowship, candidates should be able to answer "yes" to each of the following questions. If "no" is the correct answer to any of them, they are asked to explain on the application form what special circumstances might make them eligible anyway, given the requirements for a Howard Fellowship.

Can your current professional status appropriately be viewed as “early mid-career” as understood by the Howard Foundation? Normatively candidates for a Howard Fellowship will have completed their formal studies within the past five to fifteen years of the application date and should also have successfully completed at least one major project beyond degree requirements that would be sufficient toward awarding of tenure at at higher education institutions or for achieving comparable peer recognition in creative practice fields, e.g., through publication or exhibition.  Creative practitioners are not required to hold academic appointments. Candidates who are already nationally and internationally recognized leaders in their fields as reflected by their promotion to full professor or by comparable standing in creative fields are not normally eligible for a Howard Fellowship.

Would a Howard Fellowship provide you with time off from other responsibilities to work on your proposed project? Our support is particularly intended to augment paid sabbatical leaves. In the case of independent artists or scholars, or those without paid leaves, we would expect that a Howard Fellowship would enable them to devote a substantial block of time to the proposed project. Howard Foundation Fellowships are unrestricted awards for the sole purpose of aiding the intellectual and artistic development of the recipients. The Howard Foundation has no funds to pay indirect costs, so any decision about payment of benefits on the fellowship would be a matter for you to resolve with the appropriate officials at your institution.

Are you, regardless of your citizenship, currently living and working in the United States or U.S. Territories?

Does your proposed project fall within one of the fields established for this year's round of applications? Given the limits of our resources, we must adhere strictly to the fields announced each year for project proposals.

Howard Foundation Fellowships are awarded through a multi-stage review process that begins with successive rounds of screening by expert panels assembled for each year's fields. Proposals advance through the process based on the collective determination of panelists. To ensure candid assessment, the identities of reviewers are not public. The proposals that panelists collectively judge to be the strongest under the Foundation's award criteria are forwarded to the Foundation's multi-disciplinary Board of Administration, which makes the final selection.

Partial or incomplete applications will not be considered. This includes receipt of the mandatory two letters of recommendation by the stated deadline.

The Howard Foundation is committed to diversity and inclusiveness in selecting the artists and scholars it supports. The Foundation does not discriminate on the basis of an applicants' gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, ability/disability or any other legally protected status, and it welcomes creative and scholarly work reflecting a full array of lived experiences.