The Tribe 12 Fellowship is an accelerator for entrepreneurial people in their 20s & 30s in Philadelphia's Jewish community.

Tribe 12 Fellows apply the tangible skills they learn and the network they build to create a capstone project of their own design: a new or existing business, non-profit, community, project or anything in between!

What do all the projects have in common? A "double bottom line", which is a business strategy which uses positive social impact as one measurement of success.

Applications for the 2024 Tribe 12 Fellowship are now open! Visit tribe12.org/fellowship to apply. The Fellowship begins in January of each year and concludes at a closing event in May. The program is designed to run concurrently with school or work obligations and is based in Philadelphia. 

Anyone in their 20s and 30s who is in the Greater Philadelphia area and considers themselves part of the Jewish community is invited to apply. Tribe 12 welcomes people who identify as Jewish, whose partner is Jewish, or who are exploring Judaism. Tribe 12 uses an expansive definition of "Jewish" which includes people of all backgrounds and upbringings, all races and ethnicities and all levels of practice or non-practice. We are proud that our 150+ alumni represent a range of gender identities, sexual orientations, nationalities, races, ethnicities and religious backgrounds.

The Fellowship takes place over the course of four months (January-April) and is designed to run concurrently with work or school obligations. The program takes Fellows through a rich curriculum with a particular emphasis on entrepreneurial skills like prototyping, public speaking, financial management, goal setting, and environmental scanning. Throughout the program, each Fellow will work extensively with a personal coach to design a capstone project to execute and present at a closing event.

The appeal of the Fellowship for most people is having a dedicated container in which to take their business or project to the next level. We do a significant amount of goal setting and visioning in the beginning of the program so that Fellows set a strong intention for what they want to accomplish throughout the program. The main components of the Fellowship are the cohort experience (building something alongside a dozen people doing similar), mentorship (being paired with a personal coach) and skill building (twelve seminars on a broad range of business subjects).

We estimate that the commitment for the Fellowship is about 12 “classroom” hours a month. In 2024, this includes a kickoff Sunday (January 28th), weekly Tuesday night workshops (January 30th - April 16th), and a culminating event (May 7th) plus additional hours spent meeting with your mentors and working towards project milestones. Fellows are expected to attend the majority of scheduled dates.

From 2011 to 2016, the Tribe 12 Fellowship was primarily for entrepreneurs seeking to start a socially responsible business or non-profit. In 2016, Tribe 12 piloted a separate leadership program built on the best aspects of the Tribe 12 Fellowship. Through extensive surveying and interviewing, we determined that our community would benefit most from a comprehensive leadership program which focuses on the individual, not just their business, and uses entrepreneurship as a tool to learn lifelong skills. The current Fellowship is the result! Entrepreneurs continue to make great Fellows, as do artists, creatives, people in professional services, and intrapreneurs (people piloting a new initiative within a current business or non-profit). All Tribe 12 Fellows apply the tangible skills they learn and the network they build to create a capstone project of their own design: a new or existing business, non-profit, community, project or anything in between!

Yes! Each Fellow executes a capstone project, and Fellows may choose to start a business or non-profit as their project. The Fellowship continues to teach all of the business skills that were taught in previous years — in fact, we’ve added more! Fellows will continue to be paired with mentors who are respected business people and educators, and will have access to a network of subject matter experts with expertise in law, finance, marketing, and beyond.

Tribe 12 Fellows tend to be people building projects, businesses or non-profits which offer either goods or services. The stage of the project maters not at all -- a potential Fellow may just have an idea of the kind of things they want to do, already have done a little bit, or be well established.

A second category of people, intrapreneurs, represent people who work for an existing organization or business and want to pilot something new or do something innovative within that work.

We have noticed that artists of all kinds tend to make great Tribe 12 Fellows! These folks typically want to turn their artistic endeavor into a business. Our alums include artists across many disciplines such as musicians, painters, thespians, performers, writers, photographers, designers, and can include both working artists and hobbyists.

These general categories are meant to provide clarity and understanding of who our Fellows have been in the past and not to exclude anyone who exists outside these categories. We love innovation, and that means we love when people apply who don't fit any of our ideas of who a Tribe 12 Fellow might be. It happens every year!

We tell our Fellows on the very first day: the Tribe 12 Fellowship is what you make of it! Self motivated, driven and industrious people make the best Tribe 12 Fellows because they get the most out of it. These types of people lean on their fellow Fellows in their cohort, take full advantage of the two mentors who they are paired with, leverage the huge network they have access to during their time as a Fellow, and otherwise capitalize on resources provided. Successful Fellows treasure the time that the Fellowship carves out to work on their business rather than in their business. We help Fellows set personal goals to take on the tricky bits of their work that they might otherwise avoid (finances, budgeting, and partnerships are big ones) so they can push past fear and procrastination to take their work to the next level during their time Fellowship. Motivation from watching their cohort power through hard things definitely helps!