Minderoo For-Purpose Fellowship

Minderoo Foundation is an Australian philanthropy committed to building a bright future where people, communities and the environment we depend on can thrive. Meaningful and lasting change takes talented people with the skills, determination and imagination to turn ambition into action.
Ripple Opportunities is working with Minderoo Foundation to help them find the first-ever intake of Fellows for the Minderoo For-Purpose Fellowship. Could it be you?
Why you might love this opp:
🔭 The big picture: Minderoo backs people and organisations closest to the challenges it seeks to solve. Its partners are protecting oceans, driving Indigenous-led change, tackling modern slavery and championing the critical early years - all part of a diverse for-purpose sector working towards a better future. This Fellowship creates a new path into that work: learning alongside those partners, contributing to their missions and discovering where your skills can make the greatest contribution.
🧭 Your path into purpose: Across Australia, charities, foundations, community organisations and social enterprises are working to protect the environment, strengthen communities and tackle inequality. Change on this scale takes many organisations pulling different levers. Research can inform advocacy. Community insight can shape new solutions. Funding and technology can help effective approaches reach more people. There’s no single pathway into this work, and careers emerge across a wide range of causes, skills and experiences. This Fellowship gives you a wide-angle view, practical learning and an inside look at how purpose-driven organisations create change.
🥜 In a nutshell: A paid, fixed-term Fellowship, employed and supported by Minderoo Foundation, while spending most of your time embedded within partner host organisations. A series of placements (approx. six months each) providing you with a bird’s-eye view of how change happens in different settings. Mentoring, meetups and cohort activities will help you build skills and reflect along the way. And you’ll have fellow adventurers to compare notes with, grow alongside and keep calling long after the Fellowship ends. Tl;dr: If you’re completing study, a grad on the lookout, early on the journey or exploring a career in impact, this is a unique opportunity to explore where your skills fit while building connections that carry ideas and know-how across the sector.
📅 Your week: You could be digging through research to uncover insights that help a team understand complex challenges,, helping run a community consultation, supporting an impact evaluation or wrangling event logistics. You’ll sit in on team meetings, tag along to events and training, grab coffees with people doing interesting work and hear the conversations behind how change actually happens. Some tasks will play to your strengths; others will have you asking a teammate to show you the ropes. Through cohort learning, catch-ups and support, you’ll start connecting dots: what you’re learning, where you’re adding value and what’s lighting you up (plus what you’ll finish out of sheer professionalism). Across two years, those discoveries will help you see what your future in social impact could look like.
🕶️ Your style: You'll bring your own perspective to the cohort, along with a genuine curiosity about the different ways others make change happen. Maybe your open tabs have turned your browser into a small research institute. Maybe you're the person rallying volunteers, finding a smarter way to run an event or connecting people around a good idea. There's curiosity behind how you work. You listen, find your contribution and aren't afraid to give something a go. You're comfortable starting before you have all the answers, learning from feedback and building confidence through experience.
💡 What you bring: There’s no single way in, bring your own thing. Content creator with climate change on the brain? AI automation nerd with a heart for health? The friend planning road trips around community gardens, themed Spotify playlists and interesting people? Fundraiser, organiser, numbers lover, policy nerd, researcher, business builder or natural rally-er? Something else? We want to hear from you. Your skills might come from work, study, community, campaigns or a side project that grew legs. Maybe you’re a commercial thinker, a creative problem-solver or just someone who likes making things happen. Bring those skills, your curiosity and the judgement to know when to have a go and when to ask for a steer. Come with a passion, a question, or both.
📍 What’s included: A full-time, paid, fixed-term Fellowship, with a proposed term of 8 February 2027 to 15 December 2028. Experience across partner host organisations through a series of approximately six-month placements. Structured learning and development, mentoring, cohort activities and reflection. We expect to offer up to eight places across Perth and Sydney. You’ll be employed by Minderoo Foundation, with working hours and arrangements shaped by each host. Full permanent Australian working rights required.
What's involved:
🧭 Where you’ll go: Think larger non-profits and industry organisations with specialist teams, through to inventive smaller organisations or social enterprises where the person pitching an idea might also be setting up the event. Through these experiences, you’ll learn to read the room, find your fit and contribute at different speeds, with different resources.
🎒 What travels with you: Minderoo’s values: courage to try, humility to listen, integrity in how you follow through and genuine care for the people alongside you. You’ll try things, put feedback to work and collect clues to carry into your next chapter: a problem you helped untangle, a contribution you can point to, a skill you’re suddenly keen to take further.
🛠️ Fresh terrain: Each placement gives you time to find your feet, get stuck in and leave something useful behind. You might help organise a community consultation, gather evidence for a policy brief or collate feedback to support a program evaluation. You’ll learn alongside your host team and contribute to its priorities, right down to service delivery and essential admin. Even big ideas need someone to send the calendar invite. From climate, health and the arts through to humanitarian work or on-Country initiatives, there’s plenty to explore. Bring your interests and an appetite to stretch beyond them.
💡 Connecting the dots: Mentoring, professional development and fireside chats will help you build knowledge and practical skills, and learn from people across the sector. Some a few steps ahead. Others with a career full of unexpected turns. You’ll hear how they made the call, what surprised them and which detour led to work they love. Alongside them, you’ll have a cohort comparing notes and helping each other connect the dots. You don’t need your career mapped out. This is your chance to explore different kinds of work and begin shaping a career around the contribution only you can bring.
Keen to get into the finer details? From eligibility to applications and how placements work, we've rounded up the good-to-knows in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
Next steps:
If any of the above resonated with you but you don’t tick every box:
👒 🧢 🎩 You should throw your hat in the ring, whatever your experience looks like so far. We’d love to hear from you! We’re committed to equal access and opportunity for all applicants. If you'd like any adjustments to the application process, let us know.
We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis and we encourage you to apply early. You can refer to the FAQ for details on the assessment process.
Submit an application via clicking 'Apply Now'. Please check the listing on the Ripple Opportunities website for the full and latest up-to-date information.
Questions? Please contact hey@rippleopportunities.com.
Ripple Opportunities works with the country's leading social impact businesses to match them with the next gen of impact operators and creators. www.rippleopportunities.com.
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Work arrangement
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