Tory Burch Foundation Fellows: what the fellowship actually gives — and who gets in
The Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program is legitimate, free to apply to, and it is not a grant. The Foundation’s own 2026 Terms and Conditions describe a one-year fellowship of webinars, advisory sessions, an online community and an in-person event, and name no cash award anywhere in the document. The Fellowship FAQ states that the Foundation “will select approximately 120 Fellows from applicants.” Applications for the 2026 class opened September 30, 2025 and closed November 11, 2025; as of August 25, 2026 the Foundation has published no window for a 2027 class. If you arrived here searching for a Tory Burch grant, the accurate answer is that the fellowship pays in access, not in money — and the money-now programs are listed further down.
Updated August 25, 2026. Every figure in prose on this page was read on August 25, 2026 from three documents the Tory Burch Foundation publishes itself — the Fellows Program page, the Fellowship FAQ, and the 2026 Fellows Program Terms and Conditions PDF linked from that page. Where our own catalog disagreed with those documents, the discrepancy is printed in the maintenance trail rather than quietly patched. Reviewed monthly, permanent URL.
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Is the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program legitimate?
Yes. The Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program is run by the Tory Burch Foundation, Inc., a registered non-profit whose address is printed at the foot of the program’s own Terms and Conditions as 11 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011. Applying is free, the selection criteria are published, and the Foundation’s fellows directory describes a network of “500+ Fellows | 45+ Cities | 20+ Industries.”
Three things separate a real program from a lookalike, and the Fellows Program clears all three. It names the entity that runs it and gives a street address. It publishes a full Terms and Conditions document rather than a marketing page alone, which is where an applicant can read the selection criteria, the publicity clause and the liability release before deciding. And it charges nothing: the Fellowship FAQ states that “applying to the program is free,” with no application fee at any stage. A program that asks for a fee to release funding is the reliable warning sign, and nothing in the Tory Burch Foundation’s documents does that.
Legitimacy is not the interesting question here, though — the interesting question is what the fellowship is. The high search volume on the phrase “Tory Burch foundation” runs at roughly 1,600 US searches a month according to Google search volume data, and a large share of that traffic is looking for grant money attached to a fashion brand. The Foundation is real; the money most searchers are picturing is the part that needs checking, and the next two sections do that against the funder’s own text.
What Tory Burch Foundation Fellows actually receive
The 2026 Terms and Conditions define the fellowship as “a one-year fellowship” consisting of webinars on business topics, an advisory program of one-to-one meetings with Tory Burch LLC volunteers and Foundation-network experts, access to the Foundation’s online community of women entrepreneurs, a mentoring session with industry figures, and access to at least one in-person experiential event. The Fellowship FAQ adds high-touch bootcamps, a virtual resource library, and founder support including virtual therapy access through BetterHelp.
| Element | What the Foundation publishes | Stated value |
|---|---|---|
| Webinar series | Sessions on “key business topics such as financials, marketing, and partnerships” | No dollar value published |
| Advisory program | One-to-one meetings with volunteers from Tory Burch LLC and experts in the Foundation network | No dollar value published |
| Online community | Peer-to-peer platform for women running early and growth-stage US businesses | No dollar value published |
| Mentoring session | A session in which Fellows present growth goals to industry figures | No dollar value published |
| In-person event | “Access to an in-person experiential event(s) related to entrepreneurship and leadership development” | Travel and costs borne by the Fellow |
| Bootcamps and library | “High-touch bootcamps to support upskilling” plus a virtual resource library (FAQ) | No dollar value published |
| Wellbeing support | Virtual therapy access through BetterHelp (FAQ) | No dollar value published |
| Cash award | Not named anywhere in the Terms and Conditions, the Fellows page, or the Fellowship FAQ | None published |
One clause in the Terms and Conditions decides how to read that table: “All costs, taxes, fees, and expenses associated with any element of the Program are the sole responsibility of the Fellows.” A fellowship whose in-person event is travelled to at the Fellow’s own expense is a development program, not a funding program, and the document says so plainly rather than hiding it. That is a fair deal honestly described — it is simply a different deal from the one most people searching this phrase have in mind.
Is the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program a grant? No — and here is where the $5,000 comes from
No. As of August 25, 2026 the Tory Burch Foundation publishes no cash award for its Fellows Program. We read the Fellows Program page, the Fellowship FAQ and the full 2026 Terms and Conditions on that date; none of the three names a grant, a stipend, or any dollar figure paid to a Fellow. The widely repeated “$5,000 Tory Burch grant” refers to a financial component attached to earlier cohorts, and the GrantCompass catalog records it as a historical $5,000 American Express business credit that is not confirmed for the current cohort.
The Foundation does market a financing dimension, and describing it precisely matters. The Fellows page lists five benefit areas — network, coaching, advisor access, education and financing — and carries a Fellow’s testimonial describing “a small interest-free loan, which I could not secure anywhere.” A loan is not a grant, and the Foundation publishes no amount, rate, term or eligibility rule for it on the Fellows page, the FAQ or the Terms and Conditions. Stating that a Fellow once received a loan is different from promising every Fellow a loan, and the Foundation is careful not to make the second claim.
The practical consequence for a founder is a scheduling decision, not a moral one. If your reason for applying is working capital in the next ninety days, the Fellows Program cannot supply it and no reading of its published terms suggests otherwise. If your reason is advisors, a peer network and a year of structured programming for a business already past $75,000 in revenue, the program is a serious and free way to get those. The three open programs in the verdict section below are the ones that actually pay cash, and they are listed there precisely because this one does not.
The odds of becoming a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, as far as they can honestly be computed
The supply side is published and the demand side is not. The Tory Burch Foundation selects approximately 120 Fellows a year, publishes no cash award, and does not disclose how many applications it receives. No selection rate can therefore be calculated, and any page quoting one for this program has invented it.
Two computed observations follow from those four numbers. First, a single current cohort of about 120 is roughly 24% of the entire 500-plus alumni network, which says the program scaled up recently rather than that it has always run at this size — a useful signal, because a growing cohort improves an applicant’s arithmetic even when the raw odds stay unpublished. Second, the seven hours of preparation this application costs is a real and comparable price: the same seven hours funds three and a half monthly entries to the Freed Fellowship Grant at two hours each, each one a live shot at $500 plus automatic consideration for a $2,500 year-end award. Those are the two ways to spend the same evening, stated in the same unit.
The Tory Burch Foundation Fellows application calendar: when it opens and closes
The Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program runs on an annual cycle that opens in the autumn and closes in November. The 2026 Program’s application period ran from September 30, 2025 at 12:01 AM Eastern to November 11, 2025 at 11:59:59 PM Eastern. Selected Fellows were contacted “around April 2026” and the Fellows page dates selection to May 2026. No 2027 application window had been published as of August 25, 2026.
| Stage | Published date | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Applications open | September 30, 2025, 12:01 AM ET | Online entry only, one application per person, business and email address |
| Applications close | November 11, 2025, 11:59:59 PM ET | Applicants must be 21 or older as of this date |
| Fellows contacted | Around April 2026 | By email and/or telephone; forms due back within five days |
| Class announced | May 2026 | Profiles and photographs of all Fellows posted publicly |
| Next window | Not yet published | Nothing announced for a 2027 class as of August 25, 2026 |
What that calendar means in late August is that there is nothing to do this week except set a reminder. The one verified data point about timing is that the last cycle opened on the final day of September, so a founder who wants to be ready should have the revenue documentation, the founder bio and the two-minute video roughed out by mid-September rather than starting when the form appears. We do not claim the 2027 window will open on the same date, because the Foundation has not said so; we track the record and will date any change in the trail below.
Two application mechanics are worth knowing before the window opens, because both take longer than they sound. The Terms and Conditions cap the video introduction at two minutes and any uploaded photo at two megabytes, and they void applications that are incomplete or inaccurate. A two-minute video is a script, not a webcam take, and the review committee names it as one of only three stated selection criteria — alongside the personal and company statements and corporate social responsibility. Preparing that video in September is the single highest-leverage thing an intending applicant can do while the form is shut.
Who actually qualifies: the $75,000 floor and the five other gates
An applicant must be a woman who owns the largest or equally largest stake in the business, personally manages it day to day, is 21 or older, is proficient in English, and is a US legal resident. The business must be for-profit, at least 51% owned and controlled by women, in early-stage growth, formed under US law and operating in the United States, and generating minimum revenues of $75,000 per year. The Fellows page adds: “There is no maximum revenue requirement.”
The revenue floor is the gate that turns most searchers away, and it is not soft. The Terms and Conditions define a Qualifying Business as one “generating minimum revenues of $75,000 per year” and explicitly list idea-stage ventures, non-profit organizations and subsidiary businesses among non-qualifying examples. A pre-revenue founder is not a marginal case for this program; she is outside the definition. The GrantCompass record for the program says the same thing more bluntly, and it is the reason the fellowship rarely belongs on a startup’s funding list.
Check yourself against the six published criteria
Tick every statement that is true of you and your business today. This checks the six published criteria only and is not an application, a prediction, or advice — the Foundation decides eligibility.
Six published criteria, all of which must be true. They are listed in full above and again in the paragraph beneath this panel, so nothing on this page depends on the buttons working.
Read as prose, the gate is: woman-owned, woman-run, US-based, for-profit, past $75,000, and the founder is 21 or older and a US legal resident. Two further exclusions live in the Terms and Conditions rather than the marketing page. Employees of the Foundation, of Tory Burch LLC and of their affiliates and vendors are ineligible, as are their immediate family and household members. And the document reserves the outcome entirely: “If no Applications meet the minimum eligibility criteria, not all Fellow openings may be awarded.” That clause is standard, and it also means the roughly 120 places are a ceiling rather than a promise.
The Tory Burch fellowship has one window a year. Your qualifying list does not. The free eligibility check runs your state, stage, industry and ownership against every US program in the GrantCompass catalog and ranks what you can reach today — and it watches the deadline on anything you star, including this one when it reopens.
See your matches — free →The fine print in the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Terms and Conditions
Applying grants the Tory Burch Foundation and Tory Burch LLC a perpetual, worldwide right to use a Fellow’s voice, name, image, likeness, biographical information and statements for promotional purposes without further compensation, with the Fellow’s business plan explicitly excluded. Fellows also accept a confidentiality clause that bars them from announcing their selection or using the Tory Burch name until the Foundation permits it.
“Applicant’s Application to the Program constitutes applicant’s consent and permission to the Foundation, Tory Burch LLC and their respective parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates… to use the Fellow’s voice, name, image, likeness, biographical information, statements, and any information contained in Fellow’s Application in whole or in part, including Fellow’s business name and logo (but excluding Fellow’s business plan) on a worldwide basis for promotional or any other purpose in any media in perpetuity without further authorization, compensation, remuneration, payment, consideration, or notification.”
2026 Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program Terms and Conditions, Publicity Rights Release, read August 25, 2026Four other clauses are worth knowing before you spend the seven hours. Applications become the property of the Foundation and are not returned. Fellows may be subject to a criminal background check, which applicants consent to by applying. Selected Fellows must sign an Affidavit of Eligibility and Release of Liability plus a Fellows Program Agreement and return them within five days, and the Foundation names an alternate if it cannot reach a Fellow within two days. The liability release is broad and includes an express waiver of California Civil Code section 1542, the provision that would otherwise preserve claims an applicant does not yet know about.
Two clauses cut in the applicant’s favour and deserve equal billing. The business plan is carved out of the publicity release, which is a meaningful protection and not something every corporate program bothers with. And on marketing consent the document is unusually clean: consenting to receive emails and other materials “is optional and is not required in order to be eligible to enter the Program and does not improve applicant’s chances of being selected.” Programs that bundle a mailing-list opt-in into the entry are common; this one states in writing that the opt-in is severable and carries no weight in judging. Taken together the fine print is restrictive on publicity and fair on data.
The confidentiality clause: you may not announce your own selection
The confidentiality clause is the one that surprises people. A selected Fellow may not disclose that she was selected until the Foundation says she may, may not publicize a relationship with the Foundation or Tory Burch LLC without prior written approval, and may not use the Tory Burch Foundation or Tory Burch marks without approval that the Foundation may withdraw at any time. The Foundation coordinates all press announcements and may refuse a media opportunity at its discretion. If the reason you want the fellowship is the badge on your website, read that paragraph twice: the badge is licensed, not given.
Apply or skip: the verdict on the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program
Written once, by hand, after reading the Fellows page, the Fellowship FAQ and the full Terms and Conditions on August 25, 2026. The monthly refresh rewrites the status lines and the alternatives table below, not this judgement.
Apply if your business is past $75,000 in revenue and your bottleneck is judgement rather than cash. Seven hours and no fee for a one-in-a-few-hundred shot at a year of advisors, a 500-strong founder network and a mentoring session is a defensible trade when the thing you lack is people who have done it before. Skip it if you need money, if you are pre-revenue, or if you are building a funding plan for this quarter — the program publishes no cash award, its window has been shut since November 2025, and a 2027 date does not exist yet. And apply with clear eyes about the publicity release: you are trading a perpetual promotional licence over your name, face and story for programming, which is a fair exchange only if you actually want the programming. The honest one-line verdict is that this is a good fellowship being searched for as a grant.
Worth pairing with: three programs open while this one is shut
Pick 1 · Open now · monthly · verified at the funder’s site August 25, 2026
Freed Fellowship Grant
Freed awards a $500 no-strings grant every month and automatically considers every monthly recipient for a $2,500 year-end grant, with applications due by midnight Eastern on the last day of each month. It is open to any micro or small business owner in the US, and non-profits are excluded. This is the closest thing to the opposite of the Tory Burch calendar: twelve decisions a year instead of one, and money rather than programming. For a founder who wanted the fellowship because it sounded like funding, this is the substitute that actually pays.
Pick 2 · Next window opens October 1, 2026 · verified at the funder’s site August 25, 2026
Breva Thrive Grant
Breva awards one $5,000 grant per calendar quarter, and its published rules set the entry window as the first month of each quarter — January 1–31, April 1–30, July 1–31 and October 1–31 in 2026. Eligibility asks for a US-formed entity, demonstrated community impact, commercial revenue prior to application and a preference for at least twelve months of continuous operations, which maps almost exactly onto the profile the Tory Burch fellowship is looking for. The Q3 window closed on July 31; the next one opens October 1, 2026. Note that our own catalog described the window as monthly within each quarter, which the funder’s rules do not support — that correction is in the trail below.
Pick 3 · Rolling · catalog record; funder’s site refused automated verification August 25, 2026
IFundWomen Universal Grant Application
The IFundWomen Universal Grant Application is a single standing application that puts a woman-owned business into the matching pool for sponsored grant cycles as they open, rather than a grant with one deadline of its own. It is the structural answer to an annual program: you write it once and it works while you are not looking. We are attributing this description to the GrantCompass catalog record rather than asserting it as verified, because ifundwomen.com returned HTTP 403 to our verification request on August 25, 2026 and we could not read the funder’s page ourselves. Check the current terms on the program page before relying on any figure.
Half of the alternatives our own engine computes for this program do not fit the reader of this page, and saying so is more useful than listing them. The engine ranks the open catalog by award size, which surfaces two U.S. Economic Development Administration programs and the USDA Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program — all three of which fund states, counties, tribes, higher-education institutions and non-profits rather than for-profit companies. The 1517 Fund Medici Grant is genuinely open and genuinely no-strings, but 1517 states plainly that it backs students, dropouts and young builders, which is the opposite end of the market from a $75,000-revenue business. Four of the eight computed alternatives are therefore structurally out of reach, and the three above are what is left after reading each eligibility rule against this program’s own applicant profile.
The Tory Burch record carries six locked intelligence fields
Amount, deadline, eligibility and effort are the free layer, and this page is built entirely from them plus the funder’s own documents. Underneath the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows record sits a Win Layer: our own analysis of who gets selected and where applications fail. Six of the seven fields are on file for this program — the missing one is published approval odds, which the Foundation does not disclose, and we do not fabricate what a funder will not publish.
- Approval odds
- What winners look like
- How it is judged
- Rejection traps
- Required documents
- When cash actually lands
- Clawback risk
Pro unlocks all seven fields on the 665 programs that carry a Win Layer, plus deadline alerts. $49/mo · $249/yr.
See what Pro unlocks →While the fellowship is shut, work the programs that are open
The GrantCompass database holds every US funding program we track with its status, amount, deadline and effort estimate. Filter it to women-focused programs that are open today and sorted by the least work, star what fits, and we watch the deadlines for you — including this one, when the Tory Burch Foundation names a 2027 date. Free.
- 1. Open, women-focused, least effort first
- 2. Star what fits your revenue stage
- 3. We watch the deadlines
What changed — the maintenance trail for this program
Every dated change to the records behind this page, including the four places our own catalog disagreed with the Tory Burch Foundation’s published documents on August 25, 2026. Corrections are printed rather than quietly applied, and this list appends rather than being replaced at each refresh.
- Our catalog carried “financial resources (varies)” as the award. The 2026 terms name no award at all. The GrantCompass record described the amount as financial resources of an unstated size, with a note that the program “historically offered $5,000 AmEx business credit” and that the current cohort figure is unconfirmed. Having now read the Fellows page, the Fellowship FAQ and the full 2026 Terms and Conditions, we can be more precise than that: no cash award appears in any of the three. The record should read “no published cash award; one-year programming.” Queued, not edited from this page.
- Network size: our note said 400+ alumni; the Foundation now publishes 500+. The 2026 fellows directory headline reads “500+ Fellows | 45+ Cities | 20+ Industries.” Our figure was a cohort or two out of date. The number on this page is the Foundation’s.
- Cohort size confirmed at approximately 120 Fellows a year. The Fellowship FAQ states that the Foundation “will select approximately 120 Fellows from applicants.” Our catalog record carried no cohort size at all, which is why the odds section of this page could not previously be written. Queued for addition.
- Fellows are contacted around April, announced in May. Our record said only that selections are announced in May of the following year. The Terms and Conditions add that selected Fellows are contacted “around April 2026” by email or telephone and must return signed forms within five days. Both dates now appear on this page.
- Between intakes is correct. The application period closed November 11, 2025 at 11:59:59 PM Eastern and the Foundation has published no 2027 window. The program timeline on the Fellows page still displays the 2026 cycle. Our status of “between intakes” stands and the page says so in the first sentence.
- Breva Thrive Grant: the entry window is the first month of each quarter, not every month. Our record described applications as opening the 1st and closing the last day of each month within the quarter. Breva’s published rules, effective July 1, 2026, set the 2026 windows as January 1–31, April 1–30, July 1–31 and October 1–31, with one $5,000 recipient per calendar quarter. That makes the program shut on August 25, 2026 and reopening October 1. Corrected on this page; catalog fix queued.
- EDA Public Works and Economic Adjustment Assistance: our own program page contradicts itself. Its summary line describes the program as “open to businesses nationwide” while its eligibility list correctly states that for-profit businesses are not eligible to apply directly. The eligibility list is right. Flagged for the catalog, and the reason this page tells you not to bother with it.
- Two funder sites blocked our checks. ifundwomen.com and nase.org both returned HTTP 403 to our automated verification requests on August 25, 2026. The IFundWomen entry in the verdict section is therefore attributed to our catalog record rather than presented as verified, and the NASE Growth Grant is not featured on this page at all.
The questions founders actually type about the Tory Burch Foundation
“How much is the Tory Burch Foundation grant?”
There is no published Tory Burch Foundation grant amount for the Fellows Program as of August 25, 2026. The three documents the Foundation publishes about the program — the Fellows page, the Fellowship FAQ and the 2026 Terms and Conditions — contain no dollar figure paid to a Fellow, and the Terms and Conditions place all costs, taxes and expenses connected with the program on the Fellow. The $5,000 figure that circulates online is attached to earlier cohorts; the GrantCompass catalog records it as a historical American Express business credit and marks the current cohort amount as unconfirmed, which after this review is the correct description. If a page tells you the current fellowship pays $5,000, ask it which Tory Burch Foundation document says so, because we could not find one.
“When does the Tory Burch Fellows application open?”
The most recent application period opened on September 30, 2025 at 12:01 AM Eastern and closed on November 11, 2025 at 11:59:59 PM Eastern, dates taken verbatim from the 2026 Fellows Program Terms and Conditions. The Foundation had not published a 2027 window as of August 25, 2026, and its Fellows page still displayed the 2026 timeline on that date. An autumn opening is the pattern the one verified cycle shows, so preparing in early September is sensible; treating a specific 2027 date as fact is not, and this page will carry the real date in the maintenance trail when the Foundation names it. The general answer to what is accepting applications this week lives on our grants open now report, which is recomputed monthly.
“How are Tory Burch Fellows chosen?”
A review committee of Foundation and Tory Burch LLC employees and affiliates evaluates eligible applications against three stated criteria: the personal and company statements, the video introduction, and corporate social responsibility. The Terms and Conditions then list the factors the committee weighs — how the business creates positive and lasting impact, what differentiates it, what problem the founder is solving, how the business reflects her passion, the substance and quality of the statements and video, what obstacles she has overcome, and her growth opportunities. The document also says the committee may consider building “an overall diverse pool of Fellows with respect to business industry, stage of growth, geography,” which means a strong application can lose to portfolio balance. All decisions are described as final, binding and not open to appeal.
“Is the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program worth applying to?”
It is worth applying to if a year of advisors, bootcamps and a 500-plus founder network is worth roughly seven unpaid hours to you, and it is not worth applying to if you are trying to solve a cash problem. That is the whole calculation, and it turns on what you need rather than on how good the program is — the program is good. The two structural facts that decide it are that approximately 120 places exist each year and that no cash award is published. A useful discipline is to treat this application as a development expense with a long payback and to run your funding search separately, on programs that publish an amount and a date. Our women’s business grant calendar covers the dated cycles across the year, and the monthly-cadence programs are the ones that pay while an annual fellowship is shut.
“What are the Tory Burch Fellows Program rules?”
The binding document is the 2026 Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program Terms and Conditions, a PDF linked from the Fellows page. It sets the application period, defines a Qualifying Business, limits entries to one per person, business and email address, caps the video at two minutes and any photo at two megabytes, and voids incomplete or inaccurate applications. It grants the Foundation and Tory Burch LLC a perpetual worldwide promotional licence over a Fellow’s name, likeness and statements while excluding her business plan, makes applications the Foundation’s property, permits a criminal background check, requires signed forms within five days of notification, and imposes a confidentiality obligation covering both the selection itself and any use of the Tory Burch marks. Read it before you write the video script, not after.