IEEE Young Professionals program provides funding for the different type of event throughout a year. You can find more details below about each program and apply for this funding at this webpage.
- Student Elevation (STEP): This program was specifically designed to bring together students and Young Professionals, aiming to introduce members who will soon graduate to what Young Professionals do, and how they can get involved in their local Affinity Group. STEP events have to be organized by IEEE Young Professionals Affinity Groups in collaboration with one or more local Student Branches, and events can take any form you like, from lectures to interactive workshops, or networking sessions. In order to boost your event’s popularity, think in terms of what can help soon-to-graduate student’s transition more easily to a professional career. The maximum funding available is $500 per Young Professionals Affinity Group per year.
- Signature Events: An initiative started in 2015, the Signature Events program focuses on growing the presence of Young Professionals at large-scale and large-impact tech and non-tech events around the world. The goal is to increase the visibility of IEEE and Young Professionals to a larger audience, and up to now signature events were held at CES, SXSE and Web Summit. To organize such an event, THINK BIG! For some ideas on the nature of past Signature Events, check out one of the example in this video.
- Meet-up Events: Meet-ups are organized by Young Professionals to engage members and volunteers living in the same geographic location (typically within the same Section) or from the same technical area. The main focus is providing networking opportunities, where members can expand their personal and professional networks, but meet-ups can also take the form of short technical talks as well (or, even better, why not organize a short tech presentation followed by a networking session?). Meet-ups can take place in conjunction with conferences or technical congresses, where you can reach out to a larger number of members, and help local Young Professionals connect with conference attendees. For a better idea regarding past meet-ups, check the IEEE Young Professionals Facebook page, where there are several photo albums from such events held in 2016. You can get up to $1,500 funding per meet-up event.
- Seed Funding: Seed funding is a new funding initiative for 2017, aiming to enable Young Professionals Affinity Groups to organize an event or implement a new program that has a significant impact or provides a real benefit to Young Professionals in their Section. The events or programs can be either technical or non-technical in nature and can take any form, i.e. technology bootcamps. With seed funding, anything goes, but do keep in mind that collaboration or partnership with other IEEE organizational units, industry or academia is highly encouraged, and the event/program should address specific needs of local IEEE members. Available funding is limited at $750 per event per Young Professionals Affinity Group.
- While applying for these programs make sure to understand clear differences between the programs and contact [email protected] for clarifications on the eligibility criteria.
- These programs have an annual budget which is allocated for application on first-come, first-serve basis. Hence, make sure you apply for the event funding well in advance. If the funding for the specific program runs out, your event may not get the funding.