Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize — 2028 Cycle Nominations Open Through 30 April 2027: A US$3 Million Award, the World's Largest Annual Humanitarian Prize Given to a Nonprofit Organization

Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize — 2028 Cycle Nominations Open Through 30 April 2027: A US$3 Million Award, the World’s Largest Annual Humanitarian Prize Given to a Nonprofit Organization

Most large philanthropic prizes go to people. The Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize goes to an institution. That single design choice, made when the Prize was launched in 1996, is what makes it unusual and what makes it worth understanding properly before you write a nomination letter for an organization you admire.

The Prize is currently set at US$3 million. The Hilton Foundation raised it to that level in 2025 to mark the Prize’s 30th anniversary, and describes it on its own pages as “the world’s largest annual humanitarian award presented to nonprofit organizations.” The escalation has been steady: US$1 million at launch, US$1.5 million in 2005, US$2 million in 2015, US$2.5 million for the 25th anniversary, and US$3 million from 2025 onward.

The nomination window that is open right now belongs to the 2028 Prize. The Foundation runs the Prize on a rolling, year-round nomination basis and assigns each nomination to a cycle based on the date it is received. Nominations received between 1 May 2026 and 30 April 2027 are considered for the 2028 Prize. The 2027 cycle closed on 30 April 2026, so if you are reading this in mid-2026 and hoping to nominate an organization, the 2028 cycle is your live target — and you have until Friday, 30 April 2027.

One structural fact governs everything else about this opportunity: you cannot apply for the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. An eligible organization does not nominate itself. Someone outside the organization’s payroll has to write the letter. That makes this a page for two different readers — the person considering putting an organization forward, and the organization that hopes to be put forward and needs to understand what happens after the letter lands.

Key Details

What the Prize Is Actually Recognizing

The Prize honors a nonprofit “leading efforts to alleviate human suffering.” That framing is broad on purpose. Past recipients have come from mine clearance, Indigenous land defense, health, refugee response, and other fields; the Foundation explicitly notes that nominees range from organizations working in a single country to those operating in more than a hundred. There is no thematic call, no priority sector list, and no requirement to align with the Hilton Foundation’s own grantmaking initiatives.

What the Prize is emphatically not recognizing is potential. The Foundation states plainly that the award “is awarded based on achievements, rather than future goals,” and instructs nominators that the letter “should emphasize the organization’s accomplishments rather than future goals.” This is the single most important thing to internalize. A nomination letter that reads like a grant proposal — problem statement, theory of change, planned expansion — is fighting the evaluation criteria rather than satisfying them.

The Foundation’s own pages describing the Prize do not spell out spending restrictions on the award. Anyone advising a nominee on how the money could be used should confirm the terms directly with the Prize department rather than assume, and this page does not claim otherwise.

There is also a non-cash dimension worth naming honestly, because it is often the larger effect on a mid-sized organization: visibility. Being named in the world’s largest annual humanitarian award, alongside a laureate cohort dating to 1996, changes how an organization is read by institutional funders, governments, and press. The Foundation frames the Prize as “shining a spotlight” and as a mechanism for inspiring wider philanthropic action, and it runs a laureate program and public events around each recipient.

Who Is Eligible: The Hard Filters

The Foundation is unusually blunt here — it states it is “unable to provide any exceptions” on the eligibility criteria. Every one of the following must be true of the nominee:

• It is an organization, not an individual. Individual nominations are not accepted.
• It is an established, nongovernmental, publicly supported charitable organization. Eligibility is determined by U.S. IRS tax-exempt status, or the equivalent for international organizations. International nominees are contacted separately for the appropriate documentation.
• It has been legally established for at least five years.
• It has its own audited financial statements for at least five consecutive years.
• Its expenditures exceeded US$750,000 in its most recent audited fiscal year.
• It is not a past Prize Laureate, nor a local office or member organization of one.
• It is not a local office or member organization of a parent organization, and not a fiscally sponsored organization. If the organization has a parent, the parent must be the nominee.
• It is not a specific program within a larger organization, and not a university-based project. Having its own budget is not sufficient — it needs its own 501(c)(3) or equivalent and its own audited financials.
• It is not a degree-granting academic institution. An affiliate of an academic institution can qualify, but only if it maintains independent tax-exempt status and produces its own audited financials.

Two of these disqualify far more nominations than people expect. The five years of consecutive audited financials requirement rules out many young, fast-growing, high-profile organizations. And the fiscal sponsorship exclusion catches a large slice of the grassroots sector, where fiscal sponsorship is a normal operating structure. Check both before you spend a weekend writing.

Being a current or former Hilton Foundation grantee is not a disqualifier. The Foundation confirms grantees can be nominated and can win, and notes that because the recipient is chosen by an independent jury, grantee status carries no weight in the decision either way.

Who Can Nominate — and Who Cannot

The nominator restrictions are as strict as the nominee ones. A nominator:

• Should have direct knowledge of the nominated organization’s work.
• May not be an officer, employee, or any individual receiving remuneration from the nominee. Board members may nominate provided they receive no payment for their service; volunteers likewise.
• May not be a family member of an officer or employee of the nominee.
• May not be the founder of the nominee.
• May not be a Hilton Foundation employee, board member, or Prize Juror, or a family member of any of those.
• May not be a Hilton family member.
• May nominate only one organization per Prize cycle — though the same person can nominate two organizations in the same calendar year if they fall in different cycles, and can nominate the same organization year after year.

There is a hard behavioral rule too: any attempted contact with the Prize Jurors about a nomination could disqualify the nominee. If you know a juror socially, say nothing about the nomination.

If several people want to nominate the same organization, only the first nomination received becomes the nomination of record unless the nominee directs otherwise. The rest are logged as letters of support, capped at four. The practical move is for the organization to quietly coordinate: pick the strongest single nominator, let that person file, and have the others’ letters uploaded as support documents through the link the nominee receives.

The Nomination and Two-Phase Application Process

The process is a funnel, and the nominee does most of the work after the nominator’s part is done.

1. Nomination. The nominator completes the nomination form on the Prize nominations portal and uploads a signed nomination letter in English, addressed to the “Hilton Humanitarian Prize Jury,” with a handwritten or electronic signature. Maximum four typed pages, 12-point font. Email submissions are not accepted.
2. Notification. The Foundation emails the nominee — using contact details the nominator supplied — and requests additional information through an online portal.
3. Phase 1 application. The nominee has roughly five business days. Phase 1 asks the organization to verify eligibility; supply contact and background information (mission, constituency served, geographic areas served); describe its programmatic approach and impact; provide recent financial information; and upload its most recent audited financial statement and an annual report or newsletter.
4. Internal review. Applications are reviewed against the criteria.
5. Phase 2 application. Select nominees are invited by email to submit a more detailed application with additional materials. The window is roughly ten business days.
6. Finalist review. A shortlist is produced. Finalists submit further information and undergo extensive due diligence.
7. Jury decision. An independent international jury of eight — six prominent figures from the humanitarian field, one Hilton family member, and one Hilton Foundation board member, each serving one or more four-year terms — meets in the summer to select the recipient.
8. Notification. Nominators are notified of the outcome by email by the summer of the year the Prize is awarded; nominees are notified in the winter of that year.

The five-business-day Phase 1 turnaround is the operational trap. An organization that gets nominated in, say, December and does not have a current audited financial statement and annual report ready to hand can burn its window on document retrieval. If you run an eligible organization and suspect someone may nominate you, keep those two files current and know who internally would own the response.

Note also the quiet warning in the Foundation’s FAQ: because of nomination volume, an organization that submits materials incorrectly or does not meet the eligibility criteria “will be removed from consideration without being contacted for verification.” There is no chance to fix a mistake.

What the Jury Weighs

The Foundation publishes its evaluation considerations. A nomination is assessed on:

• Extraordinary contributions toward alleviating human suffering.
• The significance of the issue the organization addresses.
• An established record of achievement in significantly contributing to solutions.
• A compelling programmatic approach likely to make a lasting impact.
• Organizational capacity and administrative efficiency.
• Effective partnerships that leverage further impact.
• Innovation in program design (named in the nominator FAQ).
• Prioritization of evaluating programmatic approach for continual improvement.
• The impact the Prize itself would have on the organization and on its issue.

That last criterion is genuinely distinctive and under-used by nominators. The jury is not only asking “is this organization excellent?” but “what would US$3 million and this platform do here?” A nomination that credibly answers the second question — an organization at an inflection point, or one whose issue is chronically under-funded relative to its severity — has an argument that a merely excellent organization does not.

Writing a Nomination Letter That Survives 300 Competitors

Four pages, more than 300 nominations a year, and a first pass conducted by staff against published criteria. That combination tells you how to write.

Lead with what has already happened. Numbers, years, geographies, verifiable outcomes. “Cleared X hectares across Y countries since Z” beats any amount of mission language. The Foundation asks for both historic and recent performance, so cover the arc — the organization’s long record and what it has done in the last two or three years.

Map the letter to the published criteria. The evaluation considerations are effectively a rubric. Give each a paragraph or a clearly signposted passage. A reader skimming for “organizational capacity and administrative efficiency” should not have to hunt.

Be concrete about partnerships. “Effective partnerships to leverage further impact” is a named criterion, and it is one of the easiest to evidence badly. Name the partners, name what the partnership produced.

Answer the Prize-impact question explicitly. Do not leave the jury to infer what US$3 million would change. One honest, specific paragraph on this is worth more than a page of praise.

Say why you are credible. The nominator is expected to have direct knowledge. A sentence establishing how you know this organization’s work — years of field observation, sector expertise, a professional relationship that does not involve compensation — anchors everything that follows.

Cut adjectives, keep evidence. Superlatives are free; the jury discounts them. Verified results are not.

Common Mistakes

• Nominating yourself or your employer. Founders and employees cannot nominate. This is not negotiable.
• Nominating a program, chapter, or fiscally sponsored project. Own tax-exempt status and own audited financials, or the nomination dies.
• Missing the five-year audit history. A four-year-old organization is ineligible no matter how remarkable.
• Writing a proposal instead of a record. Future plans are explicitly the wrong emphasis.
• Exceeding four pages or forgetting the signature. The letter must be signed and within length.
• Submitting by email. Only the portal counts.
• Letting several supporters file competing nominations. Coordinate; only the first counts as the nomination of record.
• Contacting a juror. Potentially disqualifying.
• Assuming a nomination guarantees a hearing. Incorrect submissions are dropped silently.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an organization apply directly? No. Entry is by third-party nomination only.

Is the Prize open to organizations outside the United States? Yes. International organizations qualify with the equivalent of U.S. tax-exempt status, and the Foundation contacts them for appropriate documentation.

Does an organization need to work in many countries? No. The Foundation states that eligible nominees range from single-country organizations to those working in more than 100 countries.

Can the same organization be nominated repeatedly? Yes. There is no limit on how many times an individual can nominate the same organization across years.

How competitive is it? Typically more than 300 organizations are nominated each year, and one Prize is awarded.

What if we are already a Hilton Foundation grantee? Current and former grantees are eligible and can win; grantee status has no influence on the independent jury.

When would a 2028 nomination be decided? The jury meets in the summer of the Prize year. Nominators are notified by the summer of the year the Prize is awarded; nominees are notified in the winter of that year.

Official Links and Next Steps

• Nominations page and portal link, eligibility rules, and full FAQ: https://www.hiltonfoundation.org/work/humanitarian-prize/nominations/
• Prize overview, value, history, and selection process: https://www.hiltonfoundation.org/work/humanitarian-prize/our-prize/
• Past laureates: https://www.hiltonfoundation.org/work/humanitarian-prize/laureates/
• Questions for the Prize department: use the Foundation’s contact form at https://www.hiltonfoundation.org/about/careers-and-contacts/

If you are a potential nominator, the sequence is: confirm the organization clears all eight eligibility filters (especially the five-year audit history and the fiscal-sponsorship exclusion); confirm you are not disqualified as a nominator; give the organization a quiet heads-up so it can prepare its audited financials and annual report; then write and file well before 30 April 2027 rather than in the closing week.

If you run a potentially eligible organization, the useful work is preparatory: keep current audited statements and an annual report ready for a five-business-day turnaround, decide internally who owns a Phase 1 response, and identify the one person outside your payroll — a former board member, a peer-sector leader, a longtime field observer — best placed to write four credible pages about what you have already accomplished.