Overview of the Prize

The Opus Prize is a $1 million faith-based humanitarian award and two $100,000 awards given annually to recognize unsung heroes of any faith tradition, anywhere in the world, solving today’s most persistent social problems. It is the world’s largest faith-based, humanitarian award for social innovation.

Opus Prize winners combine an entrepreneurial spirit with an abiding faith to combat seemingly intractable global issues like poverty, illiteracy, hunger, disease, and injustice. Opus Prize winners demonstrate that change is possible, empowering and inspiring all of us.

Origins and Values
The Opus Prize Foundation is a nonprofit foundation that was established in 1994 by the founding chairman of Opus Corporation. Opus Prize Foundation was established as a self-sufficient foundation and is independent from the Opus Corporation. The Prize identifies exceptional, yet unsung social innovators and highlights their unique entrepreneurial approaches, which give power to the disenfranchised, opportunities to the poorest and inspire others to pursue lives of service.

The $1 million dollar award was envisioned as a “cannon-shot” of recognition and support. The prize would provide a single, significant infusion of resources to advance the winner’s work to a new level of impact, provide greater visibility and attract other supporters. The first prize was awarded in 2004.

Opus Prize winners embody the Foundation’s core values of entrepreneurship, transformational leadership, faith lived each day, service to others, and respect for the dignity of the human person. And, most significantly, Opus Prize winners exemplify the adage, “Give a person a fish; you have fed him for a day. Teach a person to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”

The Opus Prize Foundation selects universities as partners to organize and execute the Opus Prize selection process and award ceremony. Through these partnerships, students are challenged to think globally and inspired to lives of service.