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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.

Previous Opus Prize winners' work has included establishing an innovative public health program for the poor in Brazil, addressing the overwhelming poverty of farm workers in central Florida and tackling youth illiteracy in India. With the Prize money, winners have gone on to replicate their successful programs and implement organizational plans.

Selecting an Opus Prize Winner
Annually, the Opus Prize Foundation partners with a university to organize and execute the confidential Opus Prize nomination and selection process. The university partner, this year the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., selects at least a dozen anonymous spotters – people drawn from education, non-profit, humanitarian and religious communities – to identify potential Opus Prize candidates from anywhere in the world. The spotters submit nominees to the Opus Prize jury, which ultimately selects three Opus Prize finalists. The final step is to visit the nominees in the field to evaluate their work first hand. Past university partners include Seattle University, The Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, Marquette University and the University of San Francisco.

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. 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.”