Universities are seeking novel ways to strengthen the collective educational competence of their faculty and promote educational merits. In this paper we describe and compare the experiences of two recently started initiatives for teaching excellence, the Program for Future Leaders for Strategic Educational Development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (henceforth KTH) and the Teaching Fellowship Programme at the University of Twente. Both programs have recently completed one complete round of implementation. The programmes are similar in that the participants work on a project of their own for an extended time, while also being part of a community with regular meetings and supported by coaches. The main differences are the programme duration, number of participants, and whether the projects are in a specific theme or wholly formulated by the participants. In this study, both programs are evaluated using similar themes. We analyse this data, and reflect on the context, conditions and design of the programs and our lessons learned from these first experiences.