Deadline: July 31, 2023.

The fund aims to strengthen sustainability and resilience and increase the adoption of open infrastructure that underpins research and knowledge creation.

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is excited to announce their upcoming funding call for the Open Infrastructure Fund, which marks the next step in their Collective Funding Pilot. This call will provide funding to projects that support the development of open research infrastructure services, with the aim of strengthening sustainability and resilience and increasing the adoption of open infrastructure that underpins research and knowledge creation.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

• Applicants may apply as individuals or as representatives of an organization, but must be at least 18 years of age.
• Applicants can apply as individuals or as a team.
• Applicants can be based anywhere in the world, except Russia. The US and European governments have growing sanctions on financial relationships with organizations and people in Russia. As a result, our banks and financial service providers have wholly prohibited any payments to Russia. With uncertainty about how sanctions will impact this grant program later this year, and the inability to provide payment, we cannot support grants to regions under these sanctions.
• Applicants can submit multiple applications.
• IOI staff, including employees and current contractors, are not permitted to apply.
• They welcome applications from open infrastructure service providers, as well as those who are supporting and using open infrastructure services, e.g. institutions, communities of practice, etc. For more on how we’re defining open infrastructure, please see the section above.
• They welcome applications from both new and long-established organizations, and from individuals who are new to the space as well as those who have been long-time contributors.
• All applications will be openly reviewed on OpenReview. By submitting an application, the applicant agrees to their proposals being publicly accessible and publicly reviewed.
• All applications require a point of contact who will commit to reporting back on the progress and impact of the award to the IOI team.
• Applicants must abide by local laws that apply to their activities based on their residence.

PROJECT CRITERIA

• Projects can be of any duration up to 2 years, with a start date between November 1 and December 31, 2023.
• Projects can be based on a proposal that has been submitted for other sources of funding.
• Projects will be evaluated on degrees of openness. We recommend that infrastructure providers review our criteria for the Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services for guidance.
• Projects should strive to be as maximally open, accessible, and reusable with minimal restriction as possible, utilizing open licenses.
• Projects must not discriminate with regard to race, sex, education, ethnicity, socio-economic status, religion, ability/disability, sexual orientation, gender self-identification, age, country of origin, first language, marital status, or citizenship.
• Projects seeking to support political campaigns, lobbying activities (in line with IRS guidelines), religious proselytizing, or promotion of violence or terrorism will not be funded.
• Projects are encouraged to share their progress regularly openly and, where applicable, to use open licenses (e.g. Creative Commons, MIT), for project output.
• Budget: Projects can request funding between 5,000 and 25,000 USD total cost, using this budget template. Budget items may include:
  • Software and technology, e.g. software subscription, compute costs.
  • Equipment and supplies, e.g. costs for mobile data and power.
  • Fees/salaries for staff/consultants, e.g. contract developers, event facilitators, legal support. In the description, please provide hourly rate and number of anticipated hours
  • Travel costs. In the description, please provide expected number of team members/others travelling, and to where (which event and/or location).
  • Honoraria, e.g. for interviewees, speakers, working group members.
  • Accessibility services, e.g. translators, closed-captioning, transcribing.
  • Indirect costs/overhead: the maximum indirect/overhead costs that can be requested is 10% of direct costs.

GRANT/BENEFITS

Level of funding: 5,000-25,000 USD

OFFICIAL LINK