Applications Invited for 2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grant Program

About the Organization:

They believe in the inherent dignity of all people. But around the world, too many people are excluded from the political, economic, and social institutions that shape their lives. Across eight decades, their mission has sought to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.

About the Grant: 

Everything in our modern society, from hospitals and banks to universities and social media platforms, runs on software. Nearly all of this software is built on “digital infrastructure,” a foundation of free and public code that is designed to solve common challenges. The benefits of digital infrastructure are numerous: it can reduce the cost of setting up new businesses, support data-driven discovery across research disciplines, enable complex technologies such as smartphones to talk to each other, and allow everyone to have access to important innovations like encryption that would otherwise be too expensive. Sharing code to address common challenges is in principle cheaper, easier and more efficient.

While the collective action problems that characterize infrastructure funding are well-explored, the industrial organization of digital infrastructure is less well-understood. In 2016, the Ford Foundation funded a report by Nadia Eghbal titled “Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure” that described how that the development and maintenance of digital infrastructure often falls to communities of volunteers who take it upon themselves to maintain this infrastructure in their own free time and for little or no money. Unsurprisingly, this leads to significant risks to the open internet and the ability to develop new, innovative research and businesses within it.

In order to better understand the incentives and constraints that influence the maintenance of digital infrastructure, in 2018 the Sloan and Ford Foundations funded a portfolio of 13 research projects. In some cases the findings of these projects open up further questions, while in others they suggest interventions that could strengthen community practices.

Grant Amount:

Small Grant: Under $50k

Medium Grant: $50k - $125k

Large Grant: over $125k-$200k

Eligibility Criteria:

Individuals, Organizations (nonprofit and for-profit), and Academic Institutions who are in the field of Digital Infrastructure are eligible.

How to Apply:

Application can be filled from the online portal. If you have any further query, please email m.brennan@fordfoundation.org

Deadline: Sep 5 at 9:29am, in your local timezone (GMT +5.5)

For more information please check the Link