Apply for funding

We support projects that contribute to an open, resilient, trustworthy, sustainable and human-centered internet. Are you working on open hardware, open software, open data or open standards? We financially support organisations and people who are developing open solutions that empower users on all layers of technology.

What we offer

We provide grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro — with the possibility to scale them up if there is proven potential. In addition to these grants, depending on the fund in question, grantees can benefit from a variety support services such as security and accessibility audits, mentoring, testing expertise, and copyright & licensing advice. As a philanthropy, we do not pay commercial rates — we provide a cost-recovery based mechanism, allowing people to freely work on what they believe in.

How to apply

We have back-to-back open calls, so you can always submit a proposal. There is a deadline on the 3^rd of every odd month. We do our best to offer a low-threshold application mechanism. We've kept the application form short so as not to waste your time.

Eligibility

In principle anyone can apply: individuals, research organisations, non-profits, public institutions, companies of any size and type, etc. However, do read the eligiblity section of the fund you are applying for, as specific conditions may apply. All projects must be free/libre/open source: all scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any software and hardware developed must be published under a recognised free and open source license in its entirety.

Submit a proposal

Active funds

Here we'll give a basic overview of our currently active funds. You can find more information on each fund's main page. There you'll find the Guide for Applicants, FAQs and eligibility criteria. We advise you to have a thorough look. It gives you an idea of the type of projects we are looking for and which conditions apply. If you are unsure which fund best fits your project, submit to our open call.

Restack

Building a healthy open internet stack

The goal of Restack is to build a healthy Open Internet Stack. The fund provides practical and financial support to projects that help deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the entire technology stack. In scope are innovations and enhancements to core internet infrastructure, alternatives to closed online technologies serving a large userbase, and devices used to run and consume these in a secure and privacy-friendly manner. This includes full stack security, software supply chain management, reproducibility, trust enhancing technologies, and the creation and use of norms and standards. This also includes improving and decoupling infrastructure layers, service management and deployment innovation as well as actual services and their client-side counterparts. Note that AI-related projects are not in scope with one specfic exception.

Open Social Fund

Promoting W3C ActivityPub and beyond

The goal of the Open Social Fund is to help to restore balance in the social media landscape of today and tomorrow. By redecentralising this part of the internet and handling the functionality required as a native part of the world wide web, we help make this technology to be more robust and healthier for users. The Open Social Fund is intended to be complementary to the funding of R&D work, funding auxiliary efforts not within the scope of our larger funds

Research and Higher Education Technology Fund

Today we make the internet of tomorrow

Financial cuts and the 'publish or perish' paradigm are increasingly impacting the capability of the research and education community to contribute to the future of the internet - while the internet needs their talent and ideas more than ever. The Research and Higher Education Technology Fund was created to help fund small initiatives that can make a noticeable difference to the users and providers of Research and Education networks.

Open calls within pilot programmes

Pilots are existing larger R&D efforts with a fairly specific and often very concrete (= more applied/constrained) objective and scope. Typically a consortium of organisations has received budget to develop or enhance a specific open technology or set of open technologies of interest, and/or applying these to specific (real-world) use cases. The role of NLnet in such pilots is often to involve additional parties through open calls, providing grants to free and open source projects which are aligned with the goals of the pilot and strengthen its overall proposition. If you do not specifically target the technologies developed within the pilot, you are generally better off applying to our other open calls.

CodeSupply

Strengthen software supply chain security

CodeSupply is a pilot programme which addresses data challenges in cybersecurity, software supply chain management, and regulatory and open source license compliance. Funding is available for free and open source efforts that align with the programme's three main objectives: 1. Publish current, correct, and comprehensive software metadata. 2. Establish a scalable and sustainable mechanism to provide democratic access to data sets. 3. Create a foundational framework for future iterations, enhancements, and new data sets.