On 26th November during our Open Knowledge Network monthly call Marie Kreil, co-director of the Prototype Fund at Open Knowledge Germany, and Verena Kontschieder, Project Lead for Prototype Fund at Opendata.ch (our Swiss chapter), presented the Prototype Fund in their respective countries.
The idea behind Prototype Fund (that we share entirely) is that there is a lot of knowledge in open source communities that existing funding structures are not set to support. Prototype Fund offers funding with a lightweight structure for public interest tech, allowing individuals and small teams who do not have professional grant-writing skills to easily access public funding. It is a space for experiment, flexible, with minimal formal reporting. The funding scope is very wide, it spans from civic tech, data literacy, to infrastructure, and security.
Prototype Funds was started in 2016 in Germany, and since the beginning it is entirely funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education & Research. There have been 16 rounds of funding so far. Each round funds approximately 25 projects and lasts 6 months. The grantees are awarded a maximum of €47,600 per project, and beyond the funding itself they also get support via 1:1 calls, coaching, and exchange on specific topics. All grantees start and end together, so they get to share a lot and get a kind of class feeling.
Some examples of projects that Prototype Fund has supported are: Mastodon, NextCloud, OpenMLS, an open source ticket system, dripapp.org – a privacy friendly app to track your menstrual cycle, and many many others.
After 8 years of activity and with 387 projects funded to date, Prototype Fund is now entering a new phase with a relaunch in January. The new Prototype fund will have a stronger focus on project sustainability, and will privilege modular infrastructure that is part of an ecosystem.
If you are in Germany, you can apply to the new funding round until January 2nd (more info on the new website: https://new.prototypefund.de/).
In Switzerland, Prototype Funded started in September 2020. It has an incubator approach, and just like the German one, it targets individuals who are less likely to get more conventional funding. In the words of Hannes, one of the co-founders, Prototype Fund is really thought of as a ramp that leads to the Foundation. Unlike Germany, in Switzerland the Prototype Fund is funded by private foundations, but opendata,ch hopes it will eventually get funding and support from the government too.
Since its inception, Prototype Fund has become a very well-known experimental space in Switzerland for open technologies from and for civil society, fostering collaboration for the common good. Each funded project gets 100,000 CHF funding for 6 months. Similarly to Open Knowledge Germany, opendata.ch also offers coaching, structure and access to a network of experts. To date the Swiss Prototype Fund has supported 100 people in 16 projects.
The next round of applications in Switzerland is starting on January 23rd, under the theme “Ecologically Sustainable Digitalisation and Digital Sufficiency”. The idea is to raise awareness to the ecological impact of tech (more info on their website: https://prototypefund.opendata.ch/)
Besides being a very successful project, Prototype Fund is also a great example of project replication within the Network, something we would love to see happening more! This is the reason why in November 2021 we launched the Open Knowledge Project Repository, which is showcasing prominent projects from the Open Knowledge Network and its close allies. The objective of the Repository is, on one hand to showcase externally all the fantastic work our Network is doing, and on the other hand to provide a space where Network members could have an overall view on what the others are doing, and maybe join or replicate already existing projects.
The Project Repository could be fine tuned to be a more useful tool for that purpose, and that’s why in 2025 we’ll be working on improving it.
If you want to explore the Project Repository, you’ll find it here. Remember you can always nominate a project to be part of it via the form at the bottom of the page.
What is the Open Knowledge Network?
The Open Knowledge Network connects activists and change-makers of the open knowledge movement from more than 40 countries around the world, who are advancing open and equitable access to knowledge for all everyday through their work.
We believe knowledge is power, and that with key information accessible and openly available, power can be held to account, inequality challenged, and inefficiencies exposed.
More information and how to join: https://okfn.org/en/network/