Who funds them, what they fund and how to apply.
Mozilla Foundation selected ten projects for its global Democracy x AI Cohort. The teams are spending 12 months in Mozilla's Incubator with coaching, expert advice, and peer mentorship while building and testing AI tools intended to strengthen democratic participation and accountability.
An active NSF Dear Colleague Letter encouraging PESOSE proposals on secure, open protocols for AI agent ecosystems. Proposals may address interoperability, scalability, security, open science, partnerships, education, and training, and must follow the underlying PESOSE solicitation.
The Open Source Endowment is billed as the first endowment fund dedicated to sustainably funding open source projects, investing donations in a low-risk portfolio and disbursing only investment income as grants, starting with roughly $5,000 microgrants.
The funding channel through which OpenSSF allocates resources for audits, technical writers, interns, and other needs across its technical initiatives, working groups, and projects. Its defined request process includes tiers up to $70,000–$150,000. A separate $12.5 million coalition investment announced in March 2026 supplies OpenSSF and Alpha-Omega with capital for sustainable open source security work; it is not a standalone public application round.
In-kind security-engineering support for critical open source projects: a dedicated Trail of Bits review week producing patches, tooling improvements, and coordinated disclosures, plus six months of ChatGPT Pro/Codex access for selected maintainers. No cash grant.
A donation-funded grant initiative of The Perl & Raku Foundation supporting development of the Perl core language. Proposals are reviewed on a bi-monthly cycle (call opens every two months, two-week public feedback window before committee vote).
Ethereum Foundation program embedding strategic advisors with a small set of prior grantees for 12 months of sustainability planning and execution. The two-year objective is to help critical open-source teams diversify funding and reduce dependency on a single grant source.
A donation-funded grant initiative of The Perl & Raku Foundation supporting development of the Raku language. Proposals are reviewed on a bi-monthly cycle (call opens every two months, two-week public feedback window before committee vote).
The Open Technology Fund's Rapid Response Fund provides short-term, urgent digital security support for at-risk users facing clear, time-sensitive, state-sponsored digital emergencies. Applications are rolling.
Provides stable, long-term funding and a Maintainer in Residence program for key Rust maintainers, funded through donations and contributions.
Rust Foundation's Outreachy internship and grants/fellowship program supports people underrepresented in tech, offering paid internships and up to 12 months of financial support.
A fellowship funding individuals implementing an innovative idea for social change around openness, technology, knowledge, and learning. Fellows receive annual salary-equivalent funding, expense contributions, a travel allowance, and project funding matched at a 10:1 ratio. Applications are accepted throughout the year for March and September intakes.
The Sovereign Tech Agency's core investment program for open digital base technologies that are widely used and benefit society or critical sectors: libraries, package managers, communication protocols, developer tooling, and encryption. Applicants must demonstrate the knowledge and technical skills to do the proposed work; prototype development and user-facing applications are not funded. Applications go through a multistep review of up to ~10 weeks, with published investments ranging from ~EUR 99,060 (coreutils) to ~EUR 1,436,729 (Prossimo/Rustls).
Annual fund (established at €100,000 in 2022) paying maintainers of critical independent open-source projects Spotify depends on. No external application: Spotify's internal engineers nominate projects, informed by internal dependency data, and a fund committee selects recipients.
Umbrella grantmaking program for the Wikimedia movement, comprising the Rapid Fund (avg. $500-$5,000, short-term projects), the General Support Fund (flexible multi-year operating support up to 3 years), and the Hub Fund (multiple rounds per year), open to individuals and organizations advancing knowledge equity.
A collaborative research-grants initiative — Ford Foundation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Mozilla's Open Source Support programme, Omidyar Network, and Open Society Foundations (fiscally hosted by Open Collective Foundation for the 2020 round) — funding research on the open-source code and digital infrastructure underpinning the internet, including how to sustain maintainer communities and address systemic inequities in the field. Ran across a 2018 wave (managed jointly by Ford and Sloan) and a larger 2020 collaborative wave.
Mozilla Open Source Support's Foundational Technology track funded open-source software that Mozilla relies on in its products, infrastructure, or internal work. MOSS has been on indefinite hiatus since the 2020 Mozilla restructuring and is not accepting applications.
A one-time Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) track funding open-source projects responding to the COVID-19 pandemic (contact tracing/health data tools, mutual-aid logistics, medical hardware). Made at least 6 awards totaling roughly $214,964, including to OpenMRS, Careables, Open Food Network, and VentMon. Part of the broader MOSS program, now on indefinite hiatus.
Status describes whether a program is running. Application methods are recorded separately. Read the funder’s terms before applying.