grants.watch
Registry loaded August 16, 2026 · 414 organizations
RegistryOrganizationsOpen-Source SustainabilityFord Foundation
Org profile: sourced & linked
Organization Profile

Ford Foundation

FoundationOpen-Source SustainabilityActivewww.fordfoundation.org
Ford Foundation is a major US philanthropic foundation that treats open- source software as public digital infrastructure, a framing set out in its "Roads and Bridges" report. It has co-funded Digital Infrastructure Research grants alongside the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Mozilla, Omidyar Network, and Open Society Foundations (fiscally hosted by Open Collective Foundation for the 2020 round), supporting research into sustaining open-source maintainer communities and dismantling systemic inequities in the field. The programme has run across at least two waves, 2018 and 2020, and remains an active area of Ford's technology-and- society work.1,2,3

Programs

1 program on file
Apply ↗
Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
0 grants tracked
No dates on file

Awards

25 on file
Showing 1-25 of 25, newest dated evidence first
  1. Anthony Townsend (Cornell Tech) — Municipal Digital Infrastructure
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$122,875.27 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  2. Anushah Hossain (UC Berkeley) — FOSS & Multilingual Computing
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$57,750.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  3. Arizona State University, UC Santa Barbara & University of Wisconsin-Madison (Frank Timmes, Lars Bildsten, Richard Townsend)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Sloan Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  4. Atul Pokharel (NYU) — Fairness & Digital Infrastructure
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$16,645.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  5. Carnegie Mellon University (Laura Dabbish, Bogdan Vasilescu, James Herbsleb)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  6. Caroline Sinders (independent researcher)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  7. Digital Asia Hub — Open Source in Public Service Delivery in India
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$83,490.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  8. Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Society (Lucy Bernholz, Jessica Feldman, Argyri Panezi)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  9. Divyank Katira (Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India) — Security Ramifications of Open Source Software
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$83,540.00 USD (total disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  10. Duane O'Brien — Fostering Open Collaboration
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$110,545.27 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  11. Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies & Institute for International Law and Justice, NYU School of Law (Benedict Kingsbury, Thomas Streinz, Angelina Fisher)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Sloan Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  12. Implicit Development Environments Research Group (Elisa Lindinger, Katharina Meyer, Julia Kloiber)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  13. Jorge Benet (Cooperativa Tierra Común) — Cooperative Model for Digital Infrastructure
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$42,427.29 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  14. Mahdi Medjaoui (APIdays / Les Mainteneurs / Inno3) — API ToS: Towards a Creative Commons Model
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$48,683.01 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  15. Martin Michlmayr (independent researcher)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  16. Megan Finn (Univ. of Washington), Ryan Ellis (Northeastern Univ.), Amelia Acker (UT Austin) — Open Source COVID Data Infrastructure
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$100,000.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  17. MIT & UCLA Anderson School of Business (Erin Ytsma, Jana Gallus)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Sloan Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  18. Narrira Lemos de Souza — Digital Infrastructure vs Climate Change
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$56,715.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  19. Research ICT Africa (Alison Gillwald) — Mapping African Digital Infrastructures
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants
    Amount$124,907.00 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  20. Rochester Institute of Technology (Mel Chua, Stephen Jacobs)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  21. Simply Secure & Superrr — Infrastructure Funder's Toolkit
    Program2020 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (applied/practice project)
    Amount$149,988.73 USD (total raised/disbursed via Open Collective)
    Date–
    Source ↗
  22. UC Berkeley (Anushah Hossain)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  23. UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science, UC San Diego & UCONN (Stuart Geiger, Lilly Irani, Alexandra Paxton, Nelle Varoquaux, Chris Holdgraf, Dorothy Howard)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Sloan Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  24. University of Canberra & Telecom Paris Tech (Mathieu O'Neil, Laure Muselli, Mahin Raissi, Stefano Zacchiroli)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Sloan Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
  25. University of Washington (Kaylea Hascall Champion, Benjamin Mako Hill, Morten Warncke-Wang)
    Program2018 Digital Infrastructure Research Grants (grant managed by Ford Foundation)
    Amount–
    Date–
    Source ↗
1
Programs
25
Awards
25
Grantees
$998K
Known USD
0
Live rounds
no open or announced rounds on file
Active
Status
Focus Areas

open source software, digital infrastructure sustainability, maintainer communities, equity in tech, open source policy and governance.

Typical size2020 round: $1.3M pool across 13 research projects
CadencePeriodic cohort rounds (2018 Ford/Sloan RFP; 2020 collaborative round)
Sources
  1. www.fordfoundation.org
  2. www.fordfoundation.org/work/challenging-inequality/technology-and-society/digital-infrastructure/our-work
  3. www.fordfoundation.org/media/5391/digital-infrastructure-research_-funded-project-descriptions.pdf