The Data Futures Lab is an experimental space for instigating new approaches to data stewardship challenges. It provides funding, scaffolding for collaboration, convening around emerging ideas, and a place to workshop approaches to data stewardship which give greater control and agency to people.
The Data Futures Lab is interested in supporting organizations building technology platforms that mobilize communities to contribute their data for a shared benefit. Mozilla is seeking organizations applying this idea in any domain (health, transportation, labor rights, gig-work, research, consumer advocacy, and beyond). They are specifically interested in projects committed to implementing ethical and fair data collection, storage, and use towards solving a public interest problem.
Benefits
4 projects will be selected to receive individual awards of up to $100,000 USD, and access to a network of experts and peers. These projects will receive Mozilla’s support and accompaniment over a period of 12 months starting January 2023.
What types of projects are eligible?
- Platforms that allow users to upload their health, voice, shopping, environmental, financial or location data, to better generate insights that contribute towards addressing a larger societal issue, like Mozilla’s Common Voice.
- Projects that engage users to donate data from their Internet-enabled devices to get insights and/or choose to participate in studies, or contribute to open datasets.
- Initiatives that seek to involve underrepresented communities in generating datasets and making decisions about its access and sharing.
- Projects like Mozilla’s Rally or RegretsReporter, where users contribute their browsing data for public interest research like promoting better transparency on otherwise opaque data ecosystems.
Applicants must meet the following requirements:
- Be a nonprofit, co-op, or other entity, developing a technology platform focused on solving a public interest problem or issue. They are especially interested in consumer & community technology platforms. For profit organizations like startups are welcome to apply, as long as their project has a charitable purpose.
- Be legally able to receive funds in the form of grants from the Mozilla Foundation, a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
- Be working towards solving a public interest problem or issue, providing value or deriving insights from data that directly benefit communities or groups of users.
- Have launched a product or working prototype in hand–projects which have not moved beyond the idea stage will not be considered at this time.
- Have a core team in place to support the development of the project.
- Be able to articulate a list of project priorities or product milestones for the next twelve (12) months.
- Mozilla is especially interested in projects that engage communities and users in collective decisions about the data they provide, exploring different governance models.
- Work in the open, by establishing accountability or transparency mechanisms that aspire to share learnings and tools with the broader ecosystem.
Additional details
Awards will be paid out in full during the first quarter of 2023; the award term will begin in January 2023 and will last 12 months (until December 2023).
Who can apply?
These awards are open to all applicants regardless of geographic location or institutional affiliation, except where legally prohibited. However, Mozilla is especially interested in receiving applications from members of the global majority or Global South; Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color; women, transgender and/or gender diverse applicants; migrant and diasporic communities; and/or persons coming from climate displaced/impacted communities, etc.
Application Deadline – Applications for the 2023 grants will be open until November 11, 2022 at 23:59 (UTC-5).
