What We Fund

Mozilla fellowships provide resources, community, and amplification to internet health leaders building a more humane digital world.

Fellowships are funding to an individual to advance work they are doing - independently, together with Mozilla, or in collaboration with a host organization - to lay the groundwork for a more open and inclusive internet.

Mozilla Awards provide funding, peer support, and mentoring to projects with a charitable focus that address the most pressing challenges facing the internet and its users.

Project support awards provide organizations with the funds they need to develop and/or implement a distinct initiative/project. These grants are aimed at achieving specific goals and milestones that are related to that initiative/project and are agreed by the grantee and Mozilla Foundation.

General operating support awards (also known as core support funding, or core operating support) provide organizations with the funds they need to carry out their day-to-day work. These grants are self-directed by an organization and typically used to cover costs that are essential for an organization to function. General operating support grants may only be made to organizations that 1) have a charitable mission and focus; and 2) are aligned with the strategic aims of the Mozilla Foundation.

If invited to submit a full application, and thereafter awarded, organizations receiving general operating support will need to work with the Mozilla Foundation to obtain an equivalency determination certificate through NGO Source (at Mozilla Foundation's cost).

Many Mozilla funding opportunities are open to individuals, teams of individuals, non-profit organizations, and even for-profit companies. Please review the application guide for the Call for Proposals to which you’re responding for specific eligibility requirements.

Many Mozilla funding opportunities are open to individual applicants. Please review the application guide for the Call for Proposals to which you’re responding for specific eligibility requirements.

Groups of individuals or organizations are eligible to apply for many Mozilla funding opportunities. Please review the application guide for the Call for Proposals to which you’re responding for specific eligibility requirements. Please note that fellowships are for individuals only. For awards, one individual or organization must be listed as the primary contact on your award application. If awarded, this applicant will be programmatically and fiscally responsible for the award.

Unregistered organizations can apply as long as you have a legally registered fiscal host. If awarded, the grant agreement will include your fiscal host.

To ensure the widest possible distribution of award-funded materials and to ensure that they remain generally available to the public, our grant agreement includes a requirement for awardees to release any project-related content under a Creative Commons license and any project-related code under an open source license.

If you have governance concerns about releasing your project-related work under an open source license, we encourage you to include a note on this in your application with an explanation and this will be considered accordingly.

Outside of the active requests for proposals, Mozilla does not accept award applications unless invited by a staff member.

Mozilla's awards are managed through Fluxx. To submit an application consult the guidelines for the awards track to which you are applying, and visit https://mozilla.fluxx.io to submit your application.

If you need help using Fluxx, please contact [email protected].

Mozilla requires review committee members to sign confidentiality agreements, which preclude them from disclosing any confidential information they review as part of the judging process.

Please download this Budget Template to complete and attach to your application.

We require that all applications are submitted in English.

However, recognizing that English is not a primary language for many people, we encourage you to use translation support to complete the application, including free translation tools/apps. We also offer a space in the application for you to let us know if a translation tool was used to complete the application. We ask this in order to support reviewers to read the application based on how it was prepared.

Applications are reviewed for conceptual strength, not quality of language.

Mozilla funding cannot be used to support:

• Projects that are unrelated to Mozilla's mission and vision
• Political campaigns and lobbying activities
• Projects that provide personal monetary gain (beyond reasonable compensation for time spent working on the project; eg salaries and wages)
• Religious proselytizing
• Promotion of violence
• Entities subject to sanctions by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control

Yes, but not all applicants are eligible to include indirect costs. Please see Mozilla's Indirect Cost Policy for details.

Yes. Direct costs are expenses directly attributable to the specific project/activity described in your application. Generally, direct costs would not be incurred if the proposed scope of work did not exist. Direct costs may include staff salaries, contractors or consultants.

Individuals and non exempt organizations using grant funds to purchase single pieces of equipment in excess of $5,000 USD must usually donate that equipment at the conclusion of the funded project to either (1) an organization that is exempt from tax under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code (IRC); or (2) a nonprofit organization organized under the laws of another country and complying substantially with the laws governing organizations exempt under 501(c)(3) of the IRC. The recipient of the equipment should make sense in light of the purposes of the project funded by Mozilla, and Mozilla has the ultimate right to determine whether the recipient is acceptable.

Should the awardee wish to retain the equipment and materials beyond the grant term, the awardee must get prior approval from Mozilla for an exception, which will typically be given only if the awardee commits to using such equipment and materials exclusively for work substantially similar to the funded project, or otherwise demonstrates that Mozilla has only paid for the portion of the equipment costs reasonably allocable to the equipment’s use during the grant term. Awardee must also provide any additional reporting on the use of the equipment as requested by Mozilla.

We strive to provide fellows and awardees in each cohort with the resources needed to unlock their full potential and to make their work more sustainable in the long term. While the specific types of support are tailored to the unique needs of the awardees and cohorts, providing opportunities for peer learning and community, mentorship, and communications support are key elements of our accompaniment approach across all of our fellowships and awards programs.

A healthy internet is one in which privacy, openness and inclusion are the norms. These are values Mozilla has championed from the beginning in our Mozilla Manifesto.

Mozilla believes that we all have a stake in understanding and protecting the health of the internet. For this reason, the Mozilla Foundation is primarily focused on fueling an emerging movement of internet users, technologists, researchers and activists who are standing and fighting for a healthy internet for generations to come.

A majority of Mozilla’s movement building work is focused on developing trustworthy AI.

Mozilla has ideas for how to work towards AI that enriches the lives of human beings, rather than harms them. We call it ‘trustworthy AI’ and this framing guides a large part of our work.

If we want a healthy internet — and a healthy digital society — we need to make sure AI is trustworthy. AI, and the large pools of data that fuel it, are central to how computing works today. If we want apps, social networks, our devices and government to serve us as people — and as citizens — we need to make sure the way we build with AI has things like privacy and fairness built in from the get go.

Read more about our AI theory of change here.

Please consult the application guide for the Call for Proposals to which you're responding to find the appropriate Program Officer's contact information. You may also contact [email protected].