Grounded by our own open source roots, Mozilla has long funded open source technologies that help to untangle thorny sociotechnical issues. From the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program’s funding of critical building blocks of the open source ecosystem to the Data Futures Lab’s support of new data governance models, and the Mozilla Technology Fund’s cohort of projects employing AI to address environmental impacts, we’ve fueled a broad and impactful portfolio of technical projects.

Like other parts of the Foundation, we’re now thinking about the next era of Mozilla’s grantmaking that builds on these past successes, an era in which we work thoughtfully with others in our ecosystem to find, fund, and sustain technical projects that might not fit neatly into traditional funding models because they prioritize people over profit. And because we believe in working open, we’re sharing our thinking now, even as it is evolving. This commitment to transparency isn't just about communication - it's about better grantmaking. By sharing our emerging ideas, we hope to learn from our community's insights, spot blind spots early, and build stronger approaches through collective wisdom.

The Future We Want

Imagine a world where innovators working to ensure that technology serves people and communities can focus on building, not constantly searching for funding to take their work to the next level.

Right now, that's not the world we live in. Too often, brilliant projects tackling our most pressing sociotechnical challenges struggle to secure a sustainable source of funding and support. Innovators working to change the way data is stewarded, preserve privacy, or build ethical AI alternatives face a fragmented funding and partner landscape - all the more so when the products they’re building are open source and might run counter to the prevailing market-leading tools. The cost of this funding gap isn't just to individual projects – it's to all of us. When transformative solutions can't find proper support, we all lose out on the future they could help build.

As we begin to build our next era of grantmaking at Mozilla, we’re envisioning a world where promising sociotechnical innovations can readily find the support they need to grow from promising ideas to sustainable projects capable of achieving impact at scale. What does this mean? Making bold bets on open source technologies and data infrastructure that have clear potential for transformative impact for people and communities - and then seeing these projects through from prototypes to, hopefully, sustainability. Doing this well will require us to think differently about our grantmaking, prioritizing longer term funding and working more intentionally with peer funders and value-aligned investors, because we know we can’t go it alone.

Essential Questions

To realize this ambitious vision, 2025 will be a year of experimentation. Grounded in our guiding funding principles and in what we’ve learned from the success of work like the Data Futures Lab (read more in this recent case study by our partners at Siegel Family Endowment), we'll test new approaches to finding and funding transformative projects, exploring questions like

1. What supports do projects need to move from promising prototype to real-world impact? What could a Mozilla Foundation version of an accelerator model look like? We know funding alone isn't enough. Through the peer mentorship model of Data Futures Lab and other initiatives, we’ve seen the outsized impact that is possible in the short-term when projects work together. We now want to understand what combination of funding and tailored support might help promising sociotechnical projects flourish over a longer term.
2. How can we build stronger bridges between community needs and technical innovation? Mozilla is a big believer in building with—not for—communities. We know that the best solutions to issues impacting communities require real buy-in and ownership from people in those communities. In our next phase, how might we better surface and fund projects that are organically growing out of community needs? How can we encourage that technical infrastructure be owned and stewarded by the communities it impacts most? How can we best support communities that are under-resourced by traditional funding models?
3. How can we better leverage the broader ecosystem – from events like MozFest and startups like Mozilla.ai to our peers in the broader field - to scout and support promising projects? We're exploring how to align our work with partners, coordinate with peer funders to create clearer paths to sustainable support, and bridge the gaps between technical innovation and community needs. The question isn't just who we partner with, but how we structure these partnerships to maximize impact for the projects we support. A field of open source funders who are better coordinated will provide clearer pathways to fund seekers and ultimately benefit the ecosystem as a whole.

Looking Forward

As we explore these questions and reimagine how we support technical projects, we want to hear from you. Have ideas on the above questions or an example of a great grantmaking model we should learn from? Get in touch via email or share your ideas on Discord.

We've seen what's possible when promising open source technologies receive the right support at the right time: data cooperatives giving communities control over their information, privacy-preserving technologies that protect rights while enabling innovation, critical open source infrastructure strengthening the internet for millions, and new models of AI development that prioritize accountability and community benefit. This is the kind of work we want our next era of grantmaking to enable, and we look forward to your feedback on what’s next.

More TK.