Welcome to the new home of the Digital Infrastructure Fund

In 2014 the Heartbleed Vulnerability in Open SSL ignited a conversation about the sustainability of the free software, standards and protocols that lie at the core of nearly every public service, commercial offering and indeed much of our daily lives.

In 2015 The Ford Foundation's 'Roads and Bridges' study by Nadia Eghbal drew parallels between the need to maintain these shared assets and the need to maintain our public infrastructure, coining the phrase 'digital infrastructure' to describe them. In 2018 The Ford Foundation and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation created the Digital Infrastracture Fund to support work to better understand how digital infrastructure is built, maintained and sustained.

Today the fund continues to advance this agenda, supporting 26 projects to date. Mozilla, The Omidyar Network and The Open Society Foundation joined as partners in 2020, awarding $1.3m to projects in our second request for proposals.

This site has been created as a resource for those working on this shared challenge. You will find information about each of the projects supported by the fund, announcements and updates about our work, talks, videos and other resources authored by those who have received support from our partners, and information about future calls for proposals and rounds of funding. If you would like to recieve updates about the fund, our projects and future rounds register for our mailing list below.

This site is new - so if you spot a mistake, or believe that something requires an update feel free to email us.