Join me this friday 29th of May 2026 to write a funding application

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Hey y’all

I registered for open source design to be able to apply to this fund: https://weavingliberation.org/digital-justice-fund/

I’ll be in the Jitsi Meet open source design jitsi room this friday at 5.30pm GMT for 1 hour to start writing up the application for the digital justice fund!

If successful we’ll having some funding to help support community growth and membership of under-reprsented majorities in Europe. This means we can grow and support Black, Indeginous and folks of colour doing open source design activities and organising in Europe as well as defining how open source design practices and contributing design to open source software can reduce harm in technologies and create a better future!

We’ll be looking to apply for 30k-45k and define what we would do with that funding as we write the application.

Just in case it isn’t clear i’m volunteering my own time to make this fund application to support OSD, I don’t get paid for my work/contributions/organising at OSD :smiley:.

Copy-pasted info about the fund!

The Digital Justice Fund works towards nurturing an ecosystem where groups resisting violent technological harms and imagining more nourishing relationships with technologies have the resources they need to dream, organise, build and thrive towards liberatory digital presents and futures.

This fund is built on participatory principles: it aims to redistribute power as well as resources. Funding decisions will be made by our Peer Circle — people who stand with and close to those directly negatively affected by technology, and who bring lived experience of systemic harms and liberatory practice. They have given input into the scope, process, and approach of this funding model. Folks in the movement will decide where movement money should go.

Our vision is for an ecosystem where these groups can do their work on their own terms, moving beyond resisting and reacting to harms, with the resources to imagine and build power for better presents and futures. We see this ecosystem as a place where justice movements are in solidarity with each other and organising, dreaming and building together to ensure that the purpose, design, fabrication, use and governance of technologies are rooted in justice and towards our collective liberation.

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I made some progress on the application which included answering two questions:

4. When and how did your group start? (300 words) We’d love to know the origin story of your group including things like when did the group start, what brought you together, who was involved, what did you start working on together?

Open Source Design started in Spring 2015 when a handful of designers that were making individual and seperate contributions to open source software reached out to the wider social network spaces they were in seeking other designers doing the same/involved in OSS. Others responded, they met and decided to form a community group in May 2015, publishing a manifesto, goals and setting up https://opensourcedesign.net/ . The first open source design devroom held at FOSDEM 2015 and open source design community members have applied, hosted and run devrooms and stands for design support in FOSS at various global events ever since.

Original founding members include:

simonv3 (Psi) · GitHub https://www.burntfen.com/ and bnvk (Warm Ashes) · GitHub in setting up and initilising the github repository to host the website, resources and OSS contribution/jobs board. Other that joined and became OSS community maintainers include jdittrich · GitHub jancborchardt (Jan C. Borchardt) · GitHub https://www.risherry.ro/ and others between 2015 and 2017 which was when the first open source design summit was held in 2017.

The purpose of Open Source Design’s community was for designers and FOSS creators/maintainers to find a place to gather when they begin to have questions about design in FOSS. The community is a place of connection, collaboration, solidarity, advocacy and facilitates design contributions to FOSS by way of the hosted and maintained jobs board as well as articles (website and conversational in our hosted forum) as well as connected design in FOSS endevours over the years. The aim has always been to have designers in FOSS find each other and FOSS project find where they can gather design support for their FOSS. We’ve also grown our advocacy work to include growing diversity in FOSS (of indentity and practice, design is a rare function in FOSS) and stepping into Internet Freedom and supporting usability and access in global majorities.

5a. What is your average annual budget? (averaged over the last 2-3 years) By annual budget we mean, your annual operating costs including all your expenses. This is so we can understand the size of your group and make sure you’re eligible for the fund (it should not exceed EUR 500,000). We know some groups are new or informal and may not have this information yet — an estimation is completely okay.

10000

5b. If you would like to add any addition context around your budget, please do so here. (50 words)

We formed without ‘need’ for governance processes, it has been difficult to gain concensus on spending existing unrestricted donation funds of 10kUSD. We recently recieved a donation from Google to implement governance.

Our budget would be larger if we’d had governance on how to spend and manage funds earlier

6. How many paid staff do you have? As part of our eligibility we are interested in funding groups that have no more than 10 paid staff (including long term freelance contracts). Groups run entirely by volunteers or collectives without paid staff are also welcome to apply.

0

Next questions are:

7. What is the mission and vision of the group? (300 words) We’d love to learn about the aims of the group and what change you are hoping to make as well as your values.

8. How are the people directly affected by the issues you work on represented in the group’s leadership or decision‑making and implementation of activities? (300 words) We’re interested in how the people directly affected by the issues you work on are shaping the group’s leadership, or decisions and implementation of activities.

Your work:
These questions help us understand how you work on the issue of digital justice organising, how your group operates and what you plan to do with the grant

9. Please describe the work you are applying to be funded for. (500 words) We’d like to understand understand the specific work you want support for - what you hope to do, who it will benefit, and why it matters.

etc. etc. I’ll poist more as I work on this application :)))))

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What should Open Source Design focus on in the future?