Your application to Prototype Fund – at one glance
Information and support for the application:
- Please note: You can only apply in German. Hence, the following linked information is also mostly in German.
- These are the content-related and conceptual questions you need to answer on the application platform.
- Here you can find general tips for the application and the selection criteria of the jury (English).
- In this blog post, we showcase answers from successful applications and demonstrate why they received positive reviews.
- This is the associated funding guideline from the BMBF.
- In this blogpost, we have created five additional application tips on things we often notice.
- Here are our FAQ (English).
Timing of the application process:
The submission phase runs for 2 months at a time. We will let you know approximately 8 weeks after the submission deadline if the jury has recommended your project for funding – if there are a lot of submissions, it may take longer. All selected projects, or one person per team, will be invited to an application workshop in Berlin. On this day we will do the paperwork together and create the formal application for public funding, which you may have to finalize afterwards. This application will then be submitted via the project management organization DLR to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which will make the final decision on the funding. Important: In exceptional cases, the final funding decision from the Ministry may not be received until the start of the funding itself due to necessary processing times. Keep this in mind if, for example, you want to arrange changes in working hours with employers or similar.
The funding start date for the 16th round is expected to be September 1st, 2024. We invite all funded projects to a kick-off workshop around that day. After that, you will have 6 months to implement your prototypes. At the end of the implementation phase, there will be a Demo Day where you will present the results of your work.