The Prototype Fund is going strong!
The time has come: we are finally able to officially announce that the Prototype Fund is going to continue. After 16 rounds in eight years and 387 funded projects, we are far from done. Now it is official:
We will continue until at least until 2029!
As a learning funding program, we knew that not everything could and should remain the same. In 2023, Technopolis Group conducted a comprehensive evaluation of how effective the Prototype Fund is as a funding instrument. The results showed that it is an effective and exceptionally low-threshold funding instrument, but there is also room for improvement. Based on this and our own experiences and lessons learned over the past few years, the Prototype Fund has been further developed and adapted. We are proud to present these changes. First things first: the next application period will start as early as November 11, 2024!
New funding sums
The Prototype Fund supports software developers and small teams with money – of course. So far, €47,500 could be distributed in 6 months, which roughly corresponds to a full-time position (at an hourly wage of €50). Those who worked on a prototype with several people had to split this money. From now on, funding for teams will be up to €95,000, enabling more flexible team models and the implementation of significantly larger projects. For example, a full-time developer and two part-time developers will be possible. Or four people who each have a half-time position and spend the rest of the week working on their Prototype Fund project. Or two people who work full-time on the project. And so on. The officially funded team size is limited to four people.
In addition, it will now be possible for members of teams to apply for funding even if they reside in another EU country – the only important thing is that the (to-be-founded) GbR is based in Germany. And the (AI) translation of the application is no longer necessary – we will now also accept English application documents.
New funding periods
In the summer of 2024, for the first time in eight years, there was no regular application phase. For the first time, there will also no longer be two rounds per year. In the next four years, there will be one application phase and one funding class each year. The schedule will then be as follows: We will accept applications at the end of the year. Our jury will then select which projects will be funded. The funding period starts in June and lasts until the end of November – as usual, for a period of six months. What is new, however, is that it is possible to receive funding for a further period of four months, i.e. until the end of March of the following year, in what we call the second stage. All the information will soon be available in a separate blog post. You can see what the timeline for the first class will look like on the associated application website.
New funding focus
The Prototype Fund is realigning its funding focus: in the future, we want to concentrate on the areas of data security and software components. Projects in these areas have been significantly more sustainable in the past. In most cases, they are more strongly integrated into existing software ecosystems as components, are more likely to scale, and can be used in more diverse ways. Examples include Nextcloud applications, communication tools such as messengers, or new components for existing software ecosystems such as the Linux operating system, LibreOffice or OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, in the former funding focus areas of civic tech and data literacy, there is now a more established funding landscape and numerous civil society organizations that are better able to work in these fields. The focus in these areas often lies on long-term, broad-based structural anchoring, which cannot be achieved through the Prototype Fund’s innovation fundings.
However, we want to maintain a fundamental openness to experiments: not every software project needs to know in advance that the idea will be a 100% success – because then there would be no need for funding programs like the Prototype Fund. Promoting innovation always involves the risk that an idea may turn out to be a failure or impossible to implement. The Prototype Fund remains the space to try it anyway.
Oh My God, we’re back again
We look forward to the future, to changes both large and small. But we also look forward to the things that will continue as usual. We will be able to benefit from the experiences of the last eight years (which, by the way, we will celebrate in March 2025).
If you want to stay up to date and be the first to hear about all the upcoming changes, subscribe to our (German) newsletter or follow us on Mastodon and LinkedIn.
You can also take a look at the website for the first application phase of the new funding program – and maybe submit a project already? The application phase is from November 11th, 2024 until January 2nd, 2025.
We look forward to all of it!
