Small Development Grants - NumFOCUS

The Small Development Grants program is a NumFOCUS microgrant program benefitting our Sponsored and Affiliated projects.
The program helps projects fund important work that they might not otherwise be able to do like improving usability, growing project communities, and speeding up the time to major releases. Below you can view a list of work that has been funded under the program.
The Small Development Grants Committee is a volunteer committee established by the NumFOCUS Board of Directors to help facilitate the Small Development Grants program. You can read more about the committee’s role and responsibilities in the charter.
David Pérez-Suárez, Co-chair
Smit Lunagariya, Co-chair
If you are interested in serving on the committee you should subscribe to the NumFOCUS newsletter. Requests for applications are sent out each January via the newsletter.
Any NumFOCUS Fiscally Sponsored or Affiliated project is eligible to submit 1 proposal per grant cycle. Each project may receive a maximum of 2 grants per calendar year.
If a project would like to solicit proposals from its internal community, leaders must organize their own review process to select the proposal submitted on behalf of the project. Proposals may be submitted by residents of any country and work can be performed at any university, institution, or company worldwide (U.S. export laws and sanctions permitting).
Projects will be notified via the NumFOCUS internal project mailing lists that the call for proposals has opened. Applicants will be notified of proposal acceptance or rejection via the email address provided on the application on or before the notification deadline.
Grant funds can be used for:
Proposed work must be achievable within one year.
Applications should be submitted via the Small Development Grants Proposal Submission GitHub repository.
Available program funding is determined and approved annually by the NumFOCUS Board of Directors. A portion of the total funding may be allocated for Off-cycle Grants with the remainder divided equally between the three grant cycles. Up to $10,000 can be awarded for each proposal.
Each proposal should include clear and concise objectives and deliverables. Whenever possible specific timelines should be included. The impact of the proposed work on the project and/or overall scientific computing community should be clearly illustrated.
Each proposal must include a detailed budget justification stating how grant funding will be allocated. As applicable, the following should be included:
Suggested guidelines for word count can be found in the proposal application. Enough detail should be provided to give reviewers a clear understanding of the proposal’s objective but should not be so lengthy that it puts an undue burden on the evaluation process.
Proposals will be evaluated and ranked from most impactful to least impactful. If possible, the maximum allocation of funding for each round will be awarded.
Funding will be dispersed by the finance team directly following the notification to applicants according to established financial procedures and guidelines:
Projects to whom grants have been awarded will be required to submit a report to NumFOCUS describing the work that was performed under the grant and detailing any grant deliverables and outcomes. Reports will be due no later than three months after the close of the one-year period following the award of funds. Reports must be submitted on the Small Development Grants Report Back Form.
Off-cycle Grants may be awarded to projects outside the established grant cycles if:
—SunPy, NumFOCUS Sponsored Project
—Jeff Reback, pandas Lead Developer
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