The Data Futures Lab is interested in supporting organizations building technology platforms that mobilize communities to contribute their data for a shared benefit. They’re seeking organizations applying this idea in any domain (health, transportation, labor rights, gig-work, research, consumer advocacy, and beyond). They’re specifically interested in projects committed to implementing ethical and fair data collection, storage, and use towards solving a public interest problem.
They will select 4 projects to receive individual awards of up to $100,000 USD, and access to a network of experts and peers. These projects will receive Mozilla’s support and accompaniment over a period of 12 months starting January 2023.
What types of projects are they interested in?
- Platforms that allow users to upload their health, voice, shopping, environmental, financial or location data, to better generate insights that contribute towards addressing a larger societal issue, like Mozilla’s Common Voice.
- Projects that engage users to donate data from their Internet-enabled devices to get insights and/or choose to participate in studies, or contribute to open datasets.
- Initiatives that seek to involve underrepresented communities in generating datasets and making decisions about its access and sharing.
- Projects like Mozilla’s Rally or RegretsReporter, where users contribute their browsing data for public interest research like promoting better transparency on otherwise opaque data ecosystems.
What we are looking for
We will focus our support on projects which have existing communities of data contributors, or are able to demonstrate effective capacity to recruit them and reach critical mass within the next 12 months. At the geographic level, we will be seeking increased participation from Global South and projects led by historically underfunded communities and/or teams in the global majority.
Eligibility and deadlines
These awards are open to all applicants regardless of geographic location or institutional affiliation, except where legally prohibited. However, Mozilla is especially interested in receiving applications from members of the global majority or Global South; Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color; women, transgender and/or gender diverse applicants; migrant and diasporic communities; and/or persons coming from climate displaced/impacted communities, etc. We strongly encourage all such applicants to apply.
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