Netpolicy/advocacy/advocacynetworkfund

Advocacy Network Fund

Mozilla believes the Internet to be a global, public resource that must remain open and available to everyone. This shared openness is essential to a healthy and innovative society. The rapid growth of the Internet creates challenges and opportunities in every area of contemporary life, from health and education to economic development and political engagement, civic life, and more. Mozilla’s Advocacy Network Fund is designed to provide funds to organizations to help them tackle these challenges.

This program works closely with Mozilla’s Advocacy and Leadership Network staff to cultivate partnerships with civil society organizations working to protect the open Internet. This is an ongoing grant process, with application intake occurring for one month each quarter. This program looks to address emergent advocacy issues with a rapid response.
Apply here. (The application intake window is now closed. Please check back in September.)

Guiding Operational Principles

In line with Mozilla’s mission to work in the open, we strive to meet the following set of criteria that informs our choices as we implement and refine the Advocacy Network Fund -- from the type of grants we distribute, to the internal controls we put into place, to the grantmaking timelines we envision.
We strive to provide:

• Transparency about criteria, internal processes, and decisions.
• Simplicity around the procedures so they are clear and easily understood by applicants and the broader community.
• Rapid response to provide flexibility to organizations responding to emerging opportunities.

Grant Focus Area

The overarching purpose of the Advocacy Network Fund is to provide civil society actors with the opportunity to increase their capacity and productivity, and to contribute to the global digital advocacy space working for an open Internet. These activities should be in line with both the organization’s mission and Mozilla’s manifesto. The grants we provide can go to the following:

• Learning (e.g. capacity building)
• Innovation (e.g. community building, research)
• Convenings (Events, both online and offline)

These activities would work to:

• Increase public awareness about threats to an open Internet.
• Find consensus among public interest groups around Internet advocacy priorities (e.g. net neutrality, privacy, digital security).
• Support local solutions to these priorities
• Develop skills for emerging leaders in Internet Advocacy

Grant Specifications:

• The maximum grant amount is USD$30,000.
• Proposed project must be accomplished within 12 months
• Program grant reporting within 30 days following the conclusion of the project. Details regarding the report structure are below.

These funds may not be used for:

• Ongoing general operating expenses or existing deficits.
• Endowments
• Regranting
• Projects that exclusively serve religious purposes.
• Lobbying
• One time events that do not build long term capacity (e.g. fundraising, event sponsorships).

Process

1. Application is received by Mozilla Advocacy team members; a goal is set to start a conversation with the applicant within 3 weeks.
2. Evaluating the application: The application will be reviewed by Mozilla Advocacy team members. The review team may consult with the Policy and Legal teams, and the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation.
3. Further review and conversations between the Mozilla team and applying organization may take place.
4. Decision. While Mozilla strives to have a decision within 5 weeks after the organization completes our application, the evaluation and review process can be prolonged depending on: how thoroughly the applicant fills out the questions, how much due diligence is required, the amount requested.
5. Agreement. Following verbal or email confirmation of the decision, an agreement will be sent from the Mozilla Operations team to the organization’s grant administrator. We aim to disburse funds within 2 weeks of receiving the countersigned agreement. The agreement lays out the reporting requirement and terms.

Grant Reporting

Grantees are required to submit a public facing blogpost on the grantee organization’s blog and a narrative report no later than 30 days after the end of the grant period.. The narrative report will compare the grantees’ anticipated outcomes and outputs with their actual outcomes and outputs; the blogpost will be a summarized version of the narrative report that is fit for public sharing. A financial report is also due at this time, which compares their anticipated expenditures versus actual expenditures. Mozilla reserves the right to require interim reporting if the organization believes it necessary.

If you have any questions, please contact Melissa Romaine at advocacy[at]mozilla[dot]com.

In an effort to fuel the global movement for an open Internet, we are looking to build a balanced portfolio across many regions. We encourage organizations from all countries to apply.