Prototype Fund

The Prototype Fund supports socially relevant software projects and increases their sustainable impact by open sourcing as a principle. In short: We support Public Interest Tech.

We make digital-social innovation possible with developers that bring a wide range of skills in technology design. With up to 47,500 euros per project and team, the Prototype Fund supports software developers, hackers and creatives in building protptypes for tools and applications in the areas of civic tech, data literacy, IT security and software infrastructure.

In addition to financial support, we offer mentorship and coaching along the way and exchange ideas with our extensive and diverse network of coders, practitioners and potential users.

The application process is kept as unbureaucratic as possible and adapted to the needs of the self-employed. To date, we have already spent 14.4 million euros on 340 projects (status: October 2023). The programm runs over a total of 16 funding rounds until 2024.