intermediaries
Wow - congratulations on the World Bank bid. That’s huge… It would be great to dig deeper into these kind of strategies. It would be great to see your past funding applications.
I had a conversation with Shannon Doesmagen (PublicLab executive director) recently - they frequently act as fiscal sponsor for other projects, fielding a lot of funding from private foundations and donors, very occasionally public funding (they’re based in the US). Most recently they’ve been managing a lot of funding that has come in for the Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI). It’s a little different, but the same trust issues apply. I think they would also be happy to share the details of their practices.
In Germany, Open Knowledge Foundation fairly recently launched their Prototype Fund, which distributes funding from the German Education and Research ministry to smaller civic tech projects. Again, similar but different. I could see what I can find out about that as well.
Neither of those are so clearly about ecosystems or focussed collective action between smaller initiatives, as edgeryders is. But interesting nonetheless. I think this could be a really interesting and practical discussion.