IFTF is delighted to announce that our grant program is coming back, after a very successful trial in 2024! We are seeking to disburse small amounts of money to projects serving the interactive fiction community. Please refer to the following guidelines before applying. If you have a question, or any hesitation, don’t hesitate to get in touch at grants@iftechfoundation.org!
Our budget for the fall 2024 application period is $3,000 USD.
From this pool, we can grant as much as $1,000 per accepted application; however, requesting smaller amounts allows us to support more projects. That being said, to preserve our volunteer bandwidth, we will not consider funding projects needing fewer than $150. We will ask you to submit a simple budget to back up the amount you are asking for.
Be creative! Be interesting! That being said, to maximize your chances of becoming a grant recipient, please read the following.
First of all: please get familiar with who we are! We are IFTF, and you can read our mission and goals here. Please take a look at our programs and the kind of things we already do, to get to know us more before applying. Finally, you can get an idea of what kind of projects we can go for by looking at the ones we funded in 2024.
By our nature, we like projects that are community-minded; tools and works that benefit the interactive fiction community at large make us swoon. Please don’t focus too much on the “technology” in our name; beyond our work and support on technical topics, we also exist to enhance and preserve the culture and artform of interactive fiction! That being said, we’d like to focus on projects that really need our help, to maximize our impact.
You will also be asked to provide a report 9 months after you have received the funds; for this reason, our funding is probably best-suited to projects that will be accomplished in under a year.
Do you want more concrete guidelines? How about this:
For each grant cycle, the IFTF Grants Administration Committee appoints 6 Grant Advisors whose sole responsibility is to read all submitted applications and formulate a recommendation. We do not disclose who the Grant Advisors are for a given grant cycle; however, when recruiting the Grants Advisors, the Grants Admin Committee strives to build a team representing a variety of perspectives, areas of specialization, and walks of life, in line with IFTF’s values seeking to promote diversity and inclusivity.
Grant Advisors will grade the projects on a feasibility+interest scale, then meet to consolidate their selections, being careful to stay within budget. The Grant Advisors’ recommendation will then be submitted to the Grants Administration Committee, who has the final say.
Submissions are currently open, until October 31st. Click here to access the application form!
The application itself will be short; we ask for a description of the project, how the project benefits the IF community, your relevant skills and experience, and a simple budget.
People directly involved in the process (i.e. Grant Admin Committee members, Grant Advisors, IFTF Board Members) cannot apply. If you have a connection to someone involved in the process, we ask that this is disclosed transparently, so we can make appropriate plans in order to avoid conflicts of interest. Finally, people who have been banned from IFTF activities are not welcome to apply.
Congratulations! We will only ask for two things:
