IFTF is delighted to announce that we are opening our very first grant program! 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!
Please note: this is very much a trial run for us! The response and interest that we get from this call of proposals, as well as how the process goes and feedback from applicants, will inform our approach, i.e. subsequent rounds, future funding, etc.
Our budget for this initial run is $3000 USD.
From this pool, we can grant as much as $1000 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: https://iftechfoundation.org/mission/. Please take a look at our programs and the kind of things we already do, to get to know us more before applying: https://iftechfoundation.org/programs/.
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: (+) We love open-source, and we are open to stipends subsidizing contributions to open-source tools! Education is also important to us! And we’d love to foster more works on the genre or history of the medium! Community projects that need to cover some fixed costs (website/application hosting, archival supplies, printing costs, etc.) to get to the next level might want to apply! (-) Projects which will only benefit one person (development of a game, portfolio-building samples, conference attendance, etc.) will not be good candidates for our grants.
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.
Click here to access the one-page 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:
