Engineering Microgrants 2025: Program Announcement

julcnx · 2025-05-17T06:12:16.606Z

Hey Salim, thanks for launching this year’s program and for all the work behind it!

A few quick questions:

If a project improves core OSM tools like the website or iD, is there any support to help coordinate or prioritize integration with maintainers?
For standalone tools, is there any support for hosting if the project is lightweight and useful to the community? Or should hosting be included in the proposal?
Has there been any recent list or thread collecting promising but non-implemented project ideas? I have a few I might submit, and others I’d be happy to share in case they’re useful to others.

matheusgomesms · 2025-05-17T11:23:50.179Z

Thanks, Salim! Some questions:

1 - when is the exact deadline?

sbaido:

All proposals should be submitted via the GitHub templates, which are designed to ensure transparency and to help prevent conflicts of interest.

So, just to confirm, in order to submit a proposal, one should open an Issue in that repository, using that template?

julcnx:

For standalone tools, is there any support for hosting if the project is lightweight and useful to the community? Or should hosting be included in the proposal?

Interested on that as well. I suppose no one wants a project to work for some months and disappear, because of hosting issues.

sbaido · 2025-05-17T18:53:31.358Z

Hello @matheusgomesms :

Looking at July 15th to be the deadline: subjected to change of course if needed by the jurors and the EWG.
GitHub issue is needed to be submitted indeed
good question @julcnx and @matheusgomesms : depends on the cloud spending and juror’s judgment but it can be either or depending on the circumstances.

sbaido · 2025-05-17T18:55:43.139Z

Hello @julcnx

you can propose getting a support or coordinating it indeed, we are open for all options, yet I advise that you place all options and scenarios in your proposal.
answered
I will need to get back to you on that, yet the previous projects and ideas are stored.

sbaido · 2025-05-17T18:56:10.864Z

you can propose.

SimonPoole · 2025-05-17T19:22:23.445Z

matheusgomesms:

Interested on that as well. I suppose no one wants a project to work for some months and disappear, because of hosting issues.

A quick, not tongue in cheek, observation: the issue with this is that somebody would have to actually operate any service that would continue on after the project completed, not just obtain funds for hosting.

That would require the EWG reaching an agreement with the OWG best before even awarding funds/hw support to a project.

That’s a very very big organisational stretch.

matheusgomesms · 2025-05-19T13:16:30.962Z

Thanks, Salim!

sbaido:

Looking at July 15th to be the deadline: subjected to change of course if needed by the jurors and the EWG.

Sorry, I’m not sure if I understood correctly here. In the first message, you said that the jury wants to announce the winners by mid-july. So the deadline is July 15th to announce the winners or to submit the idea?

(just to be clear, I was initially asking for submission deadline )

sbaido · 2025-05-22T13:28:23.568Z

Deadline July 15th. @matheusgomesms

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2025-05-22T20:24:55.123Z

Applicants must make a good-faith effort to avoid conflicts of interest to ensure their proposal is judged on the merits of their application.

this probably should be stronger and outright exclude people like me (who were for example on OSMF board where it was set up, even if they were not pushing for it) and people involved in running it

LowestPotential · 2025-05-26T01:38:45.074Z

Hey all, I am new around here.
Reading the github template, I am not entirely clear if the intent is that the applicant be in a position to enact the suggested improvement themselves.

Is that the intent?

sbaido · 2025-05-27T09:37:02.548Z

The intention is that the improvement should be aligned with the maintainers and if necessary the developers of any tool or technology.

Kshitijraj_Sharma · 2025-06-05T12:24:01.888Z

This is nice , Do you know when is the deadline ?

sbaido · 2025-06-05T12:45:59.144Z

July 15th 2025

Kshitijraj_Sharma · 2025-06-05T13:04:30.462Z

Alright , We will be submitting few projects from OSM Nepal !

sbaido · 2025-06-06T10:16:48.484Z

Hello community!

It’s been three weeks since I announced the Microgrants 2025 program on behalf of the Engineering Working Group. We’re excited to see a few promising ideas already submitted, but there’s still plenty of room for more! We encourage everyone to share their innovative proposals, do not hesitate or doubt yourself. Every idea has the potential to make a real impact and could be selected for a grant.

Our jurors are currently reviewing the submissions we’ve received so far, and we look forward to seeing even more creative contributions. Best of luck to everyone participating!

Salim, EWG

sbaido · 2025-07-14T10:31:52.638Z

Hello everyone! We have some great news: the EWG and jurors have decided to extend the deadline for submissions to July 31. This gives even more time for brilliant ideas to be submitted!

Dustin_C · 2025-10-14T10:30:36.399Z

Out of curiosity, what happened with this – were there any announcements about funded microgrants, or any timeline for when judging will finish?

SimonPoole · 2025-10-14T11:16:21.968Z

IIRC there was a recent statement “somewhere” (Mastodon?) that the jury was currently working on a decision.

Just for good measure: the competition concept has never made any sense, coupled with the lack of a clear communicated scope (which is why there are so many paid mapping obscured with a thin veneer of development submissions), and was always silly and it would be a good thing for the whole undertaking to vanish without a trace.

sbaido · 2025-10-14T11:40:08.614Z

Hello @Dustin_C

Thank you so much for reaching out. I’d also like everyone to know we’re working to make this process as fair as possible. Over time, we saw that some ideas requested just a few hundred euros or pounds, while others were closer to 6,000 euros. Because of this big range, we realized we needed to update our approach.

We want to be certain that, no matter how we select the top ideas for microgrants, the scoring process is fair and considers both project size and potential impact for OpenStreetMap. We’re adding a few new parameters to our scoring to reflect this. Please rest assured: our jury members are taking their role seriously and reviewing proposals with care, looking not just at the technical side, but also at the human impact.

I know it’s taken a bit longer than expected, but we believe it’s worth it to get this right. Our goal is to finish scoring by the end of October, get feedback from the engineering working group and jury, and then finalize things with the broader committee. We aim to complete the selection before the end of November, so the funding aligns with the 2025 calendar year.

Thank you for your patience and understanding—we want this process to be both thorough and fair for everyone involved.

Salim on behalf of the EWG + Jurors.

sbaido · 2025-10-29T14:01:39.590Z

Update on Engineering Microgrants 2025: Program Announcement:

Hello everyone,

Here’s an update on the Microgrants announcement. We’ve now completed the scoring of all submitted ideas.

Next, we’ll move into the filtering phase. As mentioned earlier, some proposals request only a few hundred, while others go up to 5–6 thousand euros. Our goal is to strike a fair balance between the scores, the budget, and the potential impact of each idea.

It took the jurors some time to go through all submissions carefully, given the detailed evaluation parameters. Some ideas were truly brilliant but might be challenging to implement, while others are simpler with a more modest impact on the OpenStreetMap community.

A few proposals were not entirely engineering-focused, but we’ve still considered their potential contribution, especially wherever there’s a meaningful engineering or technical dimension.

Thank you to everyone who contributed!
Salim