The PSF Board has approved a new Grants Work Group Charter, effective March 1, 2025. To implement the changes across our documentation, application form, and grant report form, we will be pausing incoming Grants requests for the entire month of February 2025. Any applications already in the system will be processed normally.
As described in Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog post series, these updates are being made to ensure the sustainability of the PSF and our Grants Program. They are informed by the program's newly established Guiding Principles, which have also been added to the charter. If you want to get a better understanding of why and how these changes have been made, please read the preceding parts of this series.
The last update we made to the Grants Work Group Charter focused on process improvements based on grantee feedback, such as increasing the process time frame, clarifying the purpose and expectations around schedule review, and establishing participation requirements for the Work Group members. Due to the increasing popularity of the PSF Grants Program, the current update is focused on moderating spending. While we wish we could support every Python-related initiative for exactly what they need to be a smashing success, we need to ensure that the program continues supporting Python and Pythonistas for years to come and is balanced with all of the other initiatives and programs the PSF supports.
What’s changing?
Pausing several grant categories
As of March 1, 2025, we are pausing certain categories of grant types, listed below. We want to share that the number of grants we award in these categories is significantly smaller than the number of conference requests we award (e.g. 3 development grants versus the 50+ conferences grants in 2024). Even still, based on the Guiding Principles we outline in Part 2 of this blog post series, we want to:
- Ensure that we evaluate and fund in our areas of expertise, and
- Prioritize high returns on investment in terms of community impact.
This means prioritizing grant categories that fall squarely within our expertise and which we know have a high community impact.
The grant types that will be paused are:
- Development work
- Kids Coding Camps
- Sprints
- Training Programs
- Workshop with equipment
- Other
You might be thinking, “wait, why pause development work grants? Aren't those squarely in the PSF Grants Program scope?” The PSF already directs both earmarked and general funds to five wonderful full-time Developers-in-Residence to work on things we can confidently say are making a significant impact on the Python programming language in critical areas. While we would love to fund many small Python-related development projects, we feel that we aren’t positioned to adequately measure the impact of these grants. The same applies to sprint-related grants, which are often co-located at Python-related conferences that we fund separately.
Evaluating kids' coding camps and training programs poses different challenges, and we also have a similar issue around understanding the impact of these initiatives. We also feel that our current grants process is not well suited to these requests, and would fit better in a quarterly or yearly review process overseen by educational experts.
The hope long term is to “unpause” these categories with the proper amount of funding and expertise available to the Grants Program and Work Group.
Grant caps by type
As of March 1, 2025, each category of eligible grant type has a maximum amount, or “cap” that can be awarded. The caps were developed by running scenarios on 2024's grant data to attain a sustainable budget that fits the PSF’s financial guidelines. This approach, instead of limiting awards based on types of spending like travel assistance or catering, reinforces trust in our applicants and community to use grant funds to best serve their respective needs.
The per-event caps are as follows:
- Conferences: $8,000 USD
- Workshop Without Equipment: $1,500 USD
- PyLadies Workshop: $1,500 USD
- DjangoGirls Workshop: $1,500 USD
- Consolidated grant requests will be capped according to the figures above.
- Example: Python Neptune is organizing one PyCon Conference and 3 workshops in 2025. They would be eligible to receive up to $12,500 USD.
- Any organization, event, or individual organizing multiple activities will be granted a maximum of $15,000 USD per year.
- This does not include individuals who participate and submit applications on behalf of multiple organizing committees.
We understand that for some applicants, this won’t make a big difference and for others, this could make a big difference. The thought process for this change is that larger more mature conferences and organizations that take on ambitious efforts should put a significant effort towards fundraising from multiple sources. As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, we intend to aggregate a library of resources for event organizers to help develop skills such as fundraising and negotiating with vendors.
Add guidelines for number of days funded
As of March 1, 2025, we will only consider funding for a maximum of 4 days of conferences and 2 days for workshops. For context, the Grants Work Group uses a “per person/day” guideline to help determine how much funding to award. Those amounts are $15 per person/day for conferences, and $25 USD per person/day for workshops. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Python Neptune is organizing a 5-day event with conference, tutorial, and sprint days, and they anticipate 125 attendees.
- Under the current guidelines, the Grants Work Group would consider awarding a maximum of $9,375 USD.
- Moving forward, with the 4-day funding limit, the figure the Grants Work Group could consider awarding a maximum of $7,500 USD.
The idea here echoes the reasoning for the grant caps– larger and more ambitious events are typically more mature and should have multiple sources of sponsorship. Additionally, attendance typically isn’t steady across events that include more than just conference days (most people show up for talks, only some stay to sprint). Instead of analyzing attendance forecasts for each day of an event (more work for applicants, administration, and the Grants Work Group), we are establishing caps by number of days.
Administrative updates
If you’ve applied for multiple grants through the PSF Grants Program, you are aware that we require reports for prior awards before we consider any subsequent requests, which is stated in the Grants Program documentation. Previously, this was not stated in the Grants Work Group Charter and has now been added to the ‘Grant Application Guideline’ section of the charter.
Under the last update to the Grants Work Group Charter, the threshold for PSF Board review increased to $15K. Now that we have capped our grant awards to $15K, this no longer applies. After rethinking this aspect of our Grants Program, the Board will now review consolidated grant requests, as these are usually comprehensive applications that have region-wide implications.
Moving forward
We want to recognize and note a few things:
- These are not small changes
- They will have a varying degree of impact on Python initiatives and events across the globe
- For those who are not familiar with the ins and outs of how we award grants, parts of these updates may be confusing
- We believe some folks will want to discuss these changes, ask questions, and point out where we can continue to improve
- We plan to monitor the impact these changes have on the Grants Program and will consider additional updates if required
To help the community understand the changes and ensure we keep our
two-way communication strong, we are going to hold two supplementary PSF Grants Program Office Hours on the PSF Discord. The office hours will be at varying times through January and February on top of our regularly scheduled office hours:
- January 7th, 4PM Eastern, 9PM UTC (supplementary)
- January 21st, 9AM Eastern, 1PM UTC (regular)
- February 4th, 4PM Eastern, 9PM UTC (supplementary)
- February 18th, 9AM Eastern, 1PM UTC (regular)
