A few years ago, Talia Speaker and I sat and wrote a wishlist of everything we would fund *if we could*. Our dream list included 'Developing training materials, creating thorough documentation, maintaining technical infrastructure, community organising, standards' and more - everything that it is so, so difficult to write into traditional grants unless you can creatively wrap it up into an exciting new project. But do you know how hard it is make 'server costs', 'fix this annoying bug', 'write detailed documentation' into a sexy new project that has enough funding to actually do this stuff? As someone who fundraises for all of these type of acitivites at scale, I *know* just how difficult this is. 

I laugh looking at that doc now, because we never even turned it into a proper, slick proposal. It's still just a problem and an idea captured in dot points, but it had a name that says everything: The Boring Fund. The first people we talked to about it were Fran Baker and Rosalie Tribe, who heard about 10s of our idea and were all in, 'Boring but essential? We're in, that is exactly the work Arm supports'. Instead of having one more grant in our WILDLABS Awards, Arm saw the impact this funding could have and let us direct $50k to launch The Boring Fund instead. 

We are so proud to announce The Boring Fund is now open for applications. We knew it was needed, but we are still so encouraged by the response we've had to it already... the number of messages of support our team has received has been incredible and far outstrips any launch we've ever done. Many of these have been from people who aren't looking to apply but see the huge need it's addressing, like this one: 'Not looking to apply or have any queries, just wanted to say that I love the idea of this grant. Good luck on your applications!' 
 

As we grow the WILDLABS Awards and are joined by new funding partners in this programme, our plan is to continue the approach we began with Arm and this first round. Our goal is to ensure a subset of any and all funding for our Awards programme is directed into the Boring Fund. With this approach, we will ensure that any funding we are trusted to steward is supporting both the critical infrastructure and foundational activities that strengthen the sector alongside providing resources to support new technology developments and applications. 

So finally, if you are interested in learning more about the Boring Fund and applying, check out the full information here.

Adrien Pajot is leading the Boring Fund, and he's happily answering all questions here.

If you love the idea of the Boring Fund and want to find out more about how to support it as a funding partner, drop me a message via dm or at stephanie.odonnell@wildlabs.net. 

Good luck with your applications!