Hi Emily, thanks for your question! The character limit on the application form does include spaces.

Best,

Henry

Hello @Lullula, 

Thank you for your question!

For this amount of funding, you are welcome to apply as an individual and manage the funds directly, provided everything is clearly outlined in your budget and project plan.

Alternatively, if you choose to list the university as the grant recipient, they are allowed to subgrant you a new scholarship—again, as long as this is clearly defined in the budget. One important note: universities often apply high overhead costs, so please be mindful of our limits in that regard.

If you decide to apply as an individual, we recommend checking the potential tax implications.

I hope this helps!

Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions.

Best,

Hi @SnappyMapper , 

Thanks for your question and comment! 

Contrary to the WILDLABS Awards which focus on supporting innovation, adoption, and scalability, the Boring Fund is not designed to support new ideas or untested concepts.

While I can't encourage you or discourage you to apply with what seems to be a very great project, I'd suggest you to see if you can frame part of your project in one of the "What we are looking for" bullet points of the launch page. 

Don't hesitate if you have any further questions,

Best.

Thanks for your reply.

I believe it would fit into Knowledge transfer and/or Maintaining existing technology? 

It allows field users to contribute geospatial data to projects who would traditionally either not have the skills to do so, or would require training.

It also removes the burden of data cleaning and organising from GIS specialists in existing workflows allowing them to focus on specialist tasks.

Hi @Adrien_Pajot

The Maintaining existing technology bullet point mentions "The Boring Fund does not support building new features and components."

Does that mean for third party software / projects, or does that include the project itself?

I.e. Does that mean I couldn't use the funds to continue working on new features for Snappy Mapper?

Thanks,

Grant

Hi @SnappyMapper, 

Thanks again for your question. 

This sentence is included to clarify that the fund is not intended to support innovation, contrary to the Awards. 

Corrective or evolutive maintenance may be included in these proposals and the primary objective of maintaining existing technology is to ensure that current tools remain usable, enhanced by improved infrastructure, greater stability, better database support, security, and so on.

I hope this provides clarity.

Thanks, 

Adrien 

Hi @Adrien_Pajot,

Thanks again for your answer.

For the budget it states:

Because of the size of the grant, we won't accept overheads that exceed 7.5% of the total direct costs.

Can you clarify what is meant by "overheads"?

Would that include staff costs?

Would it include AWS costs?

Thanks,

Grant

Hi Grant,

Thanks for your question. When we refer to overheads, we mean the ongoing costs of running an organisation that aren’t tied to a specific project, for example, rent, utilities, admin staff salaries, and IT. This does not include project staff costs, and there are no restrictions on how much funding you can allocate to those. In this case, overheads would include AWS or other server hosting costs, unless those costs are specifically and exclusively for this project.

All the best,

Henry