Tag: Funding

Thinking of applying? Do it

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

This is not an easy Fellowship to get, the process may be simple, but the competition is stiff. Approximately 1% of applicants are offered a fellowship.

The personal investment you have to make in contemplating this fellowship is substantial – you have to really, honestly and purposefully think through what your contribution to positive social change will be and that is tough. However, it could be the first step towards realising your big vision.

We have structured the application in a way that helps you build a narrative, from the problem statement to your specific approach, with enough free form to allow you to express yourself. We are not looking for “correct” answers, we are looking for your answers. Typing up your responses to the questions, making a video and uploading your resume is all it takes. Applications are private, which adds to it being low risk. And you will know where you stand within 4 weeks of the close date.

The video is not the enemy. We are not looking for a production quality promotional video. We want to get a sense of who you are and what you are setting out to do. That can be done successfully through a mobile phone video recording of your talking head.

Our hope is that this application process helps you organise and articulate your thoughts in a way that is useful beyond this application, enabling you to express your idea with clarity that inspires momentum and gathers support.

Although thoughtfulness is required, the actual investment of time and effort necessary to apply is tiny given the possibility of actually getting offered a fellowship. There is only a 1% chance you will get it if you apply, but a 100% chance you won’t if you don’t. The odds are in your favour, if you take the leap.

We would love to hear from you.

Thinking of applying? It could be you

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

When thinking about applying for this fellowship, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is will I get in? Do I fit their profile? Am I who they are looking for? Someone might suggest you apply for a Shuttleworth Fellowship. Even if they are a Fellow, Alum or member of staff, there is no guarantee that your application will be successful. But you have to be in it to win it.

Anyone can become a Shuttleworth Fellow. You do not have to have any specific level of education, or you could have a PhD. You do not have to have years of experience in the workplace or be an up and coming millennial. You do not have to be from any specific geography or nationality, you should just be able to communicate fluently in English. You do not have to have an organisation, but you can if you want to, and it can be for or not for profit. You do not have to be of any specific gender. You do not even have to be building software.

What you should have is a clear sense of how you can contribute to changing the world for the better. You should be able to articulate the problem, and your idea should offer a fresh approach to addressing that problem. You should be able to motivate why you are the best person to do this, and how this particular fellowship might help you do that.

This Fellowship consists of anyone from college drop-outs to doctors (academic and clinical), students to professors, enthusiastic upstarts and seasoned veterans. They come from all over and work where they can make the most difference. The profile they share is one of openness, commitment and bravery.

We invest in individuals to change the world, now and in future. If you believe that is you, we could too.

Thinking of applying? Be different

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

We do not have a list of topics we are interested in funding or a call for proposals around a specific theme. Of course we have a sense of what critical problems could be addressed in the world. But an important part of the openness we practice is being open to ideas.

Below are areas in which we have already made substantial investments. If we were to invest in these further, we would look for exceptional ideas that advance the field beyond what we already know, that bring a fresh perspective or approach to addressing a specific aspect, or that radically re-imagine the concept at its core.

Open education – creating open educational materials; building platforms to hold and share materials; establishing pathways for delivery and experimenting with sustainability and access models for effectively integrating open educational resources into formal education systems.

Open government – encouraging and enabling open government data; establishing the veracity of public statements; building systems and process for more effective citizen/government engagement; and supporting citizen-led campaigns addressing important governance issues, especially around digital rights.

Open science – experimenting with alternative approaches to advancing science and its impact on society by revolutionising scholarly communications and inviting citizen participation, rooted in openness.

Telecommunications – addressing access and affordability by experimenting with mesh phone networks using both traditional and mobile handsets, establishing community owned and operated mobile phone networks (including the necessary policy, regulation and sustainability work) and combating spectrum congestion by using laser-enabled data transfer.

Health care – building affordable, easily reproducible, high quality open medical devices supported by the process for designing, manufacturing, quality assuring, distributing and using these devices effectively; assessing and mitigating the negative impact patent systems have on access to medicines.

Cultural expression – exploring web-enabled mechanisms to express culture – represented by music and history – more freely, widely and openly, for the benefit of marginalised groups and society as a whole.

The Open Web – fortifying the practices that enable us to become and remain effective citizens of the web, with specific reference to reducing friction around end-user secure communications, contributor agreements, equitable access and how knowledge resources flow.

The environment – enabling citizens to take back control of monitoring their environment, using open hardware and open data, to support conservation management, resource allocation, extractive industry regulation, food production and traditional knowledge stewardship.

If you are planning on applying and see your idea described here, pay special attention to articulating how your approach is innovative, adds value, what we might learn or discover.

There are also many areas – thematic and geographic – in which we are just getting our feet wet or have not yet found the right fit in investment. We look forward to being challenged and surprised.

How we measure success

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Applicants, and sometimes even Fellows, find it difficult to compute the broad question “what do YOU want to do?”. They keep looking for guidance to narrow down the scope of possibility and fit within prescribed parameters. Yes, we want open and innovative, we like technology and we get excited about access. Other than that, and even beyond that, we want applicants to tell us what they want to do, not the other way round.

In order to decide what it is you want to do, you need to know what you want to achieve and in order to know if you are on the right path, you need to know how you will measure success. We believe this is different in each and every case. When dealing with social change, shifting the way people perceive and engage with the world around them, the most each of us can hope to do is to make a contribution to that change. Almost never does measuring this contribution conform to the simplistic single cause and effect paradigm.

Measuring your contribution to change – your impact – is hard. It is complicated, complex, does not adhere to your implementation timelines and often extends way beyond your control. While many models for measuring impact exist, in truth most of them only evaluate implementation. On top of that they are tailored to specific types of projects. We support a wide range of for-profit and not-for-profit implementation and experimentation models. No single success matrix can be applied across the board.

Over time we have also learnt:

Numbers show how many, not how much. There is a tendency to gravitate towards quantifiable metrics, the things that are easy to measure rather than those that are truer. How many users? How many beneficiaries? How much investment? These may be useful measures of interest, but they do not give you much information on the depth and sustained impact you are having on your intended market. ‘How many’ helps quantify potential for success, it is not success in itself.

Price does not mean value. A large cash injection by an investor means someone is making a bet on the possibility of making money from your company in future. It is no guarantee of future income or sustainability. Nor is it a measure of any value you are adding (or offering) to your industry or your clients. There may be potential in your idea, either as a going-concern or a competitive threat, but this form of validation is much more of an indication of the expectations of others than a measure of your progress towards your intended goal.

Journalists are not your target beneficiaries. News coverage, public accolades and social enterprise awards are all great ways of getting your message out, but to what end? The risk here is that you spend all of your time meeting the criteria of selection committees and award judges, but miss the connection to your target audience completely.

What does that mean for how we, and our Fellows, measure success now and impact in the future? At the highest level, success, for us, in the context of our fellowship programme, is:

  • We know more at the end of a fellowship than we did in the beginning, through experimentation and iteration.
  • That knowledge is available to others to learn from and build upon.
  • The individual Fellow goes on to influence positive social change in their field way beyond the duration of the fellowship.

Within this context, we work with Fellows to define their own success, for the fellowship year and for their big picture change in the world. If some of the ideas we explore together result in a new norm, that would be the cherry on top.

Our experiment in the world

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

This is not where we started and it is almost certainly not who we will be indefinitely. But our experience in philanthropic investment so far has resulted in a couple of key principles that govern how we behave in the world, and specifically how we structure our relationships with those we invest resources in.

This is where we are today:

We fund individuals in the first instance.

Individuals carry their learnings, experiences, passions and hopes for the future with them throughout their lives. Investing in and supporting them to work on what is broken in their world, equips them to continue to affect change far beyond the life of a specific project or organisation.

We offer true fellowship.

When crafting innovative solutions to social challenges, no step-by-step guide or external expert can offer the support you need to keep on experimenting, testing, failing and fighting. A network of peers with a comparable frame of reference, learning and evolving as they travel along similar roads, helps accelerate the journey and amplify useful truths along the way.

We ask Fellows to invest in their own ideas.

Along with their own time and attention, social change agents and entrepreneurs typically invest a considerable amount of their own resources trying to bring about their vision. Continuing to do so is an indicator of their continued commitment and ownership.

We amplify Fellows’ investments.

Just enough is not enough. Funding the time, effort and resources a social entrepreneur needs to implement an idea gives them a leg up. Amplifying their own investment rewards commitment, shows recognition and allows them to implement a vision. It frees up their time and their mind and accelerates experimentation and actualisation.

We offer freedom and flexibility.

Realising a big vision requires many incremental steps and involves a lot of uncertainty. Each step affects change in a tiny way, shifts the environment and establishes a new norm over time. In order to continue driving the change you want to see in the world, you have to be willing and able to adapt, evolve and pivot.

Our Fellows own their IP.

Technology, policy and boundaries change so fast that the best possible chance of success arises when someone can be agile and determine the future of an idea or project quickly. To this end, it is important to have the necessary ownership and control to make that happen.

We encourage innovation and taking risks.

Where conventional thinking fails, fresh thinking and unconventional approaches are necessary. There may be no single right answer. Without the failures, you don’t learn and little progress is made. Those brave enough to innovate and take these risks are the ones that get real results.

We support both for and not for profit implementations.

Progress is the point. Sometimes progress is best made through charitable acts. At other times the commercial market needs to take up an approach in order to sustain it. For or not for profit are merely tools. Choose them as you need them.

We open what we fund.

Intellectual property that is both legally and technically open allows others to adopt, replicate, reuse, adapt, improve, bring to scale, write about, talk about, remix, translate, digitise, redistribute and build upon it. These freedoms are key to the results of intellectual and financial investment getting to intended and unintended beneficiaries and removes the constraints of time and money available to the creator.

It is very much a learning journey. Just as we select Fellows who question the status quo, we continue to challenge our own model on how best to support social innovation responsibly and towards sustained change. There are no silver bullets and we do not have all of the answers. Being iterative and agile is hard. So is admitting mistakes, identifying learnings and being open about it.

We are fortunate to have the Fellows as partners in this pursuit. They come into this Fellowship with a commitment to openness at all levels. We experiment, assess, correct and build – within the individual projects and within the Fellowship as a whole. As each Fellow completes their fellowship we expand our frame of reference, which feeds directly into our ability to build a more robust model.

Download our legal templates

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Since 2007 we have required Fellows to apply open licences – first CC-BY-SA and then CC-BY – to all intellectual property created during the fellowship.

The same principle applies to works produced within the Foundation. Openly licensed resources are only as useful as the number of people who can access to them, so now we are eating our own dogfood and making our Fellowship Agreement and Project Agreement available on GitHub.

These agreement outlines are the most recent in a series of iterations based on our experiences over time. The process was led by Open Counsel, Andrew Rens, who has an amazing aptitude for converting real world vision into legal language. We have tried to optimise the agreements to reflect the essence of our Fellowship, including a firm commitment to openness.

We are releasing these under CC-BY. Other document templates will follow as part of our contribution to the pool of online reference works. It is our hope that this will give you some insight into how we work and that you might share yours as well, increasing that pool and allowing us to learn from your experiences.

Open as a Strategy for Philanthropy and Social Change

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

The more we expose the thinking, working and practices of our organisation, our ideas and our projects, the better. Exposing this information allows other organisations, project implementers, funders, policy makers, change agents, advocates and academics to learn from what we have done.

We have found that being intentional about making knowledge resources, funded and/or produced by us, freely and openly available creates a number of strategic opportunities:

You can buy one copy, give 1000′s free. If you’ve already paid for the creation of a knowledge resource then the more people use it, the more effective your spend. When knowledge resources are available in digital form via the Internet the cost of making and distributing a copy, while not quite zero is close to zero.

You can pay for one experiment, try many. Openness can make development efforts more robust, by allowing multiple experiments to take place with the resources you’ve funded. As change-makers we know that knowledge must be contextualised to be effective but we can’t afford to contextualise resources for every (imaginable and unimaginable) context. We can afford to give upfront permission to others to do so.

‘Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’. That is how open source coders express an important lesson they’ve learned about making knowledge resources open. The larger the pool of contributors the more likely it is that someone will propose a best fit solution. Imitate the humility displayed by open source coders who believe that someone you’ve never met could use your work to make something wonderful which you never imagined.

Let others help you to put your best foot forward. When you make things open you give them your best efforts. We’ve found it to be a good way of showing exactly what our organisation is all about; anyone can see (and use) what we’ve created and funded.

You can create building blocks for more effective change. Network effects result from many people making use of the same knowledge resource. It becomes more robust, more effective and has many more uses. Further more, once something has been done, a standard set, people can focus on new challenges and build on top the principles already in place.

Open can be a short-cut to trust. Potential allies find it easier to trust you when you’ve committed to keeping knowledge resources open.

It helps to empower people. Change makers hope to enable people to help themselves. Opening knowledge resources gives permission to people to self organise, build on, customise and modify, and contribute back what they’ve learned. If that is not empowering then what is?

It has the potential to extend the life of creativity. Opening resources allows others to use and remix them, long after we and our partners have focused on new issues.

You can build knowledge pathways. An ‘all rights reserved’ attitude gives us more control, but it also adds more overhead. If we had stuck “All Rights Reserved” on our resources then others would have to get permission from us. Why would they bother? We would never know about potential partners because they would give up.

You might just strike it big. While many open knowledge resources are useful to particular communities some become global phenomena.

Application pointers

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Prospective applicants often ask us to narrow down the parameters for applications and be more specific about what we’re looking for. We are not planning on doing that, as we want to be surprised and intrigued by applicants, no matter how unconventional the idea may be.

However, we can provide some thoughts on what to keep in mind while developing your application for our fellowship. We hope these are useful, for applying for the Fellowship, and for distilling the essence of your idea.

Our number one ask is that openness be at the core of your idea and/or its implementation. Openness is not an add on. It is a fundamental approach to both participation and intellectual property.

Other than that, there are no absolute rules, only strong suggestions.

  • Address your application to us and customise it accordingly. Generic proposal material does not tell us why we should specifically support you.
  • We’ve invested in Open Educational Resources (OERs), education platforms and re-imagining peer learning before. Although this remains important in the world, it no longer automatically meets our criteria. We will need considerable evidence of innovation.
  • “I will build a platform that will…”: Platforms do not solve problems. They also do not magically bring people, or problems and solutions, together. If you build it, there is no guarantee they will come. Tell us HOW you will do this and what the real world processes will be.
  • “The Facebook for…” or “Like a social networking site for…”: Facebook and other social networking sites exist. They are theme agnostic and allow you to engage with others around any topic/theme/identity of your choosing. They also already have millions (billions?) of users. Why does your theme/topic/subset of people need their own site? Why can’t they just use Facebook or similar? What will make this specific group come to your version? How will you let them know about it? Same goes for “crowdfunding platform for…”.
  • Just adding technology to an offline process or problem will not solve it. Participants in the offline process will also not move to the technology enabled version just because it is there. What is the compelling reason for them to adopt the technology version? How will you help them do it?
  • Building awareness or making connections is not specific enough. We want to support the exploration of a specific solution to a specific problem. Enabling others to connect in order to ask those questions and possibly find answers is great. We’re looking for more. While we think it is important and useful for people to come together and we in no way prevent this from being part of a strategy, that is not enough. We are looking for a specific result in change in behaviour.
  • “I want to inspire (young) people…” People are inspired by what you do in your own life, not by what you tell them to do. Do not set out to inspire someone else, set out to make a difference in the world. Your journey may end up being inspirational to others, young and old.
  • “I want to provide information on x to y…” Providing information only serves to inform; people need a compelling reason to act. Any information service has to be clear about the actions they will take to bring about change in behaviour as a result.
  • Picture quality on your video is less important than sound quality. If we are distracted by trying to understand what you say, your message will not come across.
  • Offline solutions are still important in the world, and often the best way of doing something. While we don’t rule these out completely, it is not our experiment in the world. We far prefer solutions that include an online, technology enabled component.
  • “Mobile” money/payments are being done, and done well, already.
  • Let us understand your context. Making it as real as possible allows us to understand your frustrations and see the applicability of your solution.
  • “We can bridge the digital divide” and “democratize innovation” for “systemic change”. These are all phrases that are over used and mean very little. What are you actually doing? For what purpose? What value are you adding?
  • Quoting others does not help your cause, unless they are specifically speaking about you and your project. Share your idea in your own words.
  • When compiling your video, assume the viewer has not read your documentation. Set the scene, but ensure that you mention your specific idea as early as possible in the video.
  • Focus on what you want to do next. We would like to hear about how far you’ve come, but this is not a history lesson. It is a pitch on how you are going to change history.

Lastly, propose what YOU want to do, not what you think we want to see. Of course it should be tied to our interests – innovation, technology, knowledge and learning – but an honest application from the gut lets your passion and commitment shine through. This is much more likely to be successful than a formulaic response to a call for proposals.

Your idea may not be for us, but if you believe in it, others will too. Good luck!

From Traditional Funder to Today

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Our main goal was to improve the quality of education in South Africa. We invested in projects that offered unique and innovative solutions to educational challenges in a developing society, focused on the areas of science, technology, entrepreneurship and maths in education, as well as propagating the use of open source software. The Foundation operated as a traditional funding agency – we accepted proposals and funded them. Grantees implemented their projects and came back with reports.

By the time we’d seen the third proposal suggesting the same intervention, we realised that we were not learning, building institutional knowledge or having sufficient impact in the world as a result of our investments. The ideas were all valuable in the world, but we had the potential to be more challenging and to make a contribution by testing theories in areas where other funders feared to tread.

We started down a road of incremental change. We gradually shifted our focus and methodology as we took stock of the ever changing landscape, seeing education in its wider context and experiencing the power technology had to speed up innovation, even in South Africa where access to such technologies was still scarce.

During 2006/7 however, we had a crisis of leadership which resulted in a very high staff turnover and no new projects being taken on. Whilst this was clearly not optimal, it also gave perspective and clarity, allowing us to ask questions and define our future as a Foundation based on what we thought could work, not from what we had inherited, or what someone else did. The breakdown of the organisation allowed us to imagine something better.

Our Funder gave a new mandate to the management team: Re-imagine the Foundation, based on openness and innovation, using the money we have in a smarter fashion. Sit with the kernel of our learnings, and create a process that will take best advantage of them. Most importantly, test our theories and work towards a re-boot.

We observed a number of things that informed this iteration of the Foundation.

  • Because our investments often involved a technological component, by the time we could agree on the perfect project plan with a grantee, innovations appeared and the contextual environment changed. We had to be more nimble.
  • Openness and technology enable the unrestricted sharing and spread of ideas. We could implement our programme internationally.
  • If there was not one person, a champion, whose life’s work it was to bring about the change, it could break an intervention. We should support people, not just projects.

This sparked a process of gradual but deliberate change, a journey from project based funding to the individual, independent fellowships of today. We focused in four thematic areas. Communication and Analytical Skills in Education, Intellectual Property Rights, Open and Collaborative Educational Resources, and Telecommunications.

We brought the projects in-house and offered residential fellowships to thematic experts and thought leaders in their respective fields. The strategy was to work on policy in order to remove legislative barriers and do action based projects that would demonstrate the potential of working bottom up. We wanted to bring about positive shifts in thinking and doing in the world, and we learnt a great deal, both in breadth and depth. These learnings became the building blocks of our current way of working.

  • It is better to support an idea where it originates, than try to make it conform to a geographic context. We support Fellows where were based, not just in South Africa.
  • While the policy space remains very important in removing barriers to change, action based initiatives are a better fit for us. It allows us to test theories about ideal policy in a real world and examine the results. We focus on implementation rather than policy.
  • Only some ideas will get traction and that is fine. It is the nature of being experimental and encouraging innovation. We actively encourage being bold, and learning from things that fail.
  • Innovation is rarely something that is entirely new, but rather fresh thinking that adds value in incremental ways. Either way, that is what we look for. We understand that context is important.
  • The ideas that are most interesting are those that are not yet dominating newspaper headlines or flooding social networks. Those ideas typically have enough brilliant minds and funders paying attention to them. We do not have set thematic areas for funding and are open to discovery.
  • Past success is not a guarantee of future success. Nor is proven expertise. Creative problem solving often comes from left field. We make bets on inspired brilliance rather than rewarding past successes.
  • Freeing up 100% of a person’s time, and even more importantly attention, to follow their dream, will accelerate the research and development process. We offer the equivalent of a reasonable salary as a fellowship grant, to remove the concerns of making a living and allow space to thrive.
  • A sense of ownership is important for the success of any initiative. When an individual has skin in the game, they are more likely to have true ownership, which lasts far longer than the financial investment of a donor and fuels the continuation of the work. We ask the Fellow to co-invest financial resources into their projects. We also ensure that any resulting IP vests in the Fellow.
  • Individual commitment can only move an idea forward up to a point. We give the Fellows access to project funding to amplify their own investment of time and money at least tenfold.
  • Levers for positive social change in society do not come in a standard package. Markets forces, charities, governments, universities and many other types of institutions have a role to play. We support Fellows by investing through the best vehicle fit for purpose, be it for profit, non-profit or a rogue individual.
  • When a great idea originates, it rarely comes with the experience of institution building. Administration, human resource, legal and financial quandaries are huge burdens and can often overtake the initial kernel of genius. We provide a legal, financial, administrative and technical home for the Fellows, allowing them to concentrate on their objectives.

This is by no means the end of our learning journey and evolution. Each fellowship is made up of a set of unique components linked to the individual, the theme and the context. Shared threads run through all or some of them. This think piece series is our expression of this continuing process, sharing some of our questions and discoveries along the way.