The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is excited to announce the launch of the Open Data Day 2025 Mini-Grants Application to support organisations hosting open data events and activities across the world.
This year we are running two separate calls to reflect the different interests in our community. The first call is for the general community, and the second is specifically for activities in French-speaking countries in Africa. See details below:
ODD25 General Open Call
This call is open to any practices and disciplines carried out by open data communities around the world – such as hackathons, tool demos, artificial intelligence, climate emergency, digital strategies, open government, open mapping, citizen participation, automation, monitoring, etc. Applications from Francophone African communities will be automatically added to a specific call (see details below).
A total of 22 events will be supported with a grant amount of USD 300 each, thanks to the sponsorship of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and Datopian.
ODD25 Francophone Africa Call
This call is specifically seeking to promote events happening in French-speaking countries in Africa. It’s open for any kind of practice, just like the General Call above, but it must take place in one of the following countries: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi, Benin, Togo, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Comoros, and Seychelles.
A total of 14 events will be supported in Francophone Africa with a grant amount of USD 300 each, thanks to the sponsorship of the Communauté d’Afrique Francophone des Données Ouvertes (CAFDO).
Who and How to Apply
The deadline for both applications is 23rd February 2024. The call welcomes all registered organisations across the world interested in hosting in-person open data events and activities in their country. An individual cannot apply, and the events cannot be virtual or online.
The events supported by the grants should take place during the Open Data Day from 1st to 7th March 2025 and must be registered at the Open Data Day website. We encourage proposals to try to dialogue in some way with this year’s thematic focus “Open Data to Tackle the Polycrisis”.
Registered civil society organisation events supported by the mini-grants cannot be used to fund government events. The grant payment will be transferred to the successful grantees after their event takes place and once the Open Knowledge Foundation team receives a draft blog post about the event.
Selection Criteria
The submitted events will be assessed by an organising committee made up of members from each sponsoring organisations. Applications will be blind-reviewed and given a score according to the following criteria.
- Novelty/creativity of the proposal
- Community aspect: to what extent the proposal promotes community involvement (especially local communities)
- Achievability of the activity and level of commitment of the organisers when writing the proposal
- Diversity in terms of geography, gender, and type of activities
- Alignment with Open Data Day 2025 thematic focus
* Organisations taking part in Open Data Day for the first time will receive an extra point, as will organisations that have not received mini-grants in past editions of the event.
The winning organisations will be contacted from 24th February. The official announcement of the list of grantees will be made on 26th February.
About Open Data Day
Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. ODD is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the Open Knowledge Network.
As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date over one week: this year between March 1st and 7th. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world, in 60 countries using 15 different languages.
All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.
For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group or join the Open Data Day Slack channel to ask for advice, share tips and get connected with others.
