Essential Open Source Software for Science (Cycle 6)

Overview

Open source software is critical to modern scientific research, advancing biology and medicine while providing reproducibility and transparency. Hundreds of software packages, libraries, and applications have become essential tools for research—so much so that many researchers could not continue their work without them. Despite its importance, even the most widely-used research software often lacks dedicated funding for maintenance, growth, development, and community engagement. Also, those who work on such software often lack credit and recognition.

In an effort to support open source software for science, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Wellcome Trust (Wellcome), and The Kavli Foundation (Kavli) (“The Funders”) seek letters of intent to apply for funding for software projects that are essential to biomedical research. Ideal applications will have previously demonstrated impact, currently show potential for continued improvement, and expect to deliver added value to the biomedical research community through the proposed activities.

The Funders have partnered on this request for applications because of our shared commitment to supporting software critical to biomedical research. Although the process will use CZI infrastructure (e.g., application portal), The Funders are equal partners in this call. All applications will be considered by all funders. Selected proposals will be funded by either CZI, Wellcome, or Kavli, and the decision of which funder funds what will be made based on the corpus of selected proposals, their domain, and their alignment with funder goals. The decisions on which Funder supports a proposal will be made after evaluation and selection of the full proposals. Funders will provide requirements and information for the successful applicant at the time of award notification. All grants, regardless of funder, will be for two years and can be used to fund a variety of eligible activities, as listed in the Use of Funds section below.

Note this is a two step application process: an initial Letter of Intent (LOI), which will be followed by invitations to a select number of applicants to submit a Full Application.

With this program, we aim to provide software projects with resources to support their tools and the communities behind them. Whether it’s hiring an additional developer, improving documentation, addressing usability, improving compatibility, onboarding contributors, or convening a community, we hope our support can help make the computational foundations of biological research more usable and robust.

For this Request For Applications, we seek to support software tools across a broad range of biomedical fields, including (but not limited to)

• Imaging
• Single-Cell Biology
• Neuroscience
• Bioinformatics
• Genomics
• Structural Biology
• Clinical Biology
• Infectious Disease
• Data Visualization
• Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and AI
• Data Management and Workflows

Scope

Applications for two broad categories of open source software projects will be considered in scope:

• Domain-specific software for analyzing, visualizing, and otherwise working with the specific data types that arise in biomedical science. Software will be considered out of scope if it primarily serves domains outside biomedical science without strong evidence of adoption in biomedicine.
• Foundational tools and infrastructure that enable a wide variety of downstream software across several domains of science and computational research. While foundational tools will be considered in scope for this program, they must have demonstrated impact on some area(s) of biomedical research.

We strongly encourage proposals requesting funding for multiple related software projects (as in this example). For examples of open source projects CZI has previously funded through the EOSS program, we encourage you to check the list of proposals awarded in the previous cycles and CZI’s blog posts.

Examples of projects that are less likely to be successful in this RFA:

• A project in its earlier stages that is not used extensively or known beyond the creator(s);
• A project that is focused on improving or supporting a database or knowledge base that has few community contributions or low adoption in the biomedical community;
• A project that is widely successful and adopted but has little or no applications to biomedicine; and
• A proposal for a research project to mine, publish, or analyze research results rather than a project that will support the biomedical research process itself.

Use of funds

Applications can request funding between $50,000 USD and $200,000 USD total costs per year for two years (inclusive of up to 15% for indirect/overhead costs) for an overall amount requested between $100,000 USD and $400,000 USD total costs for the two-year duration of the grant. Proposals will not need to provide a detailed budget or justification at the LOI stage. At the full proposal stage, budgets will be required and evaluated for appropriateness relative to the scope of work proposed.

Acceptable use of funds includes, but is not limited to:

• Salary support for staff (full-time, part-time, or contract): developers, contributors, technical writers, community managers, product managers, project managers, user experience researchers, community educators, or other roles that directly support the software project(s);
• Hackathons, sprints, outreach, or other forms of community engagement and support for community participation;
• Operational needs such as cloud computing, storage, networking, or continuous integration services; and
• Support for work that bridges software projects or ecosystems, including better coordination across software projects that are similar, dependent on one another, or frequently used together.

• Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign nonprofit and for-profit organizations, public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, units of state and local government, companies, and eligible agencies of the federal government. As part of the application process, for-profit organizations may need to provide additional information on the charitable purposes of the proposal and will only be eligible for funding from a subset of the funders. Grants are not permitted to individuals, only to organizations. Open source software projects operating independently must be affiliated with an organization, as described below.
• If an application does not come from an organization eligible to receive and distribute funds (e.g., an academic institution), it may designate a fiscal sponsor (e.g., NumFOCUS, Code for Science & Society, or others). We encourage proposals that require fiscal sponsorship to contact the appropriate organizations early in the application process. If your application requires a fiscal sponsor, you must secure one by the full proposal application deadline. Please note that applications utilizing a fiscal sponsorship may only be eligible for funding from a subset of the funders or be subject to additional processes upon award.
• We will consider and potentially fund multiple applications from the same organization, multiple applications related to the same open source software project(s), and multiple applications that include the same staff and/or software project contributors. However, the proposed work in such applications must be distinct.
• We encourage proposals supporting multiple open source software projects. In the case of applications for work spanning multiple software projects, one individual must complete the application and a single organization or fiscal sponsor must coordinate the dispersal of funds to the members of the collaboration. Note that non-U.S. institutions may not issue subcontracts to U.S. institutions (if funded by CZI), so please be mindful when selecting the applicant organization.
• We encourage proposals that are currently funded from all five previous cycles of the EOSS RFA to submit an application to continue or build on the previously funded work.
• We believe that the strongest teams incorporate a wide range of voices. Those underrepresented in science and technology are strongly encouraged to apply.
• Meta employees, including employees of any subsidiary Meta entities, as well as employees of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, are not permitted to apply.
• The funders reserve the sole right to decide if an applicant and applicant organization meet the eligibility requirements relevant to each organization (please see organization Policies). Additional information may be requested at any time of the application or award process from any funder.
• The funders reserve the right to request budget changes prior to award.
• We welcome applications from any country, provided the proposed work is compliant with the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions program. Prior to award, all grant applications will be reviewed for compliance with the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions program, the United States Department of Commerce’s export administration regulations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), any other applicable U.S. laws and regulations, and any corresponding laws and regulations in the country where the applicant is based. All grant agreements will also require the grantee to comply with these laws and regulations. For additional information please refer to: the U.S. Treasury Department’s resources, the International Trade Administration’s website on U.S. Export Controls, and the Department of Justice’s website on the FCPA.
• While applicants from all countries are welcome to apply, they may not be eligible for funding from all three of The Funders. Due to required ongoing compliance with U.S., E.U., and U.K. sanctions and export controls, an applicant’s funding eligibility may need to be reassessed if the applicable laws and regulations change at any time. As a result, even if an applicant is eligible to receive funding at the time the application is reviewed, the applicant’s status may change later in the process or during the course of the grant term.

CZI suggests that you consult your home institution to determine eligibility to apply for this grant and your institutional policy on indirect costs. For questions about eligibility for this award or the application process, please contact us in advance of the proposal deadline at sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. Deadline extensions will not be granted.

Although this RFA is using the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) application portal, projects chosen for funding may be supported by CZI, The Kavli Foundation, or the Wellcome Trust. The Funders have partnered on this request for applications because of our shared commitment to supporting software critical biomedical research. Although the process will use CZI infrastructure (e.g., application portal), The Funders are equal partners in this call. All applications will be considered by all funders. Selected proposals will be funded by either CZI, Wellcome, or Kavli, and the decision of which funder funds what will be made based on the corpus of selected proposals, their domain, and their alignment with funder goals. Funders will provide requirements and information for the successful applicant at the time of award notification.

CZI uses SurveyMonkey Apply (SMApply) as its grants management portal. All applications must be submitted through this portal (https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com). SMApply is configured to work best using the Google Chrome browser.

Application specifics

• The application process is a two-stage process: Letter of Intent (LOI) and Full Application (if invited).
• Eligibility: Please refer to the Eligibility section.
• Award Period: Proposals should be two years in duration with a start date of June 1, 2024.
• Budget: Applications can request funding between $50,000 USD and $200,000 USD total costs per year for two years (inclusive of up to 15% for indirect/overhead costs) for a total amount requested between $100,000 USD and $400,000 USD for the two-year duration of the grant. A detailed budget is not required at the LOI stage.

GETTING STARTED

The applicant must first set up an account in the CZI online grants portal:

1. Go to https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com/.
2. Click the green Register button in the upper right corner.
3. Complete the requested fields and then click the green Create Account button.
4. Click the green Continue button to proceed to the site.
5. Verify your account via email.
6. Log in to the grants portal at https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com/. Using the links in the upper right corner, you can access available programs (which includes RFAs for all CZI areas) and any applications you have in preparation or previously submitted.

SUBMITTING THE LETTER OF INTENT

For more detailed instructions about how to use the application portal, please refer to the Appendix below.

For the purpose of the application, we will use the following terms:

• Application: At this stage, the “application” refers to the Letter of Intent
• Applicant: The person submitting the application materials on behalf of the software project(s)
• Software project(s): The open source software project(s) that will be supported by the funding
• Proposal: The proposed use of funding

Process

The application (Letter of Intent) consists of the following sections (called tasks in the grants portal): Applicant Details, Proposal Details, Terms and Conditions, and Equal Opportunity & Diversity (optional).

1. Log into https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com.
2. Click the green View Programs button. Find the program/RFA you may need to scroll down. Click the green More button.
3. Click the green Apply button in the upper right and complete all sections.
4. Enter the title of your application. Proposal title is limited to 60 characters, including spaces. If you need to edit your proposal title, click on the My Applications link in upper right and click the green Continue button on the application you wish to edit. Once the application page opens, click on the three dots to the right of the application title and select Rename from the dropdown menu.
5. Task 1: Applicant Details. The information entered should be for the individual submitting the application who will act as the main person responsible for the application and as its point of contact. Please note that this person must remain the same between the LOI and full application (if selected).
   1. Name and email are auto-filled. To edit your name or email, please do so in your account information by clicking your name in the upper right corner and clicking My Account in the dropdown menu.
   2. Institution/Affiliation: Add your home institution, company, or organization. This does not need to be the organization to which a grant would ultimately be awarded, if selected for funding.
   3. Award Organization: Add the institution, company, or organization that will be receiving the award. This may be the same as listed above, or different.
   4. ORCID iD: Enter in format XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. ORCID iDs are unique, digital identifiers that distinguish individual scientists and unambiguously connect their contributions to science over time and across changes of name, location, and institutional affiliation. ORCID iDs will be used to streamline reporting in our applications and grant reports to reduce the burden on grantees. For more information, please visit https://orcid.org/register. (Please contact us at sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com if you wish to opt out.)
6. Task 2: Proposal Details. All sections are required.
   1. Proposal Title: Auto-filled; Maximum of 60 characters, including spaces. If you need to edit your proposal title, navigate to your application summary page; click on the three dots to the right of the application title; and select Rename from the dropdown menu. Please note that you will not be able to make changes to the title of your application between the LOI and full proposal period.
   2. Amount Requested: Total budget amount requested in USD, including indirect costs; this number should be between $100,000 USD and $400,000 USD total costs over a two-year period. Enter whole numbers only (no dollar signs, commas, or cents).
   3. Proposal Summary/Scope of Work: Provide a short summary of the work being proposed ​(maximum of 500 words).
   4. Value to Biomedical Users: Describe the expected value of the proposed work to the biomedical research community ​(maximum of 250 words).
   5. Open Source Software Projects: Indicate the number of software projects involved in your proposal (up to five). Complete the table with the following information for each software project.
      • Software project name
      • Main code repository (e.g. GitHub URL), enter in format https://www.example.com.
      • Homepage URL (if none, re-enter the main code repository URL), enter in format https://www.example.com.
   6. Landscape Analysis: Briefly describe the other software tools (either proprietary or open source) that the audience for this proposal primarily uses. How do the software project(s) in this proposal compare to these other tools in terms of user base size, usage, and maturity? ​How do existing tools and the project(s) in this proposal interact? (maximum of 250 words)
   7. Category: Choose the two categories that best describe the software project(s) audience:
      • Bioinformatics
      • Single-cell biology
      • Structural biology
      • Clinical research
      • Genomics
      • Neuroscience
      • Infectious disease
      • Imaging
      • Data management and workflows
      • Machine learning and data analysis
      • Visualization
   8. Previous funding:
      • Have you ever received grant funding from CZI, the Wellcome Trust, or the Kavli Foundation? Select Yes or No.
      • Please check the box(es) of the organization(s) from which you received funding.
      • Did you previously apply for funding under the CZI EOSS program? Select Yes or No.
        • If yes, have you previously received funding under the CZI EOSS program? If yes, please provide your application ID in the format EOSS1-0000000001.
7. Task 3: Terms and Conditions.
   1. Grant policies: Funded applications will be subject to various grant conditions and policies. Submission to this program will imply that your organization agrees to and will be able to comply with these conditions. Funder specific policies are linked below:
      • CZI Grant Policies
      • Wellcome Grant Conditions & Grant Funding Policies
      • While the Kavli Foundation does not have a specific grant policies document, if you have questions related to Kavli grant conditions, please contact science@kavlifoundation.org.
      • For general questions on the grant program, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.
        • Check the box to acknowledge that you have read and understand the grant policies and conditions.
   2. Application and Personal Data: By submitting your application, you agree to share all submitted application data (i.e. name(s), contact details, role, professional details, organization, details of your proposal, ORCID iD) and sharing these personal data with the Wellcome Trust and Kavli Foundation (in addition to CZI) for the purpose of administering, managing and evaluating your application, as well as for assessing the effectiveness of our grants program. In addition, if you choose to, you can voluntarily provide demographic data in the following section of the application. If you choose to provide the data, check the box in section b.2. below to consent to CZI’s data privacy and sharing policy. The demographic data / diversity data will be aggregated and anonymized and this anonymized data will be shared with the Wellcome Trust and The Kavli Foundation for diversity monitoring purposes. Applications and reviews will be subject to and processed in accordance with the privacy policies for all three organizations:
      • Wellcome Grants Privacy and Confidentiality
      • Kavli Foundation Privacy Policy
      • Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Privacy Policy
        • Check the box to acknowledge that you have read and understand the data privacy and sharing policy and consent to CZI sharing your LOI application data and subsequent full application data (if applicable) with the funders affiliated with this grant program (the Kavli Foundation and the Wellcome Trust).
        • Check the box to consent that you have read and understand the data privacy and sharing policy and consent to CZI collecting your optionally provided demographic / diversity data (as set out above), which will be aggregated and anonymised before being shared with the Wellcome Trust and The Kavli Foundation. Please note that providing any data is optional and all sections in the Equal Opportunity and Diversity section may be left blank. To withdraw your consent at any time please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.
   3. Future Sharing: For unfunded proposals, we may share your proposal and reviews with other interested funders who may wish to pursue funding outside of the formal EOSS program. If you would like CZI to share your LOI proposal and subsequent full application data (if applicable) with other interested funders for potential funding, please check the “yes” box. We will notify the applicant and get consent before sharing. If you do not want your proposal to be shared, please select “no”.
8. Task 4: (Optional) Equal Opportunity & Diversity. CZ Science supports the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. Different communities are affected by or experience disease in different ways. Moreover, due to systemic barriers, the scientific enterprise itself is not a place where all voices and talents thrive. We believe the strongest scientific teams — encompassing ourselves, our grantees, and our partners — incorporate a wide range of backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives that guide them to the most important unsolved problems. To enable our work, we incorporate diverse perspectives into our strategy and processes, and we also seek to empower community partners to engage in science.

   We request demographic information associated with applications submitted to CZI in response to our open calls. This information helps us learn from the RFA process, as well as improve our strategies to help ensure members of underrepresented or marginalized groups in science are aware of and able to apply to CZI opportunities. Please note that answering the questions below is voluntary, and receiving funding is not contingent on providing this information. Demographic information provided may be used in our grant-making process but will not be used as the sole or determinative factor in our grant funding decisions. We may also publish aggregated data in various public forums, such as a website or blog. All responses will be shared only with limited personnel and service providers, who will use that information only for the purposes described in this paragraph.

   If you have any additional questions about why we ask this, what we do with the data, or to share suggestions for improvement, please reach out to sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.

   The information below may be entered for the Applicant. The categories listed below may not capture all possible identities; in the event that the categories do not accurately reflect your identities, please use the space provided to self-describe.

   1. What is your race/ethnicity? (optional)
   2. What is the year of your last academic degree? (optional)
   3. What is your gender? (optional)
   4. Are you transgender? (optional)
   5. Are you a member of the LGBTQIA+ community? (optional)
   6. Do you have one or more disabilities and/or long term health conditions? (optional)
9. Mark all tasks as complete.
10. Submit your application: Once all required tasks are completed, click the green Review & Submit button. Note that once your application has been submitted, it cannot be edited.
    1. If the Submit button is grayed out, it means your application is not yet complete— check that all required fields are entered and you have clicked the Mark as Complete button within each task.
    2. Click the green Submit Your Application button on the left side of the window. Confirm your submission by clicking the Submit button in the pop up window.
11. Once your application is submitted, you will receive an email confirming submission. If you do not receive a confirmation email within a few minutes, please check your spam folder. If you still did not receive your confirmation email, please email sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.

FULL APPLICATION

Applicants will be notified by email by November 2, 2023 if they have been invited to submit a Full Application. Detailed application instructions will be provided at that time. The Full Application will require additional materials such as a budget description, biosketches, software project metrics, and a detailed project proposal. Full Applications will require CZI institutional sign-off (see Institutional Approval Form for details) as well as be able to agree to the Wellcome Trust’s grant conditions, so please be sure that your institution is able to comply with all requirements before submitting a Letter of Intent. Please also review the Full Application submission timeline before submitting a Letter of Intent; deadline extensions will not be granted. Full Applications (if invited) must be submitted by 5 pm Pacific Time on December 5, 2023.

QUESTIONS?

For administrative and programmatic inquiries pertaining to this RFA, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.

For technical assistance with SMApply, please contact support@smapply.io, or while logged into SMApply, click on the information “i” link in the upper right corner and submit a help request ticket.

We adhere to values of people, technology, collaboration and open science in both proposal selection and evaluation of progress.

Applications will be evaluated for their existing impact, the quality of the open source software project(s) involved, the feasibility of the proposal, the expected value of the funded work to the biomedical community, and their diversity, equity, and inclusion statement. Each of these categories will be assessed through quantitative and qualitative factors. Relevant materials will be provided by the applicants and obtained by The Funders from publicly available sources where possible (e.g., GitHub or other public code repositories).

For those applicants asked to submit a Full Application, additional quantitative metrics on software projects will be requested. Independent expert review will be solicited, and final decisions will be made by CZI, Wellcome and Kavli staff in consultation with our expert advisors.

Impact will assess the importance of the open source software project(s) involved in the proposal to science and the open source ecosystem, in alignment with CZI’s mission to support the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the century. Reviewers will evaluate:

• Demonstrated scientific impact and adoption of the software project, with a particular focus on its use in biomedicine
• The role of the software project in the scientific open source ecosystem

Alongside qualitative materials, expert evaluation may use metrics such as:

• Number of users and recent growth
• Adoption within relevant communities
• Number of citations or mentions of the software project in scientific literature
• Number of potential contributors and diversity of the organizations they represent
• Number of past contributions to related software projects in the relevant software stack (pushing changes upstream to dependencies, receiving changes from other nearby software projects).

Quality will assess the maturity of the software project(s), its compliance with best practices in open source development, and the existence of a healthy and diverse contributor community. It will again be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively. Reviewers will evaluate:

• Composition and leadership of team
• Governance structure of the software project
• Software project communications and community engagement
• Existence, clarity, and recency of software project roadmap
• Clarity of process for external contributions
• Evidence of external contributions from outside of the core developer team (in the form of code, bugs/issue reports, documentation, etc.)
• Availability of tutorials and examples
• Quality and comprehensiveness of documentation.

Alongside qualitative materials, evaluation may leverage metrics such as:

• Frequency and growth trajectory of commits over time
• Size and make-up of current developer team
• Frequency of external contributions
• Number of open issues, and rate of issues both opened and closed
• Time between opening and closing of pull requests.

Feasibility will assess the plan of work described in the proposal and whether it can be accomplished given the requested budget and key personnel involved. Reviewers will evaluate the following based on qualitative materials:

• Specificity and clarity of plan of work to be accomplished
• Proposed use of funds (relative to plan of work)
• Likelihood of the work being accomplished
• Plan for tracking and validating progress against goals
• Degree of unmet need given existing resources
• Future plans for sustaining or maintaining the work funded by the grant.

In addition to the above criteria, reviewers will evaluate the value to the biomedical community of the proposed work, in particular:

• How the output of the proposal will advance project(s) adoption among biomedical researchers or produce value to their work
• Biomedical user needs that are unmet by the software project(s) in their current state and that will be addressed through the proposal
• Any improvement or integration with other tools that will improve the adoption, usability, functionality, extensibility, ease of use, or performance of the project in the context of the biomedical research community.

Lastly, all applicants invited to submit a Full Application must include in their proposal a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statement, describing (1) any efforts the software project(s) named in this proposal have undertaken to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion with respect to their contributors and audience; and (2) the results of such efforts, if applicable. This statement will be reviewed alongside the above criteria. Please see examples of DEI statements from successful proposals funded in previous cycles.

There is no expectation of any specific number of awards for this RFA program, however this grant program operates within a budget which will inform the overall number of awards that are recommended for funding. The Funders reserve the right to not recommend the funding of any applications.

REPORTING & PROGRESS

Annual reports, including a summary of the project progress that may be made publicly available, will be required from successful grantees to ensure that progress is on track toward the deliverables described in the proposal. Measures of progress will also include additional indicators on the growth and uptake of the software project, as obtained from code repositories, issue trackers, package distribution systems, community forums, mailing lists, etc.

Funded applications will be subject to various grant conditions and policies. Funder specific policies are linked below:

CZI Grant Policies
Wellcome Grant Conditions and Grant Funding Policies

If you have questions related to Kavli grant conditions, please contact science@kavlifoundation.org. For general questions on the grant program, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com.

Applications selected through this process will be funded by one of the following entities:

• the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation (CZIF)
• Recommended for funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Donor-Advised Fund (CZI DAF) at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF)
• The Kavli Foundation
• The Wellcome Trust

• All submitted applications, and expert reviews of those applications, will be shared with our funding partners, The Wellcome Trust and The Kavli Foundation. Applications and reviews will be subject to and processed in accordance with the privacy policies for all three organizations:
  • Wellcome Grants Privacy and Confidentiality
  • The Kavli Foundation Privacy Policy
  • Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Privacy Policy
• Expert reviews will be treated confidentially and will not be shared with the applicant. This allows reviewers to comment freely in the knowledge that we will only show their comments to others directly involved in the decision process. Full reviews for unsuccessful proposals may be shared with interested funders, however we will notify the applicant before sharing.
• Successfully funded proposals and/or their metadata may be made publicly available and/or shared with other grantees or collaborators.
• Unfunded proposals will be kept confidential, except (1) as necessary for our evaluation or to comply with any applicable laws, regulations, regulatory guidance, and / or code(s) of conduct; and (2) to the extent that the application is made public or available to others without a duty of confidentiality through no fault of CZI, Wellcome Trust, or Kavli Foundation. However, information, including brief summaries of the proposed projects, project metrics, and the types of organizations that have applied for funding, may be made publicly available in aggregate form. In addition, for those unfunded proposals that opt in during the application process, we may share your proposal and reviews with other interested funders. We will notify the applicant before sharing. Application materials will not be returned to applicants.