CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, March 25 2026  🔗 **Source:** [CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, March 25 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25dhv6ajih0) Okay, it looks like it's working. Um, okay. Thank you everyone for coming. Um, this time it's going to be me moderating the session. And we have Amy O'Donnell here from Nominette who has kindly agreed to give us a presentation um on this new funding initiative, some learnings and anything else that she wanted to share. Um actually Don saw her presentation at um Fosdom and thought that it would be a great idea if we have her here. Um so yes I think we can go ahead with the presentation. Amy just feel free to share I think um I hope you have access to sharing but let me know if not. Um okay nice. Perfect. Um yeah going to give the floor to you Amy. It's so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me and um so nice to be invited into your community. So firstly just want to say thank you and yes Dawn it was fantastic to meet you at Foste. I was blown away by how busy it was and how much of a maze it was. Um so it was uh fantastic to just get to know that community and really uh embark on this kind of learning journey that we're going through as nominate. So um very much wearing our learning hats, our humble hats. Um and so really open to if you want to stop me to ask questions or you have feedback along the way. I just thought a little presentation um might help uh set the scene a little bit of what we're trying to do. So yeah, my name's Amy. I'm a social impact lead at Nominette. We are the registry that manages the.uk domain and other top level domains. Um and we're set up in such a way that our articles of association means we're a company that's limited by guarantee. It means we can't make profit in traditional ways and our mandate comes from the UK government. Um, so from that perspective, we are a public benefit company. So any money that we don't reinvest back into our technology stack, um, we have a a lot of work in our social impact team looking at at public benefits and and and what impact we can have in that area. And while traditionally my role has looked at things like digital skills and online safety, Nominette's recently been really trying to reflect and think about how we can align our public benefit mission more closely with our day-to-day work. Um, and that's where we sort of came up with the idea of working more closely on open-source uh domain name system um activities. So, we set out really with this fund to improve the security, long-term sustainability and resilience of the DNS um focused on open-source projects and particularly maintainers. So, we weren't looking for new projects or innovations necessarily as we set out. Um but but really those those projects that are doing the nuts and bolts of the plumbing of of the DNS um architecture. Um so really keen to have a conversation with you all. I hope not to speak too much. Um but really not only what we have learned in this first year that we've been piloting this project, but we are hoping to scale, we've got approval now for three further years of funding. So it really is a window where we can open up that learning and implement um changes um as we progress. Um I should also say that when we initially set out um to to to look at this area of work, we were going to partner with the sovereign tech agency. Um but for one reason or another that didn't work out and so it is a it is a project that nominate have sort of stood up by ourselves but we really are interested in how we can broker better partnerships, better relationships and kind of collaborate better in the space as well. So where did we start? Um I think any good funding starts with doing your research and doing your homework. So we commissioned Demos who are a digital um think tank, a digital consultancy agency who interviewed lots of different stakeholders to really understand the context of the the landscape in the in the DNS. Um and we had these questions which is where should we focus our investment to best support the technology e ecosystem and what funding model should we adopt and why. Um and it was really interesting because there were lots of dimensions to this a fantastic mapping which I can share with you. we did like this kumu which is a kind of interactive um stakeholder map um and really looked at at what it was that we should we should we should explore. So there were some really some questions which were quite um insightful to us and one area that we we looked at was that existing digital infrastructure really was a priority for our members and our staff. So that came out as something like really strong over um developing and innovating on um new new work or focusing on things that were too um exploratory or maybe linked to Nominette's own digital infrastructure. Um and you can see here also that the open source community was far and away um a key uh community to look at in terms of who's best placed to fix the issues and challenges. Um someone said invest your profit into open-source software and development. Seriously, nothing else. Um and it was quite interesting also that we um asked some advisers and some experts and to to really understand what our unique role could be in this landscape because we know that when people who are being um being paid to do open source or doing it at the behest of a for-profit corporation the motivations are going to inherently steer them towards those profit driven motivations. So it's something that I'm always very conscious of as we are very conscious of as a team is our own power in a system. So what what role do we play? What you know intentionally or not a funer will always make an impact on a on a landscape. Um what what are we driving and how can we unearth those power dynamics so that we can have a really upfront um and and and honest conversation about the influence and the impact that we have. So the demos funding really resulted in three key findings about the problems of funding open-source infrastructure. Um which you're welcome to disagree with me or not if you if you see otherwise. Um but we saw some trends around funding stemming from corporates and not foundations which can bias development towards corporate interest. We saw single sources of funding, so one funer, one project. And also funding not necessarily being available for individuals or individual maintainers, only projects and organizations. And by no stretch have we been able to address all of these problems. I'm not purporting that. Um, but we definitely have um made some steps towards that. In fact, Dorne, you'll be interested to know that since my presentation at Foste, we were able to put a case to our finance team and have now supported some individual maintainers, not requiring them to register as organizations. So, um that initially was going to be a big barrier for us that you had to be a legally registered organization. Um but we've been able to get around that albeit there will be some kind of funding caps and some limits to that amount of funding. um but um something that we're sort of learning as we go along how we how we work in sync with finance teams to mitigate some of the risks that they see um and work with those. And then on the second uh problem uh we definitely haven't got around that. We've been in some discussions with different uh uh other funding uh sources and and and funders of this kind of work and trying to think about what funders or entities would bring the same kind of values or perspective that nominate are bringing to the table here. Um and so that's a kind of TBC at the moment. It's very much just our funding going onto these particular projects that we're uh supporting. But I think that that diversification and and and funders pulling together um can often make things um make for a stronger uh more dynamic uh opportunity. The other thing that we're exploring at the moment is in our first round we only were able to announce for one year worth of funding. So it's like six months worth of activities. Um and we're now in the process as we're getting ready to review all of our learning and as we've taken stock um think about whether we can do multi multissource funding so give more certainty over the longer term potentially up to three years worth of funding. So what did we end up doing on the basis of this uh findings from demos? Um, I should say that they they came up with the idea or some other ideas about more innovative um o uh open-source DNS development things like DNS skillsmies. So the future of skills, the pipeline of skills, but we decided to just stick to the the the the cleanest message and the most simple sort of foundations of just working with uh maintainers of existing open-source uh DNS infrastructure. And while we might explore some of those other areas that came up in the research, we really did want to stick to the knitting of um those foundations. So we set out with the nominate DNS fund to fund and improve the security of and sustainability of open DNS open source and in the first round we had £370,000 available GBP and we said there was no minimum amount so if you only needed £5,000 that was fine um but up to £100,000 per applicant um and we had 33 applications come forward to us in the end in that window in September October time. Um, and we wanted to really make sure that the application was as light touch as possible. So, we had uh one of our advisory panel really challenged us that it should be a 20inut application. So, some people said that that that worked for them. They were able to share links um signpost to existing uh collateral or content that was online um to evidence the work they were doing. but others said that it did take them longer and there were things that could be clearer uh in the application process that would have streamlined that for them. Um we also recognized that while we do have some DNS expertise within Nominette um we really wanted to make sure that we were listening to the broader community. So our CTO Ollie uh chaired a expert advisory panel which included two nomin members. So that's Pete and Michael from Mythic Beasts and Black Knight uh respectively. We had Roy from Icon, Hannah who conducted the original research from Demos and then you may already know because they were at Fostm as well. Dawn MO who was previously sovereign tech agency and Kalin who was previously Linux and now with probable um and they were fantastic process but also in helping us to establish and be transparent in the principles of what we were setting out to fund um and we're really hoping to work with them again as we move forward. um we did follow sovereign tech agency's lead in this idea of being really transparent in the principles that we were adopting um in the funding. So um we set out with these criteria of public benefit um working to uh the extent to which that the the project that that was being applied for was enabling a safe, secure and resilient running of critical infrastructure. Um we also spoke about core need so uh to what extent the operation of the global DNS depends on that solution. Um we did um cover pro proven use so the capability of that already being used and at scale and this was one that when I opened it to the floor in Fostam I think was the most potentially controversial and people had lots of feedback saying um it's while it's good to talk about proven use and maintainers we should also be allowing space for you know keeping our eyes open to the next steps for innovation and it shouldn't necessarily be that something's already operating at scale in order to warrant being successful uccessful for funding. So I think that's one that we will definitely be reviewing and looking at. Um I found the right people quite interesting because often times it wasn't just is the person uh leading the development of this the most skilled but um we were also asking questions about whether they were sustainable. We've had some applications of individuals operating um you know voluntarily in their own time um and sort of being able to catalyze a a conversation about sustainability and whether they need to actually add more contributors to represent the right team um in in in their in their work. So it's gone beyond this idea of just having the skills and experience but also looking at that sustainability. And finally just you know an expected question about value and sustainability there. Um so actually today it's very timely because I'm very excited that after about a year's worth of work uh we have actually announced five of the eight successful applicants from our first window. So um this is um if you go to the Nominette website this is actually an interactive um so you can click on all the different projects um and learn about them all. So we ended up funding eight projects across six countries um and these are just five of them. So if you imagine them in a DNS query uh you know from left to right from the user browser and back again um we're positioning these as not just the organizations but the the role that the projects play in the funding ecosystem. So you can see it starts with um encrypted transport. So we funded the open SSL library. It's a toolkit for general purpose uh uh cryptography and secure communications. Um in performance and testing we funded um bind nine under internet systems consortium looking at their testing environment. That one was quite interesting because we did initially articulate that we didn't want to fund hardware. Um but this was a no-brainer in terms of the hardware needed because it wasn't the the load was too high on a on a cloud uh testing environment. So that did end up they did end up buying some some hardware with our funds. Um also Quad9 which uh was described as the public bus of um supporting resolver implementations and and security protections. And then um on the right hand side here we've got NLNet labs cascade which is a DNS seexer um and ox valid valids which is uh about validating large zones in a short time along the pipeline. So there are a number of others and actually the ones that are missing from here are those smaller organizations or those individuals because they have taken a bit more time uh for us to support them and and set them up. Um so as I was preparing for today uh Adrienne said that it's you know a group that's really interested in learning and what we've learned and and looking at different funding models assessing their their value and their impact. So I was hoping that we could also touch on that very briefly just to say that Nominette doesn't normally do open calls for applications in the in the past. We've always done very intentional invitations to apply where we've done the research and that's enabled us to reach out to the right organizations. So this has been quite new for us to do that open call. Um it is you know there are upsides and downsides. The upside is obviously that it's transparent and it's open to everyone and um you know you can you you don't have to rely on the research to identify the particular organizations you want to work with. But on the other hand, I think it can involve a lot of energy and effort in people going through applications not knowing whether they're going to be successful or not. And that time is when their time is so invaluable and precious, especially when they're doing this on a voluntary basis or are not for profofits or who who who struggle to to do this kind of work. You know, in the past, we've been able to compensate uh for time put into applications because we've had a smaller call of people putting forward, but we've not been able to do that in this case. Um, and also just the time taken to, you know, short list, to organize, to put this through to an application, uh, panel. You know, some of some of our panelists said it took them a day. Some of them said it took them two weeks because they really didn't know as much about the DNS and had to go away and do all their research. Um, and as we go on this journey, you know, we really did treat year 1, uh, 2025 as our pilot. um and are in the process now of implementing changes based on feedback that we've received. Um and that's really in three key buckets. Um so we had the expert advisory panel and we've now interviewed them and and involved them in their feedback in how things went. So a big learning we have is about how the application form translates into the assessment. So um it wasn't always clear in the questions we were asking what principles were being assessed. So the advisory panel found that they had to read between the lines somewhat in how how they were drawing on the principles to assess the answers as a whole. Um so we're looking at whether we can be more we can be clearer by answer by answer um what principles that we're looking for in in the assessment and indeed how that spurts out on the other end as well into a statement of work because there's then been quite a lot of work post the decision um to create that statement of work where the successful applicants have been able to then you know say exactly what their the funding is for to attach that to their contracts. Um, and we think that we could really streamline that a lot a lot better through the application process. So, while we might compromise some of the simplicity that we initially started to introduce by saying you can just throw a link in, you can just say whatever you like, um, we do think that some of the work up front to give the application process through um, decision- making into statement of work more structure uh, will help us better. Um and then the advisory panel just get have basically said that they really think it's gone down very well and they they've played quite a big role in outreach um within their own communities taking this to events speaking doing that outreach for us to make sure that we're reaching the right people. Um so they also said it would be good to have a a larger a longer window so that there's that time and scope to to build in um more awareness amongst people that might be applying. The second big bucket that we have in terms of our learning um that we've been looking at is the applicants. So both successful and successful. Um we've been asking their feedback on how it felt to apply um how they heard about the the opportunity um what they'd like to see improved in terms of the process and the wider community as well. So just like going to Fost uh we're we're planning a few other events. So RIPE and OAR for example in May. um we want to just be part of this community and um uh continue to to be transparent and and open with our learning. Um and another area that we're exploring mostly via Kalin who's um and uh with probable was previously Linux Foundation. He's been connecting us up with the academic community as well. So the likes of the Oxford Internet Institute so that we could potentially be doing some uh academic uh analysis uh to to to put some rigor onto the data that we've collected so far. So in our um typically in our uh social impact work, we have a third-party eval monitoring evaluation partner. So they're independent from Nominette. So when any learning is shared or reflected on they are sort of independent and and work separately from us. So you often get a much more open and honest conversation even in the dynamics of how we are as a funer that we always like to reflect on. So um we're just we're still in the process of of working that out. Um in terms of evaluating the success and impact of the pro projects it themselves um we also have uh we we feel this tension between wanting to keep things simple and light touch on people that are doing this work but also ensuring that we are doing our diligence and we're accountable for the funds that we have and that we have that commitment to learning. So we've also designed um instead of having people fill out lots of log frames and monitoring valuation forms which I've come myself from the charity sector and it used to be a real pain and every donor wanted something different. Um we are doing it at the moment just on the basis of interviews. So a short 45minut informal chat at the beginning and at the end um to talk about the changes that the funding's enabled um the impact that it's had and contextualizing that in the geopolitical environment. Um and then the final one which I think is really critical is our internal stakeholders. So we've had to work very closely with communications teams, digital experts, um our own DNS um experts within Nominette as well as our kind of procurement, finance, legal teams. Um so we've held a we held a a really fascinating washup. We use lots of virtual post-it notes um and a uh thinking in in the weeds of the detail of how we can make our offer uh clearer um more easy to understand um what what other things we're prepared to publish like publishing that monitoring and evaluation detail um being more offering more clarity in dates. We know that developers don't like coming soon. Um so avoiding that as much as possible. Um and just trying to make sure that we're reflecting and uh implementing changes. Um and now that we have successful applicants, we also think that is a further tool that we can use to tell that story. So that transparency in how those um projects met the criteria, met the principles um and hopefully kind of indicate um what would make for a successful application in in future rounds. So, we're doubling the funds and it will be launched um in towards the end of April, beginning of May. Um and we're hoping for a bigger application window for activities to start in September 26. And as I say, we've got 3 years worth of funding now. At the moment, um we we're likely to only announce one year's worth, but it might be that you can then apply for an extension and then in a future year, we could say you can apply for multiple years. And we will have a track now where previously you had to be an uh an entity to be eligible. We will have a track that individual maintainers under a certain threshold of budget uh will be able to apply. I feel like I've spoken far too much. Um you've all got my email. I'll write it as well in the chat. Um so if you wanted to follow up with me separately, I'm really delighted. But otherwise, I'm really keen on your thoughts like your reflections. Um oh, and already got a question there. We got 33 applications. So, actually, I was really pleased. Uh I thought we were going to get about 12 because we're a new kid on the block and I wasn't sure uh whether whether we would be known and whether we would get outreach instead of the right list list serves. But I think that 33 felt really good, really positive, but also really manageable for the first time that you're trying to run a fund. And we wanted to put every single applicant to our expert advisory panel. So we didn't do any only very basic eligibility shortlisting. So you know projects that were evidently not meeting the criteria um were were excluded from that but they all liked seeing every every application and and I think 33 was probably pushing the limits of what we were asking of them to review. Uh Alexandra I can see your hand. >> Yes. Uh thank you very much Amy for the uh nice insights and uh presentation. So uh really a great initiative. So, uh I had a question um about this process you were describing um before you basically make uh the application for open. So you described that at the beginning you did some research and basically pre-selected organizations which you invited for a application. Uh so based on which methodologies did you do the research? So was it kind of I don't know mining repositories or like Yeah, I I I'm interested a bit about some more details of this um research going on for selecting these um right organizations. >> Yes. So sorry I should be really clear that that's what we've traditionally done. So when we've done funding on digital inclusion or uh digital skills working with young people in their digital lives, we've employed organizations to do both fieldbased um sort of uh desk based research to look at reports and um map uh different stakeholders but also conduct interviews. So with government stakeholders with well-known um uh organizations in that space and basically we'll often do an analysis of the certain levers of the theory of change that we believe needs to to occur so that then we can identify the organizations that we want to invite to submit their proposals to us. So, a really good example of that is connected to our countering online harm fund, which is uh work we've been doing to take all the nasties off the internet. And there's some um work we did with public um I can share a link with you and it kind of maps the moves that we really anticipated around the need for cross- sector collaboration um the need for academic organizations to work with civil society groups um and and the need to think systemically rather than uh preventatively uh on some of these this work juxtapose that however with this nominate DNS fund which is the first time we've done an open call. So we we did do conduct this research with Demos to help us say how what level should this be launched? What are our options position with our board to say should this be about human rights and positioning this as a very much connected to values? Should this be about DNS skills and the pipeline of who's coming to this space or should we just launch a fund that's about the very basic maintainers of this work? and we centered on that final one. >> Okay. Okay. >> And in the end was an open call. I can actually um show you the uh I I hid it from my um presentation, but I can show you. This is what we this is how we would sort of went about it. So it's got like um can send this link to you. So it's a a mapping that we did of all the different organizations um multistakeholder organizations, tech companies, funders and then selected um a sample of those to interview to best understand the system. And it basically found lack of diverse funding and profit driven uh companies providing funding. >> Cool. Very interesting. >> Yes. Thank you so much Amy and um sorry Don and Paul. Um but I my question was around um we you talked about the being lightweight in terms of monitoring these projects or having some idea of okay what's the effect of the funding and being accountable for the funds um and so I think your current um approach is to have a 25minut interview before and after the funding and I was wondering what are the main questions that you would be asking there or if there's even a set list of questions or it's more about their experience of the funding. Um, and then maybe the one before the funding happened is maybe just them explaining the project and the different questions that you are asking in the assessment part. So, I was just wondering if you have a set of questions there um that you'd like to ask from these projects. >> I thought you would ask this. So, this is the questions. Oh, it's a 45inut um interview. Can you read this? Okay. Should I zoom in >> just a little bit? Maybe. Thank you. >> Uh a collaborative conversation, not an audit, to understand the current state from the perspective of the people involved. And then at the end, we plan for a second interview to explore your experience so we can improve. Um, so it starts on the individual level. Personally, how would you describe your role, the workload of your project you contribute to? What does your day-to-day week look like? Um, what's the one thing you're hoping this funding will change for you? Um, how would you describe your current work life balance and those of your current maintainers? Um, then a section dedicated to the contribution and of the project. So, it's about the core objectives, ambition. Uh what would you describe as the current life stage of the project you're focused on? Are they an early growth or mature maintenance focused phase? Uh two to three most important things you hope to achieve which is like our kind of theory of change or definition of success. Um moving on to the kind of technical challenges and the projects that you're working on. What are your priorities for improvement? Describing the state of your documentation and is there something that would look like a win for you? We've got sections on social and community health. Uh is the workload manageable? What are the goals for you in the community with this funding? Uh economic and operational state. Um are you relying on volunteer efforts, donations, other sponsorships? Um what are the operational costs that you have and are there any risks that you see integrating this funding in? And then stepping out a bit further to look at the ecosystem, how it fits within your wider DNS open source ecosystem, your dependents, your collaborators, and any partnerships that you hope the funding might help you build or strengthen. And then we're talking about some metrics. Now, we all know that funding numbers of things uh counting numbers of things only gives a very small um part of a story. Um uh but but we think it is important to you know think about are there things we can measure uh around active users, maintainers, active contributors. Um so the aim is to do this uh now and then repeat uh once the projects are completed and uh analyze for change. >> Nice. Thank you so much. Amy >> Paul, do you want to go ahead? Yeah, sure. Uh, thanks very much for the really uh interesting presentation, Amy. Um, full disclosure, I work at the Sovereign Tech Agency, so I know Mo and obviously know Killian as well and can remember some of the back and forth trying to set up the partnership. Um, but really happy to see uh the fund off the ground. Uh, and also really thrilled to see like how you're approaching um questions of impact because obviously I think there's, you know, uh, areas of shared interest there. Um I had two kind of uh questions that were related to this. Um one of the things that we found uh particularly with the sovereign tech fund uh as a public benefit company if you like is that we operate to uh kind of um yeah calendar year budget planning. Um, and sometimes that budget planning doesn't necessarily align particularly well with the sort of realities of open source communities that are very dynamic and sometimes need to, you know, adjust um their project management or their work packages uh in light of what's happening within their communities. Whereas, you know, as a kind of bureaucratic entity, we need we have certain reporting requirements. Um I wondered if you'd had any sort of instances where there's a tension between um the funer and funee relationship uh in your work so far um because of the kind of respective nature of the two I guess. Um and then relatedly um I find it really interesting that you're doing the the these kind of lightweight interviews before and after. Um, and I wondered um just was that a that was a consideration from the beginning, right, to to sort of put the interviews at the beginning and end of the process, right? And who who does it? Is it a technologist or is it someone from your kind of uh social impact team? >> Thanks so much, Paul. Um, just writing that down. Okay. Um so yeah very good question on the first I find um this to be a real sticking point for uh the the financial year that we are uh attached to in terms of getting money out of the door if that makes sense. So our financial year runs from the end of March for one year. Um and often our activities start to kick kick off in April. Um and then you have and then you have quite a lot of work in terms of all right when when should we schedule the the window for applications? When should we when should we get these things signed off? And we're always a little bit over ambitious in thinking oh that will you know signing a contract that should take a what a few weeks. No sometimes it you know and we have to allow for more time. Um but what we then have is because we've budgeted for that fund in that financial year, the activities or the the signature of that contract has to happen within that financial year. It's a case of use or lose it. So um we do we do struggle with that and I think we do have um a lot of pressure then on the the the applicants the successful applicants to shoehorn some of their activities into our funding structure um just to make sure it gets done but I think that there are ways around it. So something we have done with our counting online harm fund for example is to to um get sign off for 3 years worth of funding. So you're not doing this kind of um not only are you then offering more sustainable funds but you can you can look more into the future and allocate that budget according to when that fund is needed across those financial years. um and and something that then gives more certainty and less of this kind of squeeze to quickly get something through and and signed off. Um I think the other thing is uh I was going to say was uh it just um our learning for next year is working backwards from when there's going to be sufficient time for delivery of projects within a certain financial year as well. So that should be on us to put put um our emphasis on bringing that application window forward so that the activities can fit within the financial year rather than um not. So there are just some things that we can't avoid. But the other thing to say is we can get around it too. It's not like it it goes into the abyss. Like sometimes we're underspent and it just means that the next year we have to make a case for our board to up the funding. It's still in the bank account. It's still there. Um and we also have had um in our social impact work some strategies like we've been working with a really cool organization which um is called the charities aid charity aid foundation and you can basically put financial a financial uh donation. So it has to be to a charity. So it couldn't be just to an open source organization. It was some of some of the organizations we've funded are charities. But as long as you're in under UK law funding a charity, you can almost like a little squirrel squirrel that there and that way um you can transfer that into a future financial year as well. So there's ways that we can manage our finances to do better and more effective planning. But I think overall, Paul, I would just say I really relate to that sense of funders being under financial year restrictions based on our financial audits and how things run. um how we mitigate the impact of the pressure of that going then onto our applicants and I think it's something that we we need to learn more about and lean more into because it is often a case of okay quick get the money out the door um so I can really relate to that. Um your second question was about the lightweight interviews. So yeah, definitely was um something we worked very closely with Kalin on because of his passion for academic communities and measurement um and uh set that up from the beginning. Um and at the moment it's going to be with our social impact team. So I'm obviously very conscious of those power dynamics that um we want to have a cut through and have an honest conversation. Um and it might be that for future years we we do look at an independent evaluator such as in focus that we work for that work with us currently on our social impact programs. So they manage all of our kind of independent evaluations. Um and again the involvement of the academic community. So Oxford Internet Institute for example, we would love to um explore some conversations about how we apply more rigor to that. Um but at the moment it wouldn't be a te a technology person because turns out DNS skills are very very sought after and um the the experts that we have borrowed their time in terms of helping us set this up and evaluate and then define statements of work um has been really really precious. So we also just need to be conscious of that. So it will be our our social impact team. But I I welcome your your feedback on ways that you've done that as part of the sovereign tech fund and if there are things that you think work better than others. >> Yeah, happily. Um I mean I think uh others in the the call will know one of the things we're trying to work on uh at SDA um and more particularly measuring the SGF program um is a balance of qualitative and quantitative approaches because we can take advantage of the fact that so much uh data is just out there by virtue of it being open source and there's already you know um a really wellestablished uh kind of conceptualization and theorizing around like metrics in open source development particularly thinking here of chaos obviously um and we can apply them um in uh different project context as measures of like outcome measurements really. Um and that means that we don't have to necessarily kind of um burden projects with like extra reporting or anything like that. We can just you know kind of run these analysis. But what's crucial there is actually having an understanding for the context and what the goal of the project was and allowing for um if you like um the heterogeneity and the complexity of a given project. Um so there will be other funding sources. So what we're trying to do is complement that quantitative approach then with um the actual project reports themselves >> and then uh testimonials um from maintainers in interviews and like I think the the big problem that we face particularly because we've got like multiple programs and lots of different types of work that's being contracted and lots of different types of projects. is that there isn't obviously a kind of like universal measurement or indicator for our impact. So we have to contextualize it and build to it. We can do kind of counterfactual things with synthetic data but that will always be uh kind of um blind to context to some degree. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's really helpful. I mean my specialism and previous work in this area has been very social science. So I'm used to hard to measure things. Um but I'm I'm really open to ideas of like are there standards and alignments in things that we can be measuring on in terms of the health of the ecosystem and the you know the impact of funding and not least that it it paints a picture that helps secure this funding for future um and ensures that we're constantly involved in that learning loop and improving as we go. So, um, I'm I'm I'm really keen to to learn more as I learn more about this space. So, uh, really hope to keep the channels open. >> Yeah, definitely love to have a chat sometime. That'd be great. >> Nice. And Amy, you're welcome to any of our working group meetings. We have one every two weeks. Um actually I think the next time it will be either be Paul you presenting right on some of the SDA work um or Abby press coming in and and um presenting if they're available. anyone else has any other questions or Amy if you have any questions to us we will be kind of finishing close to um 10 minutes before the hour but just let us know uh I would love to thank you for the invite I think um very much wearing the learning hat so um whatever we can do to align I think um I suppose um my question really has just been about um outreach to make sure that we are not only inviting you know building awareness because we're not used to doing open calls. um how we make sure that this is really transparently open and also um meets the needs is tailored to the kind of diverse needs of of people in making for a really inclusive and accessible application process. Um and also I think what I've been really learned from from Mo in particular uh who was previously with with sovereign tech agency was the the importance of transparency in decision- making so that it's really evident you know we've just announced today and we're trying to do a lot of things with a lot of messaging around who we funded why we've funded why is the DNS important why is open source important what does that mean for some of our stakeholders um but also in like this is why this project's been selected over another and being really transparent in that. So these are just like open discussion questions that I'm really interested in particularly as we sort of transition into getting ready to launch a second round and oh we're not calling it a round we're calling an application window because there's a whole thing called rounds with IAN going for um TLDDS and bidding for that. So we're not calling it rounds, it's calling it application window. >> Yeah. Nice. It's great to see funders being this committed I think to some of these pr principles that they have set out as well as being transparent about them. And it's great to hear. Um I wish all of the funders would do that. But yes, I on the agenda the only thing I have is a reminder for all things of open. Um, there's a call for proposals deadline which is the 31st of March. Um, but I don't think we have any other reminders, but let me know if there are. Okay. If not, then thank you so much, Amy, for being here. Hope to see you in some of our next sessions. I think everyone enjoyed the presentation. Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye., CHAOSS Funding Impact WG, March 25 2026, YouTube, 01kp8g0e0gc8p0w2y33nr1tww5.