Updated Grant Application Info & Priority Areas for Funding Q+A
If you’ve been following our work of creating a vision for the organization and defining strategic goals, you may have wondered what this might mean for our grantmaking criteria. If that sounds familiar, then this blog post is for you!
We’ve just posted our new grantmaking goals, along with some priority areas for funding. To help provide an overview, here are answers to some of the big questions we anticipate our applicants will have. Read on, and of course, feel free to reach out any time with additional questions: giving@ardc.net.
Where can I find information about the updated criteria?
There are two main sources of information about the updated criteria:
- Apply for a Grant – provides an overview of our grantmaking categories and goals, as well as other general information about how to apply for a grant.
- Priority Areas for Funding – identifies some topics of interest, which we see as having a high impact for furthering our vision and supporting the future of amateur radio (AR) and digital communications (DC).
We have also provided some updates to our grant application instructions page to reflect these changes.
What’s changed for the grantmaking categories, goals, and eligibility?
Our three main grantmaking categories – Support and Growth of Amateur Radio, Education, and Research & Development – remain the same. Aside from some clarification with regard to preferred open source licenses, the eligibility criteria also remain the same.
The biggest difference is that our previous grantmaking goals are replaced with our strategic goals:
- Promoting learning: getting more people learning about AR and DC.
- Promoting experimenting: getting more people experimenting, innovating, and developing technology (in the context of AR and DC).
- Promoting doing: getting more people using new technology productively on more (and newer) bands, modes, and technologies (and other dimensions) within the context of AR and DC.
Additionally, we ask for clarification around how potential projects help to advance ARDC’s vision.
Ultimately, these changes are not a huge shift from our previous goals, but they do reflect the specific lens we’ll be using to evaluate potential projects.
What are the priority areas for funding, and are they the only kinds of projects ARDC plans to fund?
The priority areas of funding are:
You can find example projects for each of these categories on the Priority Areas of Funding page. There, we identified several project ideas – which include low-cost SDR transmitter kits, geostationary satellite projects, and curriculum connecting AR and computer networking using 44Net – all based on their capability to introduce people to the field, advance the state of the art, and teach relevant, forward-thinking skills. Importantly, we look for reproducibility and usability as key components for these projects.
These priority areas do not replace our existing open call. However, quality proposals in these project areas may receive priority over other proposals.
When will ARDC start reviewing proposals with these new criteria?
When we review applications from the current grantmaking window (which closes July 1, 2025), we’ll be reviewing them with the new goals and priority areas for funding in mind.
Will my active project be evaluated based on this new criteria?
Although we may look at existing projects through this new lens to gather data for ourselves, ARDC evaluates projects based on the goals stated in a project proposal and in light of the criteria used when that application was submitted.
If you have more questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
We know that our applicants put a lot of time and effort into their proposals. We are here to help you however we can, particularly as we make this transition. If you have questions, reach out any time: giving@ardc.net.
