Funding meets targeted strategic and operational support — that's the idea that has driven the IOI fund for Network Adoption, because whilst financial investment is essential, we’ve learned something critical from our research and years of working with the open research community: to truly scale and endure, projects need more. They need governance support, sustainability planning, strategic guidance, and operational support. These often-overlooked components can make the difference between a short-lived initiative and one that is sustainable and resilient.
So we built something that delivers both: much-needed long-term funding, paired with targeted strategic guidance and operational support.
Who we will be working with
We recently announced the first two grantees of the Fund: LA Referencia and UbuntuNet Alliance — two regional networks facilitating open research across Latin America and Africa. Each network will receive up to US$1.5 million in funding, paired with hands-on implementation support from IOI to provide critical capacity and a strategic partner to accelerate the implementation of open infrastructure across the communities they serve to expand access, visibility, and collaboration in research.
What makes the Fund different?
What differentiates the Fund from traditional grant arrangements is the fact that these aren’t just fiscal relationships — they are partnerships aimed at amplifying the impact of every funding dollar by pairing financial investment with targeted and tailored strategic support.
LA Referencia and UbuntuNet Alliance bring to the fore years of engagement with research communities in Latin America and Africa, and we are eager to learn from and with them. Through the Fund, IOI will share its extensive experience in community governance design, sustainability and business modelling, community and partnership development, and funder diversification with the grantees. IOI has spent years building sustainability expertise with infrastructure providers across the ecosystem. And we have built this into the Fund itself — integrating the expertise directly and partnering with grantees from day one.
The two grantees — LA Referencia and UbuntuNet Alliance — will also be a part of a learning cohort that will facilitate peer sharing of insights and resources. Our work with communities and our research has highlighted that many open networks and infrastructures operate in silos, missing valuable insights that could emerge from collaborative knowledge sharing. While contexts may vary, the underlying challenges are often similar. We aim to facilitate collective intelligence sharing to strengthen South-South collaborations between the networks, expanding access, visibility and research collaboration.
“When we designed the Fund, IOI’s goal was to provide holistic support that goes beyond traditional grant funding models. We want to magnify the impact of a time-bound funding infusion by providing projects with targeted business and governance scaffolding that many open infrastructures lack. In our previous work, we have co-developed tailored business models, sustainability plans, and funder diversification roadmaps with open infrastructure clients. We believe in reciprocal learning – as much as we anticipate sharing our expertise in these areas, we equally look forward to learning from LA Referencia and UbuntuNet Alliance teams and the communities they serve,” remarked Katherine Skinner, IOI’s Director of Programs.
The difference the partnerships will make
This is what being bold looks like in project funding. IOI is reimagining the way open infrastructure is funded. We are demonstrating that funding can be more powerful when it’s paired with the capacity building that makes projects sustainable and resilient. And this is just the beginning. The projects will launch in early 2026 and we will be sharing what we learn along the way. If the model works the way we think it will, it could change the way the ecosystem thinks about funding open infrastructure.
Stay tuned to see what happens when funding meets expertise.