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In 2024, in line with our guiding principles of equity and participatory approach, and as part of our strategy to share leadership with institutions in the regions where datasets are created, we partnered with the African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS) and Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial (CENIA) to serve as the first two Lacuna Fund Hubs.  

In this capacity, ACTS and CENIA will manage regional and global grantmaking, disseminating requests for proposals and resulting datasets, facilitating Technical Advisory Panel review and selection, and providing technical assistance and capacity building to grantees. In 2024, ACTS will support the Health RFP (Antimicrobial Resistance) and CENIA will support the Language RFP (Natural Language Processing). 

ACTS and CENIA are committed to Lacuna Fund’s mission to get resources to data scientists, researchers, and social entrepreneurs to create, expand, or unlock training and evaluation datasets to solve urgent problems in their communities. They both have continental and global networks that will enable them to share calls for datasets widely and connect grantees and their datasets to potential data users. 

To be eligible for funding, organizations must:   

• Be either a non-profit entity, research institution, for-profit social enterprise, or a team of such organizations. Individuals must apply through an institutional sponsor. Partnerships are strongly encouraged as a way to strengthen collaboration and maximize the benefits derived from the use of the datasets, but only the lead applicant will receive funds.  
• Have a mission supporting societal good, broadly defined.   
• Be headquartered in the country or region where data will be collected.  Institutions based in other countries or regions can apply as partners of the lead institution.  As stated above, only the lead applicant will receive funds.
• Have all necessary national or other approvals to conduct the proposed research. The approval process may be conducted in parallel with the grant application, if necessary. Approval costs, if any, are the responsibility of the applicant.  
• Have the technical capacity – or the ability to build this capacity through a partnership described in the proposal – to conduct dataset labeling, creation, aggregation, expansion, and/or maintenance, including the ability to apply best practice and established standards in the specific domain (e.g. antimicrobial resistance; natural language processing) to allow high quality AI/ML analytics to be performed by multiple entities. 

For eligibility requirements specific to the 2024 RFPs, please see the “Open Requests for Proposals” section below. 

Lacuna Fund uses an open solicitation process, conducting requests for proposals (RFPs) for projects aligned with Fund goals in a particular domain on a fixed timeframe. In other words, we are not accepting proposals for every domain at all times, but when we are, solicitations are open to any applicant who meets the eligibility criteria.  

Initial screen: RFPs are generally open for 45 days or more. Proposals are submitted through an online portal. After the conclusion of an RFP, the Secretariat and partners perform an initial screen for qualifications and eligibility criteria.   

Panel review: Following the initial screen, a Technical Advisory Panel of domain experts review proposals based on selection criteria, then meet to make selections. Technical Advisory Panel members who review proposals for an RFP are not eligible to submit or collaborate on proposals for that call.   

Notification and revisions: After the Technical Advisory Panel meets, the Secretariat will finalize selections or communicate any needed revisions to potential recipients. All communication and revisions will be finalized through the applicant portal.   

Post-award confirmation: Upon notification of selection, recipients will be prompted to submit due diligence and financial information through the applicant portal.  

Potential grantees should not begin work until a contract has been signed. More details on expectations and support after a grantee begins work are available through the portal for current grantees. 

Lacuna Fund has previously funded machine learning datasets in the following domains: 

• 2020 – Natural Language Processing (NLP) 
• 2020 – Agriculture (Ag) 
• 2021 – Natural Language Processing (NLP) 
• 2021 – Agriculture (Ag) 
• 2021 – Equity & Health (E&H) 
• 2022 – Climate & Health (C&H) 
• 2022 – Climate & Energy (C&E) 
• 2023 – Sexual, Reproductive, and Maternal Health and Rights (SRMHR) 
• 2023 – Climate & Forests (C&F) 

You can find past funding opportunities here. 

Attend our Applicant Webinars for our two recently released RFPs (AMR & NLP) to learn more about the process and ask questions! Register for either – or both – below.

Recordings and slides from these webinars will be added below:

NLP Webinar: 

Recordings:

• English: https://vimeo.com/982223215
• French: https://vimeo.com/982223384
• Portuguese: https://vimeo.com/982223670
• Spanish: https://vimeo.com/982223853 (Note:  Spanish interpretation starts at 3:06.)

Slides:

• English
• French
• Portuguese
• Spanish

AMR Webinar:

• Recordings coming soon.

Antimicrobial Resistance: 

• June 27, 2024 – Applications open 
• July 10, 2024 – Applicant Webinar (Register here! Monday, 10 July 2024 – 12pm UTC) 
• July 12, 2024 – Deadline to submit questions 
• July 29, 2024 – Answers Posted 
• August 23, 2024 – Proposals due

 Natural Language Processing: 

• June 27, 2024 – Applications open 
• July 9, 2024 – Applicant Webinar (Register here! Monday, 10 July 2024 – 2pm UTC)
• July 12, 2024 – Deadline to submit questions 
• July 29, 2024 – Answers Posted 
• August 23, 2024 – Proposals due

2024 Health RFP: Mentorship Opportunity with ACTS

Lacuna Fund is pleased to partner with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) to offer mentorship opportunities for applicants. ACTS mission Is to strengthen the capacity and policies of African countries and institutions to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. The mentorship program aims to provide support to the applicants in submitting quality applications. 

On a one-time basis for this Lacuna Fund call, ACTS will offer applicants from around the world a special opportunity to join the mentorship program where applicants and teams will be matched with a mentor. 

Interested applicants are encouraged to apply for a mentorship session after they have a detailed outline or draft proposal and at least 4 weeks before the proposal due date, by 26th July 2024. We will do our best to identify a mentor for everyone who requests one, but we cannot guarantee that mentors will be available for all. Mentors will be assigned on a first come, first-served basis. All applicants are expected to read and abide by the ACTS code of ethics. 

Apply for mentorship with ACTS: https://acts-net.org/about/mentorship-programme 

2024 Language RFP: Mentorship & Matchmaking Opportunity with Masakhane 

Lacuna Fund is pleased to partner with Masakhane Research Foundation (MRF) to offer mentorship and matchmaking opportunities for NLP applicants. MRF is a grassroots organization whose mission is to strengthen and spur NLP research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. MRF’s goal is for Africans to shape and own these technological advances towards human dignity, well-being and equity, through inclusive community building, open participatory research and multidisciplinarity. 

For this Lacuna Fund call for proposals, MRF will offer applicants from Africa and Latin America a special opportunity to join the MRF community and match those who are interested with a mentor who will review your draft proposal and discuss avenues for strengthening it. Interested parties may apply for a session with a mentor by filling out this Google Form with a brief description (250-words abstract) of the dataset proposal. Mentees can request different forms of assistance such as “discussing gaps in low-resource NLP,” “writing a research proposal,” and “preparing budgets.” Providing a detailed description will support matching applicants to mentors that are aligned in your interest area. Matching of mentors to mentees will be administered by our Partner Matchmaking and Mentorship Associates who will organize several workshops to bring together applicants who are working in related fields (e.g. linguists and NLP researchers) and coordinate and organize communication sessions between relevant groups.  Through this process, we will also provide match-making opportunities for applicants to collaborate with each other to form project teams and submit proposals together.   

Interested applicants are encouraged to apply for a mentorship session at least 6 weeks before the proposal due date, by 15th July 2024. We will do our best to identify a mentor for everyone who requests one, but we cannot guarantee that mentors will be available for all. Mentors will be assigned on a first come, first-served basis. All applicants are expected to read and abide by the mentorship programme’s code of ethics and conduct.

Question and Answer Period 

All questions related to these RFPs should be submitted to secretariat@lacunafund.org. 

• For Antimicrobial Resistance questions, please write “Antimicrobial Resistance RFP 2024 Question” in the subject line. 

• For Natural Language Processing questions, please write “Natural Language Processing RFP 2024 Question” in the subject line. 

Questions submitted by the above deadlines (for both RFPs) will be de-identified and answered publicly by 29 July on the Lacuna Fund website in a document posted on the Apply page. 

Dataset Hosting and Documentation Guidance  

Lacuna Fund requires grantees to host datasets on a site that assigns a Digital Object Identified (DOI) and quantifies the number of landing page views and downloads for the dataset. We also ask grantees to include a metadata file and datasheet along with the funded dataset. This guidance provides additional details for applicants to reference in preparation of their proposals. Click here to view Lacuna Fund’s Dataset Hosting and Documentation Guidance. 

Resources for Applicants 

Visit our Resources page to view resources we have curated for applicants. There are resources available specific to AMR and NLP. 

• Health Resources (Antimicrobial Resistance) 

• Language Resources (Natural Language Processing)