Call for Applications: WILDLABS Community’s Boring Fund 2025 ($80,000 in grants)

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About Boring Fund

In response to overwhelming demand in 2024, WILDLABS have partnered again with Arm to provide more funding. In 2025, a total of $80,000 in grants will go to critical, foundational activities that help build a more resilient and effective conservation tech ecosystem, starting with the boring stuff.

This fund will support often-overlooked projects and initiatives in the sector that will benefit the wider conservation technology community. These include:

• Community management: Activities that engage and sustain active conservation technology communities through wildlabs.net and other communities of practice.
• Cybersecurity: Implementing cybersecurity measures to protect digital infrastructure, data, and communities, especially against emerging threats like Al bots.
• Data mobilisation: Curating historical data, labelling or managing large datasets, or increasing discoverability of data.
• Documentation and guidance: Publishing documentation and comprehensive guidance that is shareable and usable by the community.
• Expert intervention: Funding the participation of experts to enhance the collective knowledge of the conservation technology community on specific topics.
• Events: Organising webinars, in-person or virtual meetups, workshops, and other gatherings that foster learning and networking with the community.
• Knowledge transfer: Sharing expertise across teams, organizations, and communities.
• Maintaining existing technology: Supporting core, existing technology infrastructure to benefit the conservation technology sector and community. Note: The Boring Fund does not support building new features and components.
  Please apply to the WILDLABS Awards for support for this work.
• Self-led learning initiatives: Providing access to online courses, dedicated experts, certifications, or relevant literature.
• Technical debt management: Maintaining and improving technical infrastructure, servers, or backend systems that benefit communities of users.
• Training materials: Creating essential training resources such as online courses, instructional videos, or detailed guidelines.
• And much more, including other initiatives that contribute to the growth and sustainability of the conservation technology community.

• Sponsor Organisation: WILDLABS

Benefits of Boring Fund

Grant

• A total of $80,000 available
• The maximum amount per project is $12,500, but they encourage applications requesting smaller amounts. They acknowledge that not all essential solutions require large budget to make a big impact.

Boring Fund Requirements

They welcome applications for projects that may be considered "boring to fund" by traditional standards, as long as they address a relevant need within the conservation technology space.

They are looking for proposals that strengthen the core, often-overlooked components of the following conservation technologies:

• Al / Machine learning
• Bioacoustics
• Bio-loggers / Animal tracking
• Camera traps
• Data management and processing platforms (e.g., Movebank, Wildlife Insights, Zooniverse)
• GIS and remote sensing (satellite, multispectral, and thermal imagery, LiDAR)
• eDNA & genomics
• Mobile apps & citizen science platforms
• Non-Al computational tools (e.g., R, Python, statistical software)
• Networked sensors
• Protected area management tools (e.g., SMART, EarthRanger)
• Remote sensing & GIS
• UAVs / Drones

They will also consider applications that address at least one of the following conservation challenges:

• Biodiversity and/or environmental monitoring
• Captive breeding
• Citizen science
• Climate change / Resilience
• Habitat loss or destruction (e.g., deforestation)
• Endangered species & ecosystems
• Illegal or unsustainable fishing (IUU)
• Human-wildlife conflict and coexistence
• Invasive species
• Pollution
• Protected area management and planning
• Scientific research
• Species protection
• Wildlife crime / Illegal wildlife trade / Poaching

Application Date and Process

• Click on the link to the application website to apply.

Grant period timeline:

• Projects should begin by: October 2025
• Funds should be spent by: May 2026

Application Deadline

19 August, 2025

Scholarship Application Portal

View details of Boring Fund

Apply for Boring Fund