Winter 2025 update on new grants

Winter 2025 update on new grants

By Thomas Vink, 14th January 2025

Illustration by: Laura Lopez & Berenice Alvarez

In November 2024, we decided on our latest group of grant recipients, approving 10 grants worth just under EUR 400,000 supporting litigation to advance digital rights in Europe. We also approved funding of EUR 65,000 to support additional instances of two ongoing litigation track projects. 

In total in 2024, including additional funds for ongoing grants, we supported 25 projects worth almost EUR 900,000. Since 2018, we’ve now made over 120 grants worth around EUR 4.5 million.

The 10 latest grants were selected from a total of 50 applications, our most popular call for applications yet, beating the previous highest amount of 34 applications in 2023. We have received more applications in the last two years than in the previous 4.5 years combined (2018-2022 = 148 applications, 2023-2024 = 153 applications).

The 50 applications were spread across 25 different countries, while the 10 latest grants are spread across 8 countries: our first ever grants in Albania and Malta, alongside funding in France, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Poland and Spain. Additionally, there is one regional pre-litigation project, and one grant supporting litigation at the European Commission. 

The seven new grants supporting litigation relate to:

  • Lack of access to services by Roma and elderly communities due to digitalisation.
  • Collective action led by IUS Omnibus against the illegal use of sensitive personal data by the Flo Health tracking app.
  • Challenging the illegal collection of personal data to influence voter preferences.
  • Gaining algorithmic transparency to support the rights of gig workers.
  • Tackling discrimination and other human rights violations caused by a welfare fraud risk-scoring algorithm.
  • The unlawful sharing of data with other countries resulting in people of Muslim background being baselessly included on terrorist watchlists.
  • Center for Intimacy Justice taking litigation utilising the Digital Services Act to tackle gender-based censorship of sexual and reproductive health content by Meta.

The three new grants supporting pre-litigation work relate to:

  • Holding a big tech platform accountable for censorship and complicity in genocide of a marginalised community.
  • Human rights violations related to the use of data scraping on websites used by sex workers.
  • Data protection and data transfer issues for transgender people caused by authorities when changing their legal gender.

As the projects are made public and progress we will share more information about the actors involved and outcomes of the litigation through our case study page

29 of the 50 applications received were for litigation track support and 21 for pre-litigation research support. The largest grant amount this round was EUR 68,000 and the smallest grant amount was EUR 10,000. The average size of a litigation grant this round was EUR 41,000 and for pre-litigation it was EUR 30,000.

We were again excited to see so many new groups – 23 of the 50 applications were from first-time applicants, and 27 applications from organisations yet to receive a grant from DFF. Four of the ten grants this round went to groups that had previously received DFF funding, however all of these grants are supporting litigation following the completion of pre-litigation research that we also funded. The remaining six organisations are all first-time grantees. This takes the total number of organisations or individuals we have supported up to 74.

Looking back to 2018 when we started grantmaking, we have so far received concept note/eligibility requests from around 230 different organisations and individuals, and full applications from 166 different organisations and individuals. Of the 166 applicants to submit full applications, 74 (45%) have received at least one grant.

Looking ahead

Our latest call for applications runs until 17 February 2025, with another batch of grants to be approved by June 2025. Continuing plans to transform our grantmaking, in this call we are piloting a participatory decision-making process where all pre-litigation research applications will be assessed by a group of community peers, who will also make decisions about which applications to support, instead of DFF. For now, litigation applications will continue to be assessed with our standard process, where DFF decides which applications to approve.

In November 2024, we selected ten people to take part in the community group for the pilot. In the coming weeks we will publish the names of the people in the group and provide another update.

Later in 2025, we aim to open two new calls for applications in the following time periods:

  • May-July 2025
  • December 2025-February 2026

Remember to check out the resources on our website, including our application guides and litigation toolkit, to start thinking about or preparing a future application.