Thanks for your interest in the long term health of the PSF’s grants program. In our blog post on this topic we did cover how the budget was exceeded, “Since announcing Grants program changes in December 2024, grant requests have grown about 40% over last year.” The reason for the pause is that the number of requests and the amounts being asked for exceeded our budget. We have no control over the number of requests we receive, it is a function of community enthusiasm (which we appreciate but is sadly not tied to donor enthusiasm.)
Next year we are moving to quarterly review, “PSF Staff will research, plan, and implement a quarterly review and awarding approach for the PSF Grants Program to provide an equitable and financially sustainable process.” so that we can award to groups across the year without disproportionately leaving the events that fall later in the year without support.
I’m happy to hear suggestions on how to raise more money for our grants program. And for those of you who would rather support individual events, I think nearly every event in our eco-system would welcome financial support or leads on sponsors for their events.