No UK small-grants vehicle for public-interest internet technology (NGI analogue)

The EU's Next Generation Internet initiative distributed ~€140m to 1,200+ projects in small, low-bureaucracy cascade grants (largely via NLnet) for privacy tech, open protocols and digital commons; then the Commission dropped NGI from the Horizon Europe 2025 work programme. UK developers had already lost easy access post-Brexit, and no domestic substitute exists at the €5k-€50k grant size where most independent maintainers and public-interest tools live. UK civil-society funders explicitly treat technology as unfundable infrastructure (Careful Industries, December 2025), and Nesta/National Lottery digital funds have closed. Careful Industries has floated a 'Civic Technology Fund' concept; nobody has built it.

Small fast grants are the proven mechanism that produced much of Europe's privacy and protocol innovation. With both the EU spigot and UK philanthropy closed, an entire tier of public-interest tooling now has no funder in the UK at all.

A pooled DSIT-philanthropy fund making £10k-£75k grants with NLnet-style lightweight process, targeting privacy-enhancing tech, open protocols, accessibility and digital commons; could be hosted by an existing intermediary (e.g. ODI or Nesta) to avoid new-institution overhead.

// Build now: First artefact: philanthropic pilot grant round with NLnet-style process hosted at ODI/Nesta; DSIT co-funding can follow.

Both the EU cascade-grant spigot and UK philanthropy have just closed, leaving small public-interest tooling with no domestic funder; the NLnet model is proven and cheap to host.