Microsoft FOSS Fund

Microsoft’s FOSS Fund provides cash sponsorships to open source projects nominated and selected by Microsoft employees. It is an employee nomination program, not a public grant application: maintainers cannot submit an application themselves.

Project criteria and nomination. The project must be used by Microsoft, have an OSI-approved open source license, and have a way to receive funds acceptable to Microsoft’s procurement and legal teams; Microsoft says GitHub Sponsors is preferred. A project cannot be owned by a Microsoft employee. Microsoft employees and interns may nominate projects. During each round’s stated voting period, employees who contributed to an open source project can vote; Microsoft describes GitHub pull requests, issues and reviews as qualifying contributions, with a self-attestation route for other technical or non-technical contributions. Nominators are encouraged to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion.

Funding and availability. Microsoft’s repository says a quarterly fund distributes up to $12,500 across one or more projects and describes selected projects as receiving up to $12,500. It does not publish a typical award or allocation formula, so the amount for any project is uncertain. The repository says nominations are accepted daily and selections are made quarterly; its latest listed round is FOSS Fund 36 (March 2026). The public materials do not provide a maintainer application route, a direct public nomination form, decision timeline, or detailed payment terms.

See Microsoft’s FOSS Fund repository for criteria, process and recipient rounds, and its Open Source Ecosystem page for Microsoft’s current description of employee selection.