Code for Science and Society logo

Guiding Questions Towards a Strong Event Fund Application

Code for Science & Society’s Event Fund supports organizations to run events focused on tools, practices, and communities in research-driven open data science from domestic and international applicants across domains and sectors. You can learn more about our cohorts of grantees here. We want to share some guiding questions as you prepare your proposal.

In addition to these guiding questions prepared by the Selection Committee, applicants are encouraged to make use of resources that provide information on and support for best practices in conference planning, and to review the frequently asked questions about the application process.


How will your event broaden participation in research-driven open data science?

Think about how you can intentionally include participants and speakers from historically under-represented populations and how you might use funds to incentivize and maximize their participation (e.g. through registration waivers or honoraria). Show that you think about diversity along multiple axes in your community, and that you are considering how to meaningfully broaden participation. Successful applications often come from teams of diverse applicants who can speak directly to the needs of historically marginalized people in their community. Make sure that local events are designed with and for the benefit of local people/community, and event organizers have thought about how they share ownership and leadership for the events with their participants.

How will your event be inclusive and accessible?

Show us in your proposal that you’ve thought about how to welcome participants with different levels of technical experience, accessibility needs, or familiarity with the data science community. If you’d like to reach a global audience, consider staggering the schedule across time zones or having a combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities to welcome participants around the globe. Consider using part of your budget to cover diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting, translation services, professional closed captioning, registration waivers, and / or childcare costs.

Are your goals reasonable given the timeframe of your event?

We want to fund events with a high likelihood of success and concrete goals, so show us that you’ve thought about what you are reasonably able to accomplish during your event, describe attainable goals for community engagement before and after the event, and share how you’ll assess if you’ve been able to accomplish the goals that you’ve laid out.

Have you thought about the short- and long-term impact of your event?

The success of an event can be measured by both short- and long-term outcomes. How will you know if your event is successful? What impact might you see in the months after your event? How can you measure or capture this? Think about how you define success on both of these timescales and what evidence you can collect to measure the immediate and long-term impact of the event on participants.

How do you know that your community needs and will participate in your proposed event?

Show us how well you know your community! What sort of surveys (formal or informal) have been conducted to highlight community members’ needs? What gaps exist and how can your event fill them? How has your event been thoughtfully planned to promote participation?


If you have further questions about grant eligibility, scope of activities, or the application questions, stop by one of the two informal “ask me anything” information sessions that will be held during the open RFP period. There will be no preferential treatment towards an application based on attendance (or non-attendance) of these sessions.

  • Tuesday, December 7 at 4:30 PM - 5:15 PM Pacific (Global timezone conversions here) - REGISTER
  • Wednesday January 5 at 9:00 AM - 10:15 PM Pacific (Global timezone conversions here) - REGISTER

If you cannot attend a session and have further questions, email them to conferencefund [at] codeforsociety.org.

Featured Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash