Nominet DNS Fund Application

Yes, as these tools can be crucial to ensuring the health and stability of DNS.

We’ll agree on a statement of work that defines deliverables and how they’ll be measured or quality assured before work begins. We’ll meet at the start, during and end of the project to check-in and monitor progress. 

No, we would not fund the same work you are already funded to do. 

We recognise that sometimes these types of projects receive funding from different sources. We would not fund activities that another funder is already paying for, however if you require further funding to complement the funding you’re applying for or there are dependencies on other funding sources, we ask that you indicate this in your application.

Yes, if you’ve got multiple projects in the works, then we welcome this. You can either submit multiple applications or group your projects into one form. Each submitted application is subject to maximum budget per eligibility criteria. 

Yes, we’re open to applications from both the UK and internationally, subject to a few restrictions such as sanctions.

You can apply for funding for existing and new projects, as long as they contribute to the stability of the foundations of the internet through DNS. We will prioritise projects which can evidence demand or use case over new projects. Please note our application principles which emphasise sustainability and contribution to public benefit.

We’re most interested in building strong foundations over uses or applications of DNS. We’re focused on making the internet more stable and resilient through DNS, and there are lots of ways to do that. We will be assessing applications on what will have the greatest impact, which will inform the scope or area. For example, if a smaller project addresses a significant risk to the internet, we’d be open to that. 

It’s likely we’ll make milestone-based payments. We’ll have a light system of quality assurance (QA) that enables you to pass from one milestone to the next, with some flexibility which will be determined in consultation with successful applicants.

We’ve done our best to make the application as quick and easy as possible to complete. It should take around 20 minutes to complete. You can also review the application questions in advance via a downloadable PDF so that you know what to expect upfront before clicking through the online submission form. 

We’d prefer to focus on supporting specific projects that have a tangible and measurable outcome. That doesn’t mean you can’t request funding for a key piece of maintenance, but it must be a distinct piece of work with real world impact.

While we don’t have an ideal price, we have a planned cap at £100,000 (around $135,000 / €115,000). We hope that by having no minimum this opens the opportunity for smaller, leaner projects.

Unfortunately, a long-term project like this is unlikely to be covered under the target time frame or lead to fundamental, foundational change in DNS. Our focus is on funding projects that make a tangible difference and so while it might be a complementary activity, applying for this alone would be out of scope.

Funding hardware ,must be justified by its purpose in aiding progress towards the goal of supporting a secure and resilient DNS. Performance or scalability testing is a good example of this. We would need to ensure key questions like maintenance, security and long-term ownership were addressed.

We wouldn’t want this to form the basis of an application. However, we understand that upskilling the next generation is a big challenge in the DNS space. Therefore, if a small part of the project involved upskilling, then we would consider funding this. Please indicate the relative amounts for training in your application or a breakdown of costs if relevant in the application question on your budget.

The most important thing is the project itself. We ultimately want to fund projects that deliver stability in the DNS ecosystem; so, this might include bringing others into a program historically run by one person, or democratising a codebase.

While the assumption is projects will be written in a modern language, we don’t have a list of languages you must use. It’s about appropriate language choice to support the stability and quality of the underpinnings of internet DNS. 

Yes, we don’t geographically discriminate (apart from in exceptional circumstances). Applicants mustn’t be based in regimes subject to UK sanctions, and mustn’t be listed on UK, EU, US, or UN sanctions lists, or subject to comprehensive UK security restrictions.

The Nominet DNS Fund is an operational software biased fund, so we won’t fund standalone research. As per the principles and applicability, there needs to be an evidenced demand, it needs to have public benefit value in deploying, and it needs to increase the overall stability and operability of the internet DNS. 

Yes potentially, if what’s proposed aligns with the principles and is related to the use and stability of the DNS.

Under the value for money principle, our advisory panel will make a judgment and recommendation based on the spend profile of what’s being suggested. Please indicate your upstream and downstream dependencies and any anticipated challenges to your budget over time. Within reason, we can be flexible to change and can build milestones into a contract to revise and review deliverables over a longer time horizon.

If there’s a focus on domain registration rather than core operational DNS, then that would fall outside our core body of interested work.

We run a baseline and an endline interview to take the burden off applicants filling out lots of forms, log frames and deliverables. This helps us analyse the different changes that have occurred. We then write interviews up into a report so that we can combine the learning.  

Beyond that, in terms of the actual milestone deliverables, we ask for either a short report or a link to the repository so we can review code that’s been developed and delivered.

We recently attended NetUK in July 2026, where we had a stall and some stickers related to the Nominet DNS Fund. We’ll be in Vienna at the IETF at the end of July and we’re also looking to be present in the DNS-OARC meeting in Vancouver in November. We’re going to be attending the San Francisco IETF remotely in November and we regularly have a presence at ICANN.

The closing date for applications is 17^th August at 9am BST and we’ll be conducting initial eligibility screening that week. Shortlisted applications that pass through eligibility screening will get sent to our advisory panel the week of 24^th August, where we’ll work on the initial recommendation and budget planning.  

We expect to inform successful applicants in September. We’ll work through October on contracting and setting up statements of work with delivery milestones. We imagine that delivery could begin around November.

Yes, we will be announcing new funding every year at least for the next three years.

It depends on your application and how interdependent those pieces are. Each application has a budget limit of £100,000 a year, so you would be limited by this limit if you put all activities in one application. 

If your projects are interdependent but could be modularised, you could indicate that in your form and say we could fund one, two or three or combination of these together. But equally, if they feel like they are relevant and standalone, they could warrant their own application.  

It’s worth having a conversation with us, or the Advisory Panel, as to where you should potentially focus your ask. Talk to us if you’ve got a dilemma about how best to request funding by emailing dnsfund@nominet.uk.

If you have a question, you can email dnsfund@nominet.uk. While we’re not able to give personalised feedback, we’ll do our best to steer you in the right direction. We’ll aim to publish any answers we offer here for transparency for all potential applicants.

RFCs are technical documents that define standards, protocols, and best practices for the Internet, including TCP/IP, HTTP, email formats, and security protocols.   

We would encourage you to be developing something that is RFC compliant. If you’ve identified a gap, we would encourage you to write a draft and get in touch with an appropriate working group at the IETF. While it’s unlikely we would fund the draft, please raise any queries with us.

It’s not currently in the functionality of a form that you can go in and save different version – once you hit submit, that’s submitted to us. While you can’t go back to revise submitted applications through our online form, if you submit and want to update something you wrote, please email us and we can send you a copy of your submission and replace your first application with a revised version.

There are a few known cases of single person teams maintaining critical infrastructure and we’re aware of the shrinking pipeline for the developer base of the existing DNS critical software. 

There will be lots of different opinions on the biggest challenges, which is why we work closely with our expert advisory panel who bring in diversity of thought and opinion about the DNS space. We evaluate proposals based on merit using the assessment principles, thinking about the public benefit, and seeking to evaluate each proposal based on what core need is being fulfilled in the DNS space. 

In future, we’re interested to look at the issues more systemically.

At the moment, there’s a question in the application where we just ask you to share your own policy with us, but we don’t currently have a policy.

Our financial years run 1^st April to 31^st March. So if you are awarded funding in November 2026, you have until March 2027 to spend Y1 funding. If you applied for 2 years funding, you would have a full year (April 2027 to March 2028) to spend Y2 funding. 

No, previously awarded funding does not count to the eligibility in this window.