Ali Kazal (Unsplash License)
With funding from CZI, OLS launched the Seeds to Systems initiative in 2025 to support individuals and teams transitioning their open source or open science projects to the next stage. One of our core activities is the development of a research-based curriculum and training programme for established research initiatives, communities of practice, and volunteer-run research organisations.
As both our organisation and the projects within our community have matured, we have identified gaps in infrastructural support for community sustainability. The focus of Seeds to Systems is not only on individual capacity, but on the conditions that make sustained participation and project development possible, and the interventions that might address these gaps.
If Open Seeds (OLS’s flagship training program) focuses on early-stage development, Seeds to Systems extends that support as projects mature. This leads us to focus more closely on questions of sustainability, research funding, and grant readiness.
Our thinking around “grant readiness” builds on several months of reflection on how people and communities grow within open science and open source ecosystems. We explored an early articulation of the hidden curriculum during DISC 2023, and more recently, this thinking evolved through our work in the Seeds to Systems initiative and community discussions at DISC 2025 around systemic inequities in research funding.
Institutional hierarchies, language barriers, unequal collaborations, and differences in available infrastructure continue to limit access to funding, particularly for researchers from low-resource settings and marginalised groups. The shared recognition of these inequities as systemic barriers rather than skill gaps highlighted the need to expand the focus from grant writing to also examining the conditions that make it possible to even apply for funding, for example, access to networks, mentorship, and spaces where skills and practices can be developed and shared.
This led to two important directions. First, a focus on understanding the pathways of those who have learned to navigate the system: what experiences and patterns shape their trajectories, and which aspects of those journeys can be shared or developed through training. Second, the introduction of systems thinking as a way to identify leverage points: places within the funding ecosystem where targeted interventions could have a meaningful impact.
Much of the learning that enables someone to apply for funding happens well before the moment of application. Across our work this past year, we have been particularly interested in the less visible aspects of this process, for example, how people develop relationships, leadership skills, and expertise through participation in communities of practice.
In this sense, what is often framed as skills on “grant writing” is better understood as the outcome of a longer process of engagement with the broader science funding systems. Skills such as building relationships, articulating a project strategy and vision, understanding funders’ priorities, navigating institutional requirements, and positioning a project within a broader landscape, are part of a larger set of conditions that contribute to readiness.
A narrow focus on “grant writing”, as we had initially considered, suggests that successfully submitting a proposal is primarily about the wording, about how “well written” it is, when in practice the process involves a much broader set of activities.
Over the past few months, we have therefore been moving away from the notion of grant writing and reframing it as grant readiness. This shift allows us to focus on the conditions that enable opportunities for community and project sustainability, rather than on how to complete an application form. It also helps us think in terms of leverage points, where interventions might make a meaningful difference.
In sociology of education (e.g. Apple, 1979; Jackson, 1968), the notion of hidden curriculum has a very specific meaning, referring to the implicit norms, values, and expectations that students pick up through everyday practice and social interaction rather than formal teaching. In DISC 2023, it was originally used to describe information or practices that are rarely made explicit, yet shape who is able to successfully engage with grant systems. However, the “hidden curriculum” framework risks misrepresenting the real challenge. Gaps in grant readiness are often less about missing information and more about unequal access to the infrastructure, networks, and spaces needed to develop the skills and experience that make successful funding applications possible. Someone might be fully aware of what to do and still be unable to act effectively because the enabling conditions are not in place. By moving beyond this framing, we can focus more directly on the systemic factors that enable sustainable research and community projects, and on the leverage points that allow individuals and teams to grow their capacity to apply for grants.
With this framing in place, the Seeds to System initiative is now entering a community engagement phase. To that end, in the coming months we will be organising activities that bring projects and teams together to explore two core questions collaboratively: What infrastructure is needed to support community sustainability? And what leverage points can enable more equitable access to funding and support? Working alongside initiatives across different contexts, we hope to develop a deeper and shared understanding of the conditions that make sustainable research and community projects possible.
We look forward to sharing what we learn!