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For information about this year's program, see the pr05 2025 program page and 2025 project list
The Processing Foundation Software Development Grant or pr05 (pronounced “pros”) is a mentorship initiative by the Processing Foundation designed to support the professional growth of early to mid-career software developers through hands-on involvement in open-source projects. Participation in the program is entirely online and we invite developers from around the world to apply.
We expect grantees to connect with their cohort, offer mutual support, and take part in regular virtual meetings with their mentor throughout the program. Attendance is required by grantees at bi-monthly cohort meets, bi-monthly one-on-one mentor meetings, workshops, and town halls. Grantees should produce detailled documentation about their process and the outcomes of their work.
We ask participants to share monthly progress updates during the program, as well as a wrap-up blog post at the end of the grant period. A technical report will also be required to be submitted as a Pull Request to the appropriate repository in the Processing Foundation’s GitHub. Additional documentation in other formats are also welcome (a series of video tutorials, a website, etc.) as desired by the grantee.
All pr05 projects must be released as open-source under a Free Software license such as LGPL 2.1 or GPL 2.0. We may ask contributors to submit their work to repositories under the Processing Foundation organization on GitHub.
Projects are featured on the Processing Foundation’s website, with the grantee’s bio, images, and a link to the project. These materials must be provided by the start of the program and updated at the end.
Mentors are assigned to each Grantee. Mentors are experienced software professionals and/or core contributors from the Processing and p5.js communities. The role of mentors is to provide guidance (creative, technical, and professional), as well as serve as an advocate for the grantee’s work. Grantees are expected to participate in regular virtual meetings with their mentor. Mentors will also be responsible for evaluating the work done by their mentee at the mid-point and at the end of the program.
Throughout the program, monthly meetings guided by invited experts. These sessions are meant to expand participants' understanding of the broader context in which their technical work resides, ensuring they are well-rounded in both their coding abilities and their comprehension of the ethical and operational frameworks of the software. Town halls are hosted together with our partner program the Processing Fellowship.
The Processing Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in 2012. We cultivate creative coding software and communities to empower learners, coders, and artists to shape equitable digital futures. To read more about our mission, visit processingfoundation.org. To learn about our activities, go to processingfoundation.report.
Consider joining our mailing list to be informed of future opportunities.
Please read our Frequently Asked Questions.
Lately, we’ve been seeing more and more applications that look like they were written mostly by AI. It’s making it harder for our reviewers to go through everything and means that solid, original proposals don’t always get all the attention they deserve. We don’t love that.
If you choose to use large language models (LLMs) when writing your proposal, that’s fine, but please make sure that your own knowledge, ideas, and insights are at the core of your submission. We’re not judging your proposal based on how polished the writing is. We care a lot more about how clearly you explain your thinking and how well you understand the project. A personal and thoughtful application with a few typos is way better than a perfectly written one that misses the point of the project.
AI tools can be helpful, but only if you actually understand the context well enough to ask good questions and make sense of the answers. If anything’s unclear, take some time to check out the links we’ve shared, look through the relevant repositories, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you still have questions. This will make your proposal stronger than any large language model can. We promise!