Gitcoin’s Grants Round 15 is kicking off September 7 -and running through to September 22nd. Here’s In this post you’ll find everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 15!
Gitcoin’s Grants Round 15 is kicking off September 7 -and running through to September 22nd. Here’s In this post you’ll find everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 15!
Gitcoin is where the world’s leading web3 projects are born, validated & funded. This includes @Uniswap, @poapxyz & @BanklessHQ, just to name a few!
In our mission to support people and organizations to fund their shared needs Gitcoin’s grants rounds are the programs that make that happen.
All types of projects are welcome on Gitcoin. This includes software, tools, critical digital infrastructure, media, community creation and other impactful causes. If the project is freely available to everyone and has a positive impact on the world, it’s probably eligible for a Gitcoin Grant!
We’re proud to boast that we have distributed over $64 million in total, including $40 million through grants alone. In just 3 years, we’ve helped provide funding for over 2500 grants from tens of thousands of unique contributors across 2 million+ contributions.
We’re just getting started. Read more about how Gitcoin plans to evolve and scale with Grants 2.0
There are three important parties that participate in grants rounds. Each of these has a key role to play: Matching Partners, Grant Funders & Grantees.
Matching Partners: Communities & grant-making organizations like @0xPolygon or Momus generously contribute large sums of capital (often $100K+). This shows support for builder communities, helps them identify promising projects & is a way to give back.
Funders: People (like you) who donate $5-10 (or much more!) to web3 projects & causes they care about on our Gitcoin Grants platform.
Grantees: Builders (typically early-stage, but not exclusively) who are seeking funding for their project & to get paid to build for the open internet.
Grants Rounds bring these three groups together & then add Gitcoin’s special sauce to the mix:
Quadratic Funding!
WTF is Quadratic Funding?
Now that you know the basics, let’s go over some more details about our biggest grants round yet!
The overall structure for Grants Round 15 is as follows, with three types of rounds:
All of this wouldn’t be possible without our GR15 partners; with a special shout out to our incredible main round matching sponsors: X, X, X
[GR15 Matching Partner BANNER]
For GR15, the main round will distribute $1M in matching funds. All grants that qualify for matching funding will receive funds from the main pool – grantees need only ensure their grant is active to be eligible for matching funds.
To ensure that limited funding will be distributed more evenly there is a matching cap of 2.5% of the total main round pool. This means that once a grant has hit $25k in matching funds from the GR15 main pool, they’re no longer eligible for additional matching. This matching cap makes sure that less popular grants receive matching funds!
Ecosystem rounds are focused on funding grants that support the objectives of a specific ecosystem. Ecosystem Round Grants typically include one or more of the following:
There are XX ecosystem round partners for GR15, with X new & Y returning from previous round(s).
New ecosystem rounds:
Returning ecosystem rounds:
In total, over $1.1 million in total matching funds will be distributed to hundreds of builders. You may be one of them!
Action for grantees:
Grantees interested in receiving matching funds from ecosystem partners can learn more about how to apply in the Ecosystem Round Briefs. If you believe your grant qualifies for one (or more) of these ecosystem rounds, submit a request here.
Cause rounds are all about creating funding opportunities for impact in the real world. The creation of cause rounds was inspired by Other Internet’s groundbreaking positive-sum worlds essay and Gitcoin’s call for new kinds of public goods.
The bottom line is: they embody the values of our community and help us rally around causes we care about!
We believe that funding projects that straddle the intersections of web3 and traditional causes can change our world for the better. OWith that, over the past 4 grants rounds we’ve funded causes like climate solutions, DEI (Diversity Equity & Inclusion), support for Ukraine, human longevity and crypto advocacy.
For GR15, we have 4 cause rounds: Climate Solutions, Crypto Advocacy, DEI (Diversity Equity & Inclusion), and DeSci (Decentralized Science).
The Climate Solutions round is an opportunity to support projects from around the world at the cutting edge of innovative climate solutions. This is a testing ground for new ideas, an opportunity for cross pollination and fertile ground for big ideas that could change the world for the better.
Thank you to our climate round sponsors:.
The Crypto Advocacy round is focused on building support for trailblazing organizations at the forefront of good crypto policy and in defense of the open web. As crypto becomes a bigger issue on the global stage this is more important than ever.
Thank you to our crypto advocacy round sponsors:
The DE&I round is a collective effort to help nurture and advocate for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the web3 community. Crypto is a place where traditionally underrepresented groups may be even more underrepresented. This round seeks to empower the builders and community organizers who are shifting that imbalance in the right direction. Our diversity is our strength.
Thank you to our DEI round sponsors:
The DeSci round seeks the expansion and distribution of humanity’s shared knowledge. It supports projects that are reimagining the incentives, culture, and infrastructure for research using web3 tools and technology.
Thank you to our DeSci round sponsors:
Action for grantees:
If you believe your grant qualifies for a GR15 Ccause Rround, please submit a proposalrequest here. Grants submitted by Aug. 31st will have the best chance of being approved and ready to go by the Sept. 7th GR15 kickoff.
It’s never been easier (or more fun!) to support your favorite builders!
In Grants Round 15, over 17k people chose to participate by funding one or more grants, which distributed over $4.6M to more than 1,000 grantees. We can’t wait to build on this success in Grants Round 15.
Why donate? Here are just a few reasons:
Remember, you can support your favorite builders at any time, but donations are only eligible for matching funds during grants rounds (for GR15 it’s September 7 - 22, 2022 at 23:59 UTC).
Finally, in order to ensure that transaction/gas fees don’t swallow all your funds, consider bridging funds to Polygon and/or Zksync. See How to Get Funds in Layer 2s & Save on Fees for more info.
Action for funders:
To browse and fund of all of the grants you’d like to support, visit gitcoin.co/grants during GR15!
Want to receive grant funding? You’ve come to the right place. Gitcoin is where the world’s leading web3 projects are born, validated & funded.
We’re bullish on builders because you play a crucial role in the regeneration of our communities, our societies and our earth!
Incredible projects like Uniswap, Bankless, Dark Forest, Coin Center and POAP were funded via Gitcoin in their early days, and have grown to be pillars of the growing web3 community. Your grant could be next.
If you believe your grant qualifies for ecosystem and/or cause rounds, learn more about the rounds and eligibility criteria in the Round Briefs. To apply for matching funds, please submit a request.
If you have never used Gitcoin Grants and are looking to raise matching funds in Round 15 you’ll first need to create a grant. We recommend taking your time to fill out this form, as the more detail provided in the grant description directly influences the success of your grant.
After you have provided detailed information on the “who”, “what”, and “how” in your grant application you’ll want to create a visually appealing logo to grab the attention of potential donors. Learn more about how to maximize your matching here.
We recommend submitting your grant as early as possible to ensure your grant is approved and put into an active status. There is typically a 2 to 3 day review period before grants are published after being submitted. We recommend submitting your grants by September 3rd in order to have your grant approved before the fundraising round begins. That said, we will keep grant applications open until September 15th, however we cannot guarantee that grants submitted between September 4th and 14th will be approved into the round before September 16th. This means you could miss out on GR15 funding contributions!
Why are we asking for submissions this early?
If you have an existing grant, now is the time to review and update it in order to maintain an ‘active’ grant status and eligible to receive Matching Pool funding. It’s good practice to provide milestone updates on your grant to keep your funders updated.
Updating your grant also helps Gitcoin level up it’s matching pools as matching partners see the growth and progression of projects they’ve funded.
If you haven’t updated your grant since GR14 ended your grant is currently listed as “inactive” and will not be eligible for Matching Pool funding.
What to include in your grant updates:
If you need support creating, updating or optimizing your grant for funding success, please check and see if your question has been answered in the Grants FAQ page. If not, please feel free to reach out in the #grants-support channel in our Discord Server! Our grantee experience team will also be hosting a series of Twitter Spaces to support awesome and effective grant creation - keep your eyes peeled on @Gitcoin for more info!
We’ll be sure to keep you updated as Grants Round 15 gets underway. The best way to keep in touch is to follow Gitcoin on Twitter.
Let’s make this our best (aka most generously funded!) round yet.
– Team Gitcoin