Another Gitcoin Grants matching round is on the way! There’s over $600K in the matching pool — are you thinking about opening a Gitcoin Grant or do you have a grant all ready to go? Here are some tips on turning your cool project into a successful grant with lots of support from the community!
Another Gitcoin Grants matching round is on the way! There’s over $600K in the matching pool — are you thinking about opening a Gitcoin Grant or do you have a grant all ready to go? Here are some tips on turning your cool project into a successful grant with lots of support from the community!
Gitcoin Grants allows builders and digital creatives like you to get funding for working on the open source projects you’re most passionate about. Since 2019 Gitcoin Grants has become a trusted platform for communities seeking to build and fund the open source ecosystem, delivering over $20m in funding to thousands of projects.
CLR, short for Capital-Constrained Liberal Radicalism is one of the variations of Philanthropic Matching of Funds proposed by Vitalik Buterin, Zoë Hitzig, and E.Glen Weyl in their paper, “Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design for Philanthropic Matching Funds”. Gitcoin is a pioneer and first to try this mechanism to support public goods.
Gitcoin Grants has two components, a crowdfunding round, and a large matching pool of funds. During the crowdfund, grant owners like you seek donations from the community. The number of contributions and total amount contributed to your project influences the total amount allocated from the matching pool. This is what underlines the importance of your community building skills. If you’d like to dig deeper in the mechanism that powers Gitcoin Grants read more here.
To break it down,
They say first impressions are everything, and your project header is the first thing people will see. Be creative, show your project’s personality, and make it stand out from the rest! Describe your story clearly and explain your goals. Then confirm that all information and tags are representative of your project. Here are some additional tips: the ideal dimension of a header is not more than 2000px. Oh, do you know you can use GIFs as your project header and upload video in the description as well?
Don’t just show the cool tech behind your project, but tell your potential users how it might benefit them and what your project means to them. EPNS’s is a good example: instead of saying “A decentralized DeFi Notification protocol that enables notifications and token incentives…” they explained, “Get notified from dApps / smart contracts on mobile, web browser or user wallets. Did we mention you as a user also earns from them!? Cause why not 
.”
Proof of your work goes a long way to make sure the community knows your project’s here to stay: GitHub repo, user study, wireframes, etc. You should also show what you’ve built and achieved so far. This is especially important if your project is a previous recipient of Gitcoin Grants — let your funders know the awesome progress you’ve been making!
Provide peace of mind to your potential grant donors by getting your Grant team verified through Twitter. Verification shows that your grant is serious, and not cleverly disguised spam.
This is very important beginning in GR10: In order to maintain the integrity of the Quadratic Funding mechanism, the Gitcoin community must protect it from Sybil attack. Please prompt your community members to do their part. Have them verifying their account through SMS, BrightID, GMail, ENS, Twitter, POAP, (and more). Doing so will help defend against Sybil attacks, and in return they will receive a Trust Bonus. Donations from unverified accounts only impact the match pool algorithm by 50%. Donations from verified users can impact it by up to a whopping 150%! Help QF, and in return get a larger percentage of the match pool allocated to your grant. For more information on Trust Bonus, please go here.
Use the description area to your advantage! Let the community know how they might help your project: freely mention if you are looking for help mentoring, team members, additional resources. Your grant page is yours! With more than 50k developers, funders, and orgs in the Gitcoin community, you’ll easily get the help you’re looking for!
How might the funds from the community help your project reach greater heights? What are the new features you’re going to be buidling, or what are the parts that you’d want to maintain? Putting clear milestones on the Grants description helps the community to get to know you and your project better!
Gitcoin Grants happen every quarter. Make sure that you are hitting your milestones each quarter to build trust with your contributors that you are a worthy project to fund again next quarter!
Your supporters will be interested in how your project is progressing and what the latest updates are. Keep your grant visible and keep your supporters in the loop by posting updates on your grant – we recommend doing it at least once a month! Doing this also prevents Gitcoin from marking your grant as idle which will get hidden from the grant explorer.
Now that your grant page is ready with a swanky header, clear descriptions, and up-to-date info, it’s time to share your grant to your community! Choose a compelling image to represent your grant and promote your grant through platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Discord, or Telegram groups are the most commonly used platforms. You can also pin a Github issue at the top of your Github, mention it in the README or wiki docs – the more eyeballs you get to your grant page, the more potential funding you’re going to get.
Please be sure to follow the rules posted here. The TLDR is:
1.Please DO NOT offer anyone a quid-pro-quo for a contribution.
2. DO NOT make up an identity to contribute.
Rule violations can lead to a reduction, or nullification, or your matching bonus.
Any rule violations can be flagged via the ‘Flag Grant’ functionality on the Grants UI. For transparency, we tweet about rule violations at https://twitter.com/GitcoinDisputes – so follow that account if you’re interested in participating in that governance process
Last but not least, get to know your grant supporters: talk to them on your Grants activity tab or through the Gitcoin Discord. Learning who your biggest supporters are could be beneficial in many ways from feedback, collaboration opportunities, and more!
Lastly, please remember to encourage your donors to get verified through BrightId, ENS, POAP, google, mobile Idena, etc. Thank your supporters for supporting your grant (both during the round, and after the round). Building a relationship and consistent communication cadence helps build trust.
There you have it! Follow these tips to stand out from the rest, and we wish you and your team all the best on Gitcoin Grants Round 8! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to team@gitcoin.co.