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August 29, 2022

Level up your grant for GR15

We’re excited to announce that our 15th Grants Round is right around the corner!It all begins Sept. 7, and runs through Sept. 22. Mark your calendars for the biggest funding & building event in Web3! Gitcoin’s mission is to support people and organizations to fund their shared needs and our Gitcoin grants rounds are the programs that make that happen. We’re proud to boast that we have distributed over $64 million in total funding, including $40 million through grants alone.…

We’re excited to announce that our 15th Grants Round is right around the corner!

It all begins Sept. 7, and runs through Sept. 22. Mark your calendars for the biggest funding & building event in Web3!

Gitcoin’s mission is to support people and organizations to fund their shared needs and our Gitcoin grants rounds are the programs that make that happen.

We’re proud to boast that we have distributed over $64 million in total funding, including $40 million through grants alone. In just 3 years, we’ve helped provide funding for over 2,500 grants from tens of thousands of unique contributors across 2 million+ unique contributions.

Tl;dr for Grantees

  • Over $2.6 million in total matching funds have already been committed across the Main Round, 4 Cause Rounds ($900k+ matching pool) & 13 Ecosystem Rounds ($1.3M+ matching pool)
  • New grant creators: submit by Sept 3rd at midnight CDT to receive a thorough review prior to round start – the first days of the round are critical for raising the most funds!
  • Current grant owners: make sure you review and update your grant to be eligible for GR15! To receive matching pool funding and a through review, select the relevant tags through our GR15 form by September 3rd!
  • Check the NEW Grantee Onboarding Document – the one-stop shop for grant creators! Look inside for round briefs with eligibility criteria for main and side rounds!
  • Getting prepared early will allow you to focus on building community hype for your grant and get EVEN MORE support during the round! Check out all you need to know below.

GR15 Round Info

We will, once again, host a Main Round, multiple Cause Rounds, and multiple Ecosystem Rounds. One difference for this round is that, pending governance approval, we’ll be decoupling the main round from our side rounds. This means your grant could be approved into a side round, without meeting the main round criteria. Note that this will not impact existing approved grants.

  • Up to $1m in matching funds in the main round
  • $1.3m+ in matching funds across 13 ecosystem rounds
  • At least $900k in matching funds across 4 cause rounds – Climate Solutions, Advocacy, DeSci, & DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion)

Thank you to all of our incredible GR15 partners for making this possible!

We’re still adding more partners and there’s still time to participate in funding the rounds! Contact [email protected] or @azeemk on telegram to start a conversation.

Main Round

The Main Round is our longest standing Gitcoin Grants round in support of open source software projects in web3. In GR15, the main round will distribute up to $1m in matching funds. Our main round matching sponsors are: Yearn, Polygon, ENS, Figment, and 1inch!

Projects that meet the criteria for main round eligibility are:

  • Open source
  • Have not raised VC funding over $500k
  • Do not have a token
  • Are not selling NFTs
  • Are not advertising tokens/NFTs through the grant
  • Are public goods

Cause Rounds

We believe that funding projects that straddle the intersection of web3 and traditional causes can change our world for the better.

The GR15 Cause Rounds showcase projects using web3 to build & fund solutions related to 4 key social and environmental causes: Climate Solutions, Crypto Advocacy, DEI (Diversity Equity & Inclusion), and [NEW!] DeSci (Decentralized Science). Over $900k of matching funds is available for Cause Rounds so far!

  1. Climate Solutions

The Climate Solutions round enables communities to build and fund a broad variety of digital and real-world climate solutions.
Our climate round sponsors so far include: Momus.eth and Ocelot with a variety of other partners still working out the details of their matching amounts!

  1. Advocacy – Crypto Regulation

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.
Our advocacy round sponsors so far include: Anoma, Aragon, Starkware, 1inch, Aave Grants, and Wicklow Capital!

  1. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

The DEI Round enables communities to build and fund projects that advance DEI in web3, ensuring individuals from all backgrounds have an equal opportunity to participate.

Our DEI round sponsors so far include: Zora, Wonder, Kraus House, Lens Protocol, Unlock Protocol, and Forta!

  1. Decentralized Science (DeSci) [NEW]

The DeSci round seeks to expand and distribute humanity’s shared knowledge. It supports projects that are reimagining the incentives, culture, and infrastructure for research using web3 tools and technology.

Our DeSci round sponsors so far include: Vitalik Buterin, Juan Benet, Stefan George, Molecule, Alchemix, and SCRF!

Ecosystem Rounds

Ecosystem Rounds are focused on funding grants that support the objectives of a specific ecosystem. Ecosystem Round grants typically focus on accomplishing one or more of the following for their respective ecosystems:

  • Usability – improving UX
  • Community – growing the ecosystem
  • Tooling – improving the developer experience
  • Governance – building tools and enhancements for on-chain governance

Over $1.3 million in total matching funds will be distributed to hundreds of builders through the GR15 Ecosystem Rounds!

There are 13 ecosystem round partners for GR15 confirmed so far, with 9 returning from previous rounds:

Learn more about how to apply to receive matching funds for each of these rounds through our round eligibility briefs.

Important Info for Grants Submissions

We’re inviting you to get ahead of the pack early by preparing your grant now, before the round begins!

New grant owners: check out this handy grantee onboarding guide that walks through a step-by-step breakdown of how to create your grant.

Current grant owners: you will need to update your grant in order to maintain an ‘active’ grant status and fill in this form to be eligible for Matching Pool funding. This is your chance to share progress you’ve made with your project and build awareness for how you plan to use GR15 contributions.

What to include in your grant updates:

  • Updated project roadmap
  • Progress update including metrics
  • New/updated social media links
  • New logos and/or branding assets

Need assistance? We’ll be happy to lend a hand.

If you need support creating, updating or optimizing your grant for funding success, please check the NEW Grantee Onboarding Document or the Grants FAQ page for more info. If you still have questions, please feel free to reach out in the #general-support channel in our Discord Server.

Join our Open Office Hours & Round Panels on Twitter Spaces!

Tuesday Office Hours:Our grantee experience team will host a series of GR15 Community Q&A sessions. Come to get your questions answered and alpha on effective grant creation! Tune in every Tuesday between Aug. 16 to Sept. 6 @ 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Thursday Round Panels:

We will also host panels that detail info about our Cause and Ecosystem Rounds. Learn more about the round causes, dive into important, community-driven topics and have your round-specific questions answered! Tune in every Thursday @ 2 pm ET / 11 am PT

  • Aug. 25: DEI round
  • Sept. 1: DeSci round
  • Sept. 8: Community collection curation / Shill your collection!
  • Sept. 15: Climate round
  • Sept. 20: Advocacy round
  • Sept. 22: Funder panel

Read more
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