Name of Proposed Round
Ma Earth Grants Round
Funding for regenerative land projects.
@maearthmedia
maearth.eth
How many times has this round been run during a Gitcoin Grants round?
This is our first Ma Earth Grants Round. Itâs an outgrowth of philanthropic grant-making by Biome Trust: https://biometrust.earth.
We have also been publishing an interview series featuring leading voices from the regenerative economy, and will use this audience to help get the word out: https://maearth.com
How big is your team that will run this round? Who is your team?
- Matthew Monahan - Twitter / LinkedIn - completed the Grants Stack Round Manager training
- Andre Bate - LinkedIn - experienced at running fellowship selection programmes
- Catlin Powers - LinkedIn - solar energy entrepreneur and board trustee
- Jan Hania - LinkedIn - MÄori conservation leader and foundation director
How does this round align with Gitcoinâs mission and essential intents?
The Ma Earth Grants Round is designed to support communities in funding and protecting their natural ecosystems and ecological commons.
By leveraging our existing relationship network of land projects, we can help bring values-aligned communities onchain and into the Gitcoin ecosystem for the first time.
As an established charitable foundation, we also have established networks with other funders and foundations. We aspire for our work to be a demonstration of the value of quadratic funding and Web3 tooling, and to help onboard other funders into future rounds across the Gitcoin ecosystem.
What do you anticipate the size of the matching pool will be?
Biome Trust is contributing US $100,000 to the matching pool for this round.
Funding address: 0xE9aaCeD9a50c79C10CdCBb943f0731d0e7AC6BBa
Who will be advisors for this round, if anyone?
The wider Biome Trust community will be involved in advising the round: https://biometrust.earth/about
Please describe the eligibility criteria you envision for this proposed round.
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Place-based land projects, such as regenerative farms, eco villages, bioregional conservation, indigenous communities, and environmental education centers.
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Ecologically regenerative activities, such as: tree planting, conservation easements, invasive species management, seed saving, wetland restoration, soil testing, biodiversity monitoring, renewable energy installations, and community gardens.
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All rounds must comply with Gitcoinâs core rules, which include no fraudulent activity, quid pro quo, hate speech, or other activities out of alignment with Gitcoinâs essential intents.
How large is your community approximately?
We have active relationships with roughly 100 environmental nonprofits and land projects around the world. We are based in Aotearoa New Zealand and also have strong networks in the United States.
Our Ma Earth interview series audience is reaching thousands of people per month across social media channels.
We also have ten years of community networks and experience from our own regenerative land project, Mangaroa Farms (https://mangaroa.org).
What type of projects would you like to fund?
We are funding place-based, regenerative land projects that will help protect and restore ecosystems for the thriving of life on Earth.
We are choosing to focus this grants round on place-based projects, and not including intermediary environmental and advocacy groups at this time.
You can see the types of projects weâve supported in the past here: https://biometrust.earth/gifts
Approximately how many grantees do you believe will be eligible to apply to this round?
Since itâs our first round on the Gitcoin platform, weâre planning to keep the number of grantees tight, to approximately 10-20 projects, depending on the final applications we receive. We want to make sure we can deliver a high quality experience, especially since many of our grantees will be new to Web3 and crypto.
Impact Assessment: If and how do you intend to assess grantee impact over successive rounds? This could include, but is not limited to Hypercerts, GAP, Deresy, etc.
We are working to implement Hypercerts for scalable impact assessment, along with leading MRV (Measuring, Reporting, and Verification) providers to measure relevant ecological outomes (e.g. carbon, biodiversity, and water quality).
We will ask grantees to provide a summary of activities and impact, including when applying for subsequent rounds. We have a network of ecological advisors and experts to support us as needed in determining quality of outcomes.
Is there anything else that community members should consider when voting for which rounds to focus on in the upcoming GG20 grants round?
We are grateful to the Gitcoin community for continuing to provide tools and systems to support innovative funding models. We see this as a pillar of the future of philanthropic giving, and we are looking to use our rounds as a case study with other nonprofit foundations and donors. If successful, we also plan to commit more of our endowment to future grants rounds.
Part of our mission is also to support regenerative land projects getting onchain for the first time. Weâve started creating a series of tutorials and help documentation to this aim. Work in progress.
We welcome any additional funds for the matching pool, as we believe in the importance of the work being done by grantees. That said, our primary motivation here is for the general visibility and support that would come from inclusion as a Gitcoin Community Round.