GG22 Proposal: Ma Earth Grants Round 2

Proposed Round:

Ma Earth Grants Round 2
Funding for Land Regenerators

Social Handle of Your Organization:

@maearthmedia

Eligibility Criteria:

Projects must primarily focus on place-based environmental regeneration. Returning grantees must provide an update on work performed and impact from the previous round. All rounds must comply with Gitcoin’s core rules.

Marketing Plan:

We intend to promote the round through Ma Earth’s media channels, which represents ~10,000 followers across YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We’ll also host X Spaces and Zoom calls, especially to support the grantee land projects in getting onchain and with their community promotions. We will be creating Web3 video tutorials and sending messages through our mailing list.

We also intend to invest in storytelling about grantee land projects to showcase and elevate the importance of their work.

Round History:

This is our second Ma Earth Grants Round. We ran the first in conjunction with GG20. We posted our retrospectives from the round on the Gitcoin forum and on Paragraph.

You can see more at: https://maearth.com/grants

Team Running This Round:

  • Round Operator: Matthew Monahan, Ma Earth, completed the Gitcoin Grants Round Manager pilot cohort training and led Ma Earth’s first grants round. Technology entrepreneur, co-steward of Mangaroa Farms and Biome Trust, host of The Regeneration Will Be Funded interview series. @matthewmutual
  • Team Member 1: Sophia Rokhlin, participated in the Ma Earth Grants Round 1 as part of her role as Grants Administrator at Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. Storyteller and community manager. @sophiarokhlin
  • Team Member 2: Andre Bate, helped conduct Ma Earth Grants Round 1. Previously managed a global fellowship selection process at Edmund Hillary Fellowship (ehf.org) and runs operations at Biome Trust.

We have two additional panelists who will be supporting us in selecting the land projects.

  • Alexa Firmenich (Naia Trust), investor, philanthropist, and host of Lifeworlds. (Bio)
  • Jan Hania (Biome Trust & NEXT Foundation), conservation director, Māori advisor. (Bio) / (LinkedIn)

We have additional Ma Earth collaborators in operations, video, and design who will be supporting the round.

Alignment with Gitcoin’s Intents:

We believe in Gitcoin’s mission to support communities in funding what matters to them, and see incredible potential in using Allo and Ethereum for funding place-based regenerative land projects. We will be using the Ma Earth Grants Round to advocate and educate people around these tools, and to give them a positive onboarding experience into Web3. We are also cultivating relationships within the traditional philanthropic community to bridge new capital into quadratic funding and place-based approaches.

We see a natural synergy forming with other Gitcoin Community Rounds, including the Climate Coordination Network, emphasizing tools and enabling infrastructure, and BioFi, focused on bioregional scale financing facilities. We are also friends and fans of the Regen Coordi-Nation, Open Civics, and Giveth rounds. Ma Earth will continue to focus on place-based regeneration projects while simultaneously doing our best to support and amplify other communities.

Anticipated Size of the Matching Pool:

We have a matching pool of $150,000 provided by Biome Trust. The funding address is: 0x617B7ab789bafF8B7c4d641d18e2fc42d1e1666e

We warmly welcome additional funds into the matching pool, as we are confident in the impactful work being done by the grantees.

Advisors for This Round:

We have three round advisors who bring experience and context from other Gitcoin Grants Rounds:

Funding Mechanism:

We are using quadratic funding because of how it supports resource allocation to communities with democratic participation. We will also use Passport’s Model-Based Detection and COCM for sybil defense and optimization. We will focus on Web3 tutorials and education to help newer grantees and donors.

Community Size and Engagement:

Our first grants round raised ~$60k from 1000+ contributions and 420 contributors for 23 selected land projects. $40k of those funds came from a single anonymous donor. Our matching pool was $100k, provided by Biome Trust.

We have ~10,000 followers across YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We’ve conducted over 100 interviews about regenerative finance in the past year, check them out here: https://maearth.com/episodes

We received over 50 applications for the first round, with very little upfront promotion. Since then we have also received a lot of inbound interest from land projects around the world, who are interested in participating in our second round.

Type of Projects to Fund:

Place-based projects: We aim to fund projects that are engaged in place-based regenerative land stewardship. Place-based projects create real-world impact, which we want to support with this Gitcoin Grants Round as an innovative and scalable funding mechanism.

In general, we’ve identified the following as common features of regenerative land projects.

  1. Soil Health Improvement: Activities such as composting, cover cropping, no-till farming, and rotational grazing are employed to enhance soil fertility, structure, and biodiversity.
  2. Biodiversity Conservation: Efforts are made to promote biodiversity through practices like planting native species, creating wildlife corridors, and restoring habitats for endangered or threatened species.
  3. Water Management: Sustainable water management techniques, such as rainwater harvesting, restoring wetlands, and implementing water-efficient irrigation systems, are utilized to conserve and improve water quality.
  4. Carbon Sequestration: Practices like agroforestry, reforestation, and holistic grazing management are employed to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, mitigating climate change.
  5. Community Engagement: Regenerative land projects often involve local communities and stakeholders in decision-making processes, education, and awareness campaigns to foster a sense of ownership and stewardship.
  6. Holistic Management: These projects often take a holistic approach, considering the interconnectedness of various elements within the ecosystem and striving for balance and resilience in the long term.
  7. Indigenous Land Rights: Recognizing and respecting Indigenous land rights and sovereignty, including Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, practices, and cultural connections to the land.
  8. Land Governance: Transforming land governance structures to be more inclusive, equitable, and participatory, with a focus on decentralized decision-making and community-led stewardship.
  9. Environmental Justice: Prioritizing environmental justice by addressing inequalities and disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on marginalized communities. This includes ensuring that regenerative land projects benefit local communities and contribute to social and economic empowerment.
  10. Healing and Reconciliation: Acknowledging and addressing intergenerational trauma and healing relationships with the land and among different communities. This involves fostering reconciliation processes, building trust, and promoting dialogue and collaboration between Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other stakeholders involved in regenerative land projects.

Estimated Number of Eligible Grantees:

We estimate that we’ll receive ~50-100 eligible grantee applications. We intend to choose up to 30 projects.

We are capping the number for multiple reasons. First, we want to ensure the average grant received by each project is meaningful enough to warrant their fundraising efforts, especially since most of these communities are newer to Web3 and there is a lot of onboarding involved.

Second, we seek to maintain a high quality bar and rigorous selection process for projects in our grants rounds, in order to instill confidence for matching pool funders. When you contribute to the Ma Earth matching pool, we want you to know your funds are going to high impact projects that have been thoroughly vetted by a panel of experts.

Lastly, we are setting a cap because it allows us to be in closer relationships with grantees, as we learn more about their needs and experiences. We see this as the beginning of a long-term journey together.

Impact Assessment Plan:

We intend to assess impact primarily through our ongoing relationships and communication with grantees. We are working with Hypercerts Foundation on an integration to specifically recognize and reward environmental impact. We are also cultivating multiple partnerships in the MRV (Measuring, Reporting, and Verification) ecosystem as we anticipate eventual convergence with these tools. It’s still early, and for this second round, we will be asking repeat applicants/grantees to share their progress and impact since the first round.

Additional Considerations:

We have not decided which chain to deploy our round on. We are actively considering Arbitrum (given the network effects with Gitcoin’s OSS round), Celo (given the synergy with other community rounds), and Base (given the UX improvements of Base for newer Web3 users). We welcome any further input.

Potential Conflicts of Interest:

We will maintain a conflicts of interest register amongst panelists, and they will not judge applicants where they have a potential conflict or embedded interest.

More Information:

If we do not receive matching funds from Gitcoin, we will still conduct the round.

Thank you.

5 Likes

It is wonderful to see Ma Earth back in GG22. I am excited to be advising them as they continue to grow their impact via grants.

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I want to express my strong support for this application, based on my observations from the first Ma Earth Grants Round:

  1. Quality and Impact of Projects: The first round of the Ma Earth Grants showcased an exceptional standard of projects, all of which are making a tangible impact on both people and the planet. I am confident that Round 2 will maintain the same high standards.
  2. Dedication and Support from the Ma Earth Team: I have rarely seen a team so committed to engaging with each individual project. The Ma Earth team ensured that each project met the necessary quality standards while also onboarding them into Gitcoin and the broader web3 ecosystem.
  3. Ma Earth’s Community and Reach: Ma Earth brings in projects that are not typically seen in the web3 space, thus broadening the scope of web3 innovation in impact funding. They also provide a platform for important conversations (e.g., the Ma Earth interview series) and act as true connectors between worlds that should not remain separate.

(This is also why I am excited to be an advisor for this round.)

2 Likes

Thanks for sharing your application! I went through it and I especially appreciate Biome trust for providing such a high matching pool to distribute to projects.

Overall I like that your short term impact assessment approach is asking grantees to provide proof of work since the last round, while working on longer term MRV since its scoped to place based land regeneration projects.

One suggestion i have is to consider integrating with viaprize credit card integration with @noahchonlee . Since projects and funders may not all be in web3, providing the option to donate via fiat and still be eligible for matching will be important. I have doubts about the round getting community contirbutions of at least 20% of the matching provided and im hopeful this can help you meet that target.

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Thank you for pointing that out Devansh! @metahands feel free to msg me on tg @noahchonlee

1 Like

Congratulations @metahands! GG22 Community Rounds Announced

2 Likes