Name (or Topic/Theme) of Proposed Round:
Youth in Need
This round welcomes projects that support youth in need through kids’ shelters and related services, such as safe housing, counseling, and crisis intervention programs.
Social Handle of Your Organization:
Just a network, ya’ll
Eligibility Criteria:
Projects must primarily focus on supporting youth in need.
Additional criteria include:
-Video call interview with the round operators
-Demonstration of knowledge of crypto and the ability to receive and use donations effectively
-Transparency of financial records
-A video call booking link such as calendly or cal.com so donors may call directly with a project representative
Round operators will also review relevant materials such as a website and social media accounts.
Reminder: All rounds must comply with Gitcoin’s core rules, which include no fraudulent activity, quid pro quo, hate speech, or other activities out of alignment with Gitcoin’s essential intents.
Marketing Plan:
Clearly outline your marketing plan, including channels utilized and ways you plan on engaging your community and target audience.
We will be asking the following individuals to help promote the round on Twitter:
-Noah Chon Lee (round operator and contributor of 1k to the matching pool. Will also share on LinkedIn and Facebook with another 3,500 followers there.)
-Mozhi Rinpoche (round operator and contributor of 1k to the matching pool)
-Kevin Owocki (Contributor of 1k to the matching pool)
-Vivian Chen (Supporter of Ava’s House Kids Shelter in Thailand and a shelter in India)
-Sun (Supporter of Ava’s House)
-Vee (Supporter of Ava’s House)
-Janine Leger (said “Love it!! I’d also potentially reach out to different non-profits that run kids shelters to get them involved.”
-Brooke Bowman (works with Mozhi)
If all these individuals support then this amounts to roughly 118k followers. With Gitcoin we reach 322,000 followers.
Based on the positive responses to this idea, we expect many more individuals to share this. See responses to the idea here: https://x.com/noahchonlee/status/1836794955907375235
(Apologies to the Internet for the terrible gif)
Round History:
To our knowledge, this would be the first time a round of its kind has occurred through Gitcoin.
Team Running This Round:
Noah Chon Lee
Social: https://x.com/noahchonlee
Bio: Professional juggler turned tech entrepreneur. Former Marine Corps midshipman, volunteer in Ukraine, nonprofit organizer in the Amazon Jungle, AI start-up manager, co-founder of viaPrize, and supporter of New Hope Shelter in Ecuador.
Relevant experience:
-Manager of the first Zuzalu Gitcoin round and round operator in the Zuzalu Q2 2024 round, totaling >1M dollars dispersed.
Mozhi Rinpoche
Social: x.com
Bio: Recognized as a Buddhist Rinpoche in 2018 and currently the Executive Director of the No Self Society. This new 501(c)(3) nonprofit has launched several programs, including the Build to Become Club, which supports youth in developing a deeper sense of purpose to overcome life’s challenges through mentorship and unique project opportunities.
Relevant experience:
- Over 20 years of experience working in a wide range of educational settings
- Executive Director of a nonprofit with a program to help mentors youth
Alignment with Gitcoin’s Intents:
This round will increase Allo GMV by…
-Pulling in donations during this round
-Opening up participation to fiat donors
When we added fiat donations for the OpenCivics GG21 round (see here) 7.21% of donations came through fiat. If Gitcoin had this option in place in Grants Stack, it would result in millions more in Allo GMV. We expect the percentage would be significantly higher if the user experience wasn’t split between two sites, and long-term this opens up the user base to billions of people instead of thousands of L2 users.
Noah plans to write up a proposal for the viaPrize team to build this into grants stack, taking a fee, and splitting the revenue with Gitcoin.
Otherwise, we would add fiat donations the same way as during GG21.
This round would also be new in its focus on social projects, which may open up a new potential user group for Gitcoin.
Anticipated Size of the Matching Pool:
- The matching pool is anticipated to be $5,000, fundraised through kind-hearted individuals contacted through Twitter and the Gitcoin forum.
- Funding address: 0x850a146D7478dAAa98Fc26Fd85e6A24e50846A9d
- We have a clear plan in place for future fundraising, including sharing stories from the grantee communities on social networks.
Advisors for This Round:
TBD
Funding Mechanism:
Our default plan is to use quadratic funding because it is easier to convince people to donate when they know it will be matched.
We are also in discussion with Flow State to see if quadratic streaming would make sense for this round.
Community Size and Engagement:
We are planning to include 10-20 projects in the round.
We believe this is a reasonable number for us to thoroughly review during the application period. We are also learning from how the most recent Open Civics round chose a number of projects in this range to make sure the time spent by grantees fundraising is worthwhile.
If we count Ava’s House and New Hope Shelter as representative projects, each has around 50 people in the TG group or mailing list and roughly 30 donors. The estimated average monthly donations between the two projects is $600.
This could mean an estimate of a community size across all projects of 500-1000 with perhaps 300-600 donors giving $6,000-$12,000 if this were a normal fundraiser. We believe that the Gitcoin community, social network, and matching funds will pull in many new donors to these projects, as well.
Type of Projects to Fund:
- We aim to fund projects that support youth in need through kids’ shelters and related services, such as safe housing, counseling, and crisis intervention programs.
Estimated Number of Eligible Grantees:
- We believe that thousands of grantees will be eligible to apply for this round. There are many amazing kids’ shelters, orphanages, and other programs supporting vulnerable youth worldwide.
Impact Assessment Plan:
Describe how you intend to assess grantee impact through methods such as Hypercerts, GAP, Deresy, etc., and provide details of the plan, including how you will measure and evaluate the success and impact of the grantees over successive rounds.
- We intend to assess grantee impact through Karma Gap updates. Our detailed plan includes sending a follow-up to the projects 3 months after the round to request that they report to us how they have used the funds. In case they struggle to make a report on Karma Gap, we will ask them to also send updates in a Google form and we will add the updates to a Karma Gap project representing the whole round on their behalf.
Additional Considerations:
Community members should consider THE CHILDREN.
Potential Conflicts of Interest:
Noah supports New Hope Shelter in Ecuador
Mozhi is founding Build to Become as a mentorship program for students
We both would be happier if our projects are part of the round.
More Information:
If you do not receive matching funds from Gitcoin, will you still participate in the round?
No
Also very excited to onboard more marginalized communities to the ecosystem.
