By Val Elefante
On Wednesday, October 4th, Azeem Khan, Head of Impact at Gitcoin, presented on “How to Access Web3 Funding Sources for Makers in Civil Society.” In his presentation, Azeem taught us about Gitcoin and the company’s unique approach to crowdfunding for public goods. He also covered how Makers can utilize funding resources in the DWeb ecosystem including hackathons, accelerators, grants, venture capital, and token launches.
Azeem began by talking about his current role at Gitcoin, a platform and set of tools that enables fundraising for open source technology projects via crowdfunding, grants, venture capital, and initial coin offerings. To date, Gitcoin has facilitated the distribution of over $72 million in grants to open-source software developers working on digital public goods.
For its crowdfunding rounds, Gitcoin partners with sponsoring organizations to generate matching pools. Members of the Gitcoin community or DAO (aka a Decentralized Autonomous Organization) are invited to contribute to the projects they would like to support. As opposed to a traditional matching process, Gitcoin has become well-known for its use of quadratic funding, a democratic funding mechanism that rewards projects with greater numbers of contributors over those that receive a smaller number of larger donation amounts.
Azeem described digital public goods as the internet’s open-source infrastructure that is essential to the well-being of the broader public and is not exclusive to or rivalrous among individuals. According to Azeem, these technologies are the roads, bridges, and tunnels of the internet and should serve the advancement of the community as a whole–not the interests of specific commercial entities. He believes that many of the tools that facilitate financial transactions, search engines, and social media spaces–things we've known to be run by corporate entities– should actually be owned by the public and the code open-sourced.
While the vast majority of the projects Gitcoin has funded are part of the Ethereum or open source ecosystems, Azeem also spoke about a couple of case studies they’ve run with nonprofits to support non-crypto-native, IRL communities. In the Oakland Local Round, Gitcoin was able to help 7 nonprofits facilitate a quadratic funding round with a $15K matching pool. They provided educational support to contributors, helping them set up their wallets, preloaded with cryptocurrencies, and navigate the fundraising process. As a result of this initiative, a local farmer's market in Oakland began accepting stablecoins as payments, demonstrating how Gitcoin's efforts helped expand the use of cryptocurrency in real-world scenarios.
Gitcoin also collaborated with UNICEF in facilitating a quadratic funding grants round for a select group of 10 impact-focused, innovative projects from around the world—including Nepal, Kenya, Argentina, Brazil, and the Philippines. With a $50K matching pool and over 17,000 unique donations, the result was highly successful with over $150,000 being distributed across the projects. Azeem noted that Gitcoin is looking forward to growing more partnerships with nonprofits to experiment with quadratic funding for non-crypto-native IRL organizations and causes.
Azeem also gave a few suggestions for ways nonprofits and Makers alike could access funds within the blockchain and Web3 space. For example, nonprofits could host a hackathon, an event where developers come together to work on solutions to problems usually within a specific domain and timeframe. This approach allows nonprofits to crowdsource solutions to their problems, bring together tech-savvy individuals, and raise awareness about their mission and challenges.
Another suggestion Azeem gave to nonprofits and Makers is to apply for accelerators, specifically ones that focus on social impact nonprofits or hybrid structures. Accelerators are programs that offer funding, office space, subject matter experts, mentors, and other resources. He also recommended applying for grants in the crypto space, though acknowledged that they can be competitive. A notable grant program Azeem mentioned is Optimism’s Retroactive Public Goods Funding program, which funds work that has already been done and deemed valuable.
Azeem truly provided a wealth of insights for nonprofits and Makers working on social impact and public goods who might be able to benefit from the innovative funding mechanisms within the DWeb ecosystem. We are so grateful to Azeem for joining us and offering himself as a resource for our community. Azeem can be reached at ak@gitcoin.co, on Twitter at @azeemk_, and on Telegram at @azeemk.