If you've got an idea to build on or improve Urbit, the Urbit Foundation will likely fund it as a proposal.
We have a track record of funding many different kinds of different projects: new apps, developer libraries and documentation, open-ended research, community formation, written and video content, and lots more.
Ready to get started? Here's how the process works:
- Create your proposal as a group on Urbit
- Submit your proposal using this form
- Obtain approval from a member of our community and finalize your proposal
- Sign our grant agreement
- Submit invoices after obtaining community signoff
Create your proposal
Submitting a proposal starts by clearly articulating your idea and the value it will bring to the Urbit network. Getting the Urbit Foundation's signoff requires approval from an established member of our community and a compelling reason for receiving the requested amount of funding.
Create a group
The first step is to create a group in Landscape's Groups app — this will be installed by default on your ship. If you don't have a ship running, check out our Getting Started guide.
Your group should:
- Be named after your proposal
- Be public so our community can join
- Contain a notebook called
proposal - Contain a chat channel called
discussion
You'll write your proposal in markdown into the notebook, and engage with community members that would approve your proposal in the discussion channel.
After writing up your proposal, fill out this form, including the name of your group. The group name can be found in the URL of your browser. For example, in the URL https://your.ship.domain/apps/landscape/~landscape/ship/~wolref-podlex/foundation the group name is ~wolref-podlex/foundation.
Elements of a proposal
Good proposals all include the following:
- A detailed and clear description of the proposal. If you're proposing something technical, user stories are a good idea.
- An overview of why you are the right person for the job. A description of your background, familiarity with the project, and professional/education experience are all good starts.
- Your estimate for date of completion.
- The amount of funding you'd like for the project, denominated in stars.
- What specific deliverables will look like.
It's recommended to break your project into milestones, each of which must have its own completion dates, funding amounts and deliverables. In general, proposals should target a first deliverable within two months of the start of the project. Proposals should have a maximum of five milestones as scoping a project beyond that is impractical, and each milestone should constitute significant enough work to warrant the reward of a full star.
Here are some examples of exceptional proposals for reference:
Funding
The Urbit Foundation will provide funding of up to five stars for any one grant.
Our formula for determining how much to value a particular grant is a function of time spent on the project, value to the Urbit universe, and track record of the contributor (either via past work within the grants program, or a relevant external background).
If you're looking for more funding for a project that you're planning on devoting 100% of your full-time work to, you might instead consider The Combine.
Abandonment
A proposal is considered abandoned when a milestone is more than a month behind schedule. When a proposal is considered abandoned, the Urbit Foundation may choose to compensate the work differently upon completion, or not at all.
The intent of this policy is to:
- Reduce the support burden on the Urbit Foundation and community when contributors go silent
- Keep grants current: what's important today might not be important a year later
We try to use this rule in good faith. Reasonable delays due to unforseen life circumstances or project complexity will be tolerated, so long as the contributor is communicative with their champion and/or the Urbit Foundation. In these cases we'll encourage the contributor to modify the timelines and/or scope of their proposals to accommodate new information.
Community approval
Your proposal will be considered approved when an established member of our community decides to champion it. Only those that have made substantial past contributions to the project, generally through their own grants, are eligible to provide such a seal of approval.
Approval from the community goes beyond simply clearing the project for funding. The community member that approves your project, called the Champion, will meet with you regularly to provide mentorship and support, help onboard you to the rest of the community, and ultimately be responsible for approving your work.
How it works
After creating your group and submitting it, the Urbit Foundation team will post your group to the community members that are approved for Championing proposals.
The contents of your submission will be available to prospective champions, and if they're interested, they'll join your group and dive into the details with you (that's why that discussion channel is important).
When someone is sufficiently interested, they'll say so and ask to champion your project. If multiple people are interested in championing, you'll need to choose who to go with! This is, in our view, a good problem to have.
Working with your Champion
Your champion is invested in the success of your project — if they successfully assist you in completing your project, they'll get a small reward as well — so don't hesitate to utilize them.
Here are some guidelines for how to engage with your champion:
- Meet regularly: Those that can champion projects are chosen for their past contributions. This means that they're able to provide hands-on support. This structure works best if you set up a regular check-in, either once a week or every other week. If nothing else, having an accountability buddy is really helpful.
- Stay in touch: Leverage the Urbit network for keeping in touch about your project. Don't hesitate to ask questions!
- Ask for connections: Champions are well-connected throughout the network and know who's who. If you need support in a particular area that is beyond your Champion's expertise, they should be able to put you in touch with someone that can help.
- Get your work reviewed: Part of your Champion's job is to review your work and get others' eyes on it as well. Let them know when you need something reviewed.
If your Champion becomes unresponsive or is unhelpful, let someone at the Urbit Foundation know and we'll take care of it.
Paperwork
After your proposal is Championed the Urbit Foundation will need to get a signed contributor agreement and collect a small amount of personal information from you as part of our KYC process.
The Urbit Foundation must comply with international law when distributing address space. We try to keep this process as minimal as we can, but there's no way to avoid it entirely without legally jeopardizing the Foundation's operations.
Getting Paid
After you've finished your work and gotten signoff from your champion, you'll submit an invoice to the Urbit Foundation for the amount agreed upon in your grant or milestone, which the Foundation will pay.
We approve and issue payments within 30 days of invoice receipt and approval, although often payment is made more quickly as transactions are batched with other grantees who have recently completed milestones. If you are having any issues accepting stars through Bridge please contact ~taller-ravnut for assistance.