Introducing the Climate Collective’s New Grants Program
by A. Nirvaan Ranganathan, Program Lead (Climate Collective)
“From the Gift, we become capable of the impossible.” — Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics
In our mission to build a regenerative financial system, the Climate Collective supports the growth of a holistic ecosystem of innovative projects and diverse builders around the world. We achieve this by providing grant capital, technical advice, strategic partnerships, marketing, and broad support for climate-relevant web3 initiatives.
Today, we are delighted to announce that applications for “Wave 1” of the Climate Collective Treasury’s grant program are open until September 5th! Grants are primarily intended for projects building climate-related applications that incorporate the Celo blockchain and integrate with the broader Regenerative Finance (ReFi) ecosystem. More details on eligibility, requirements, and process can be found in our grant kit.
Current Grants (“Wave 0”)
Since early 2022, the Climate Collective has co-funded the following grants with the Celo Foundation:
- Automated Incentives for Regenerative Stewardship (AIRS) program by Green World Organization: developing an oracle-based system to monitor and incentivize regenerative agriculture
- Plastiks: an NFT Marketplace that allows users to offset waste through tokenized plastic recycling guarantees
- Untangled Finance: a decentralized credit protocol offering loans for regenerative projects and real-world assets
- ReFi Spring: an in-person event series activating new ReFi communities across the globe
- Athena Protocol: an MRV protocol utilizing an Internet-of-Things (IoT) mesh network to measure wildfire and drought risk
- Atem: a structured API-driven marketplace for on-chain carbon, built on Collective members Toucan Protocol and FlowCarbon
- ReFi Podcast: a must-listen resource for anyone interested in ReFi
- Kernel: a learning community where we support the Regeneration Guild for upcoming blocks
Though the Collective gained momentum in April after Celo Connect, the crypto market went the opposite direction in May. Despite the market downturn, and a brief subsequent hiatus surrounding scoping discussions, we are pleased to announce the following projects have been approved in the Climate Collective Treasury’s inaugural wave of grants:
- SimplexDNA: a “Proof-of-Life” protocol for monitoring biodiversity through eDNA barcoding and analysis of air and water samples
- Thallo: a tokenized carbon marketplace with native registry support and two-way bridge
- Senken: a user-friendly marketplace for tokenized carbon projects, built on Collective members Toucan Protocol and FlowCarbon
- Sequestr: a vertically-stacked platform with unique pricing mechanisms to help scale up a high quality supply of early-stage carbon projects
- MRV Collective: a metadata platform for digital MRV such as remote sensing, drones, Internet of Things, DNA monitoring, etc.
- Socialstack: a no-code social token platform offering the Climate Action Social Token Fund
- Closer: a suite of web3 tools to bootstrap regenerative action and meaningful governance in local communities
Together, these 15 grants formed “Wave 0” of the Climate Collective’s grants program:
The Climate Collective Treasury
Through Celo Governance Proposal #52, which passed in late June, the Celo community helped us establish the Climate Collective Treasury with 4.7M CELO to be utilized for grants over the next 4 quarters. This grants program is dedicated specifically to ReFi, and is administered by a distinguished multi-sig team:
- Ale Borda, Gitcoin & FiftyYears
- Birju Shah, Loam
- Craig Wilson, Climate Collective
- Kianga Daverington, ACREinvest
- Luuk Weber, Kolektivo & PrimeDAO
- Maria Li, Steward
- Nirvaan Ranganathan, Climate Collective
- Renc Korzay, Regenerative Finance Foundation
- Slobodan Sudaric, cLabs
- Tom Walker, SimplexDNA
And with this Treasury comes a new, improved, more decentralized and informed grant workflow that we have documented in our grant kit. Applicants are requested to submit a “Profile” form prior to formally applying for a grant, after which an interview may be scheduled to meet your team and to refine your grant scope. The subsequent official application is expected to dive deep into the scope, outcomes, and implementation — focusing on the project details, specific features, and concrete goals that will be achieved through this grant. The more information applicants share with us, the more comprehensive an approach we can take in evaluating a project’s fit for the Collective. All ten members of the multi-sig advisory team will review applications and decide whether to accept, revise, or reject proposals.
Our inaugural “Wave 1” of Climate Collective grants is open for applications until September 5th, after which time the multi-sig team will evaluate applications and decide on allocations by September 19th. We anticipate a high volume of applicants and will keep the community updated on our progress through articles and live sessions.
The Climate Collective’s grants program is supported by Questbook, a fully on-chain grant management platform; and Verilog, a leading web3 security review service. All grant milestones will be disbursed through Questbook, and once development is complete, the Climate Collective will cover the cost of your project’s security audit! While we want to build with the urgency necessary to reverse the climate crisis, we will not compromise on security and have developed this grant structure to help minimize exploits in ReFi.
It follows that we are seeking teams with a deployment on their roadmap, but also welcome uniquely compelling early-stage projects. Our grant kit contains several useful resources and project ideas, and outlines our quarterly cadence with “Wave 2” planned for Q4 2022. Keep an eye our for upcoming blog posts about each of our grantee partners in the coming weeks.
For questions about grants, please be sure to read our grant kit or contact grants@climatecollective.org. Let’s see what this next wave of ReFi has in store for us!
Follow us on Twitter & LinkedIn for more updates from the Climate Collective.
