VOX ORDO · GRANTS — SMALL MONEY, SIGNED, NO STRINGS
Community grants
$2,000 micro-grants for member projects that make the ecosystem better — open tooling, recipes, translations, teaching. Applications are one page, decisions come with reasons, and the money is a signed ledger entry.
01 / THE OFFER — $2K, QUARTERLY, IN THE OPEN
what$2,000 flat · 5 per quarter · paid up front, not on delivery
foropen tooling · recipes · locale stewardship · teaching material — MIT or CC what you make
stringsnone — no equity, no exclusivity, no logo requirements · one build log at the end
paid up front because trust is the brand — the only deliverable is a public build log, success or failure
THE BUDGET LINE APPEARS IN THE QUARTERLY LETTER — GRANTS ARE PART OF THE OPEN BOOKS
02 / APPLYING — ONE PAGE, PUBLIC BY DEFAULT
APPLICATION · THREE QUESTIONS
what will exist that doesn't now?
who needs it? (one attached workflow beats ten adjectives)
what's the first thing you'll ship in week one?
applications post publicly to the forum's showcase — the community sees the queue, and prior art surfaces itself
three questions, no budget spreadsheets, no letters of support
public applications kill duplicate work before it starts
the week-one question filters dreamers from builders, kindly
03 / DECISIONS — REASONS EITHER WAY, PUBLISHED
Q3funded: nvda-mode deep testing (rsa) — "fills our own a11y gap row"FUNDED
Q3declined: a hosted recipe store — "violates the no-cloud-middleman refusal"DECLINED ↗
declines cite the exact rule or gap they hit — rejection is a map of the refusals, not a mood
04 / REFUSALS — GRANT THEATER WE WON'T DO
✗ no milestone-gated dribbles — the $2k lands day one
✗ no IP claims on funded work — MIT/CC belongs to the maker
✗ no ghosted applications — every one gets its reason within the quarter
✗ no grants as recruiting funnels — funding is not a tryout
SAME CONTRACT AS EVERY REFUSALS CARD: REMOVING ONE REQUIRES A CHANGELOG ENTRY EXPLAINING WHY
05 / THE DELIVERABLE — ONE BUILD LOG, WIN OR LOSE
▶
"NVDA deep-testing: what I found" · 14 min
grant #7 closing log · hosted on rsa's instance, indexed on the grants page
a failed grant's log is equally welcome — "here's why it didn't work" saves the next person's quarter
the closing log is a lumen series entry, federated like everything
failure logs get equal placement — the graveyard rule applied to grants
findings feed the changelog when they land fixes, credited
06 / ALUMNI — WHAT THE MONEY BECAME
Q2nvda deep-testing → 11 fixes shipped, a11y gaps row updatedSHIPPED
Q1pt-BR locale stewardship → full-UI tier promotionSHIPPED
Q1vim-mode recipe pack → parked, log explains the trigger conflictsPARKED
the alumni table maps every dollar to an outcome, including the parked ones — the grants page audits itself
outcomes in the same three states as the roadmap — shipped, parked, killed
the table is the program's own quarterly letter
alumni often become locale stewards and forum library authors — the pipeline is visible
GRANT RULES: PAID UP FRONT · ONE PAGE TO APPLY · REASONS EITHER WAY · THE MAKER KEEPS EVERYTHING · FAILURE LOGS GET EQUAL PLACEMENT — 6 SURFACES