Introduction

This document intends to provide a comprehensive view of applicants and teams looking to apply for ICP Community Grants. This guide showcases how to apply for a grant, what type of grant track we offer, how to establish clear milestones, and describes how a grant application is processed and reviewed by the ICP and the milestone review and approval process.

Summary

Guidelines and Support

1. Overall Guidelines

Your project will have a better chance of being accepted if it has the following:

Type of project	Project having: • a well-researched or tested idea for which, ideally, you can show some prior work • a high-impact pilot • or a very well-established project with a proven track record
Next Steps after completion	There is a clear CTA and next steps roadmap/pathway for target audience engagement post-program completion.
Proven experience and skills	Individual/Team has proven experience with the relevant skills and technologies. You will be asked to provide the proﬁles of your/your team members as part of your application, which we will examine for past activity and work quality.
High-quality application	Your application is rich in technical details and is well-deﬁned. Milestones and price breakdowns are clear and justiﬁable.
Value add	The project provides clear value add to the ICP ecosystem.
Open to Share	The project funded by this grant should not be under copyright. Anyone can use its content, tools, platform, etc., to benefit the ICP ecosystem after giving due credit wherever applicable.
Experts	The project must have in-house/ via partnerships technical capabilities to implement the proposed project successfully (if the project requires one). The DFINITY Forum is a great place to ﬁnd support and reach out to for potential collaborations. E.g., A proposal to build a dev course for ICP should have in-house tech instructors and TAs to design and run the course, etc.

2. Focus Areas

This program aims to catalyze the ICP ecosystem's growth and make the ICP the default blockchain to more BUIDLERS worldwide by inspiring, engaging, and accelerating promising developers and entrepreneurs.

The ICP Community Grants will focus on projects applying for a grant within the following areas as of Q1 2023.

Events - Any online or IRL event ensuring evangelization of ICP and its adoption can apply for this grant. The event should focus on ICP tech experience/use cases or developer/entrepreneur/enterprise awareness/onboarding. These include hackathons, pitch days, conferences, talent fairs, and meetups.
Education - ICP community believes the path to mass adoption goes via education. Any educational initiatives which aim to educate developers, entrepreneurs, users, and enterprises. These initiatives can be top-of-the-funnel or bottom-of-the-funnel initiatives like boot camps, incubators, accelerators, curriculum integrations, etc.
Content - The success of any community depends on the type of content it creates and shares. The ICP community strives to develop world-class engaging content to ensure the ICP revolution reaches the critical target audience to drive this movement toward mass adoption. The content can highlight the ICP tech, ecosystem, community, adoption, new initiatives, partnerships, projects, announcements, etc. The content includes articles, blogs, publications, research papers, videos, SM posts, podcasts, infographics, interviews, documentaries, newsletters, music, websites, etc.

Not Supported projects

dApp building & marketing
Web2 to Web3 product transition
Conference sponsorships

Please visit the DFINITY Developer Grants for building dApps

3. Support and Resources

Below are some helpful and useful resources to learn about ICP, amplify your project, connect with the ICP Ecosystem, and more:

General ICP resources

ICP Wiki

Technical Resources & Documentation

Tools to Facilitate Building on ICP

Marketing resources

Brand Guidelines

ICP infographics

Connect and Collaborate

Discover talent & post open roles

Participate in ICP governance and earn a reward

Having issues?

Connect with our developers and ask your questions during our office hours or find support on our support portal.

Join the ICP ecosystem

Add your project to our growing list of projects

Join our community forum

Discord

ICP YouTube

Blog

Grants Parameters

1. General Rules

There is a fixed ceiling per grant, and one is eligible to earn "up to" the fixed ceiling, dependent on meeting milestones of that grant track.
On a case-to-case basis, some projects can receive a follow-up grant to continue the same project.
The original grant project must be set up for success before a second grant is considered.
A breakdown explaining how the funds will be spent and a justiﬁcation of the total grant amount will be required.
Successful completion of KYC/KYB

2. Grant Tracks

Different grant tracks cater to projects of varied impact and scale of operation. All the following tracks apply to our three focus areas Events, Education, and Content. Please refer to Community Grants KPIs and Decision Matrix to choose a suitable grant track.

3. Milestones

ICP Community Grants are required to have milestones. The number of milestones will be related to the Grant Track you choose (from 1 to 5 milestones).

What is a milestone, and why are they important?

Project milestones mark speciﬁc pointsalong a project’s timeline. They are checkpoints that identify when key developments or groups of activities have been completed. Milestones are powerful because they demonstrate forward progress. They help you monitor deadlines and identify important dates.

4. Disbursement

Disbursement of the grant will be in USD equivalent ICP tokens at the spot price of ICP on the day of the disbursement.

Once the grant is approved, the first tranche will be released as per the scheduled monthly disbursement cycle; however, for milestone disbursements, a review process will have to be completed before any tokens are released after review and approval.

The preferred method of funding community grants is “ICP tokens.”

In rare cases, fiat funding can be approved. For token grants, invoices are not required to be submitted. For fiat grants, the beneficiary must submit an invoice every time before the payment is released.

The payment method cannot be swapped midway through the project implementation.

It is essential to have a valid ICP wallet (for the token) or account details (for fiat) to facilitate payments.

Work Flow

At ICP, we continuously work on improving the grant application process and review process, with a particular focus on the following:

Reducing the time to approve the grant
Decentralization & transparency of the entire process

Once you have applied for an ICP Community Grant, your application will undergo a review and approval process (4-6 weeks)

1. Applying for the Grant

Apply for a grant using this form

Please read this handbook, KPIs & decision matrix, and Terms & Conditions to familiarize yourself with the subtleties of grants, applications, and the program.

Only complete applications or applications adhering to the guidelines, proposal template, KPIs, and T&C will be accepted for review.

! Upon submission, you will receive an email that we received your grant application.

2. Application Review & Approval

2.1 - Application Screening - ⏱ 1 week

The ﬁrst step in the review process is an eligibility check. Members of the Grant Committee will screen your application and determine whether or not your application is eligible. The quality of your application, the correct grant track, the KPI criteria fit, and an initial pass-on concept are necessary to pass this step.

Once you have passed the eligibility step, your project will be assigned to a project reviewer, and you will move on to the next steps.

! After this stage, you will receive an email notifying you of the status of your application.

2.2 - Expert/Technical Review - ⏱ 1-2 weeks

The assigned project reviewer will reach out to you and schedule a meeting to dig deeper into your application and to ask any questions he/she may have about your project to ensure that you are best positioned to deliver this project.

At this stage, you will be required to make necessary changes to your grant proposal document (if required, on the reviewer's advice) submitted during the application to make it high quality and have clearly defined milestones and corresponding payment schedules.

! After this stage, you will receive an email notifying you of the status of your application.

2.3 - Grant Committee Approval ⏱ 2-4 weeks

Once your application has passed the business/technical needs, a ﬁnal Grant Committee approval is required before accepting a project. Grant Committee approval is provided asynchronously by your project reviewer. If the Grant Committee suggests some changes to the proposal, the project reviewer will reach out to the applicant and get it done.

The Grant Committee is a five-member committee, and the decision is taken by majority vote after detailed discussion and deliberation.

! After this stage, you will receive an email notifying you of the status of your application.

2.4 - Reasons for Rejection

Your project might be declined/redirected for several reasons:

The project is declined because it is not aligned with T&Cs of this grant
The project is declined because the KPIs mismatch
The project is declined because of missing proof of concept
The project is declined because of poor application quality
The project is declined because of lack of experienced team members
The project is redirected to another grant because it doesn’t fall under this grants focus areas

We understand that being declined for a grant can be tough. However, we highly encourage you to connect and continue working on the adoption of ICP or its ecosystem. Receiving an ICP Community Grant should not be the only reason to be part of ICP; this is why upon rejection, you will be sent an email containing resources and links to help you still contribute to the ecosystem.

! At any stage, if your application is rejected, you will receive an email stating the reason for the same.

3. KYC/KYB & Disbursal

Once your application has been approved for a grant, your KYC/ KYB will be started, followed by disbursal

3.1 - Verification of Details

You will receive an email to verify your KYC/KYB details (given during the application), ICP wallet submitted during the application process. This email will also contain a copy of your final grant proposal document with final project milestones and payment schedule (submitted by you).

! Please make sure you verify your information in the email and send the approval

3.2 - KYC/KYB

As part of our due diligence process, we ask every grantee to complete a KYC (person) and KYB (if you are applying on behalf of a company) veriﬁcation using the link sent to them.

One of the Grant Committee members may reach out again at this stage, asking you to provide clariﬁcation about milestones and timelines.

! After this stage, you will receive an email notifying you of the status of your KYC. In case of non-passage of KYC/KYB, your grant will be rejected

3.3 - Final Approval(s)

Once you have completed your KYC/KYB, one of the Grant Committee members must provide ﬁnal internal approval(s) before the first tranche is disbursed to you.

! Please note that in this grant, there won’t be any agreement that either party will sign; the form itself acts as the agreement as you agree to grant T&C right at the beginning

3.4 - Payment

Once the due diligence is done, the finance team will disburse the tokens for the start of the project by the next scheduled payment cycle.

! After this stage, you will receive an email notifying you of the status of your payment

3.5 - Project Kick-Start

Once the first tranche is disbursed, you will receive an email introducing you to your Grant Manager, who will provide all the necessary support to drive the project to success.

4. Milestone Review and Payment

Once you have received the start of the program amount and start building towards your ﬁrst milestone, you will need to complete this process to receive the funds once your milestone is achieved.

4.1- Milestone Submission

Once you have completed a milestone, please complete the milestone completion form shared with you by your Grant Manager.

Please complete the form ONLY IF :

You have completed a milestone
You have sufficient evidence to prove it
Evidence you share is accessible (links to docs) and complete (as per the final grant proposal)

4.2- Milestone Review ⏱ 1 week

At this stage, the Grant Manager will review the evidence you have sent and reply with remarks, feedback, and other comments. An expert reviewer might be assigned to the milestone and will contact you if necessary.

4.3- Milestone Approval

The Grant Manager needs to provide ﬁnal approval of milestone completion before proceeding to the next step.

4.4- Milestone & Payment

Once the Grant Manager approves, the funds will be released.

! Once you have completed a milestone, you should start building toward the next one and repeat this process once that milestone is completed.

Grants Policy

Grants Terms & Conditions

ICP is committed to ensuring that its grants and activities are not used to launder money, ﬁnance terrorism, evade US, Swiss Law, and Global Sanctions, or otherwise facilitate criminal activity. Please read the detailed T&C carefully before applying for this grant. You must agree to these terms and conditions during your application process.

Prohibited Jurisdictions

This program doesn’t fund applications from certain jurisdictions based on OFAC-sanctioned countries.

Updated March 15, 2023 20:58

Community Grants

Handbook - ICP Community Grants

Introduction

Summary