HACKER Q&A
📣 youssefabdelm

Grants that ACTUALLY pay you to pursue your passion?


"We will only fund you if you've been bitten by a mosquito AND took a shit in the last half an hour, and if you reside in Brooklyn near an alley on 15th street, if you're between the ages of 22 and 22.5, there are 15 deliveraballs and I want this done by saturday, and could you tutor our kids from 9 to 5 everyday. $1200, 8 month residency.

Founder bio: As the founder of this organization, I strongly resonate with New Yorkers who were bitten by mosquitoes in the last half hour AND took a shit... especially if both things were happening at the same time. I can't tell you how many times I've been bitten by mosquitoes WHILE I was taking a shit, just love it.

NOTE: We've had a lot of applications recently of people who were bitten by mosquitoes but did not take a shit. If you have not taken a shit, you are not eligible. All partially filled applications are not considered, our application is only 15 pages. Acceptance rate is 0.1%

Deadline: Feb 1, 2023"

Foreign artist: continues to starve

This has been my experience with applying to grants. Discrimination through anti-discrimination. Thinly veiled cheap labor.

Does anyone actually know of any open-ended grants that: Pay you to do what you actually want to do? (Whatever that is) Meaning: as an artist, entrepreneur, whatever the fuck you are, you have a billion ideas, and if someone just gave you money and LEFT YOU ALONE eventually SOMETHING will come out. And if you're an interesting person and they think you're an interesting person and if you have an interesting track record, well, it'll probably be SOMEWHAT interesting.

And if you're TRULY an artist, or someone who CARES about what you do, you don't need a fucking theme (about the most artificial concoction you can have for an artist), or a deadline that forces you to compromise your art (seriously, who are these grants for?) or a requirement list, you have 5000 unfinished songs and paintings, you just don't have the money to pursue your work or start-up or whatever it is


  👤 youssefabdelm Accepted Answer ✓
For those who have come across this thread, and don't just want to read the whining folks, some things that come close:

- O’Shaughnessy Fellowships: https://www.osv.llc/oshaughnessy-fellowships

- Arvo Part Residency: https://www.arvopart.ee/en/residency/

I welcome more examples...


👤 armchairhacker
I think it’s generally really hard to get funding to pursue your passion.

What you can do is get an job with low time/effort and then work on your passion. Then make a side income from selling it or getting funding from Ko-Fi or Patreon. I've seen Patreons which are pretty laid back wrt. deliverables and donor expectations and still get a lot of funding.

If you get lucky the Ko-Fi/Patreon can get you enough that you don’t have to work at all, but I wouldn’t count on it.


👤 mafik
I share your sentiment as well. My experience browsing through public grant offers in Poland is that they strongly reflect political zeitgeist. In the particular case of Poland it is currently "everything has to promote patriotic values". I thought about presenting my projects in such light to become eligible but in the end decided to just limit my spending and use personal savings instead. Computer software is a rather cheap hobby after all.

👤 ffwacom
Get a job and do it in your spare time like every other struggling artist who eventually made it.

👤 meetingthrower
Why do you think you are owed free money without strings?

👤 pvaldes
IfyourpassionisWorkingforfree,sure

AndNowexcuseme,butImustkeeptryingtofixthis&!$keyboardspacebar


👤 khrbrt
Matthew Lesko (the FREE MONEY FROM THE GOVT guy with the ? suit) is very active on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@MatthewLesko

Maybe there's something in his recent videos that can help? He also does streams with live QA sessions.


👤 mpeg
I don’t think this is the right audience for your grievance.

There are plenty of people who focus solely on their passions, with money they made through work. That’s probably a more realistic route than expecting someone else to fund you no strings attached.


👤 bitxbitxbitcoin
Do YOU type this way in the grant applications? That MIGHT be part of the problem.

👤 bequanna
MacArthur Genius Grant?

https://www.macfound.org/


👤 ajhurliman
If you really wanted to do it, you’d find a way to do it.