This campaign supports the genesis grant fund for Unnamed Fund, a group organized by NEW INC members and alumni. NEW INC is the cultural incubator program of New Museum in New York City.

We’re launching our first NEW INC member-led funding experiment!

After months of research, model development, workshops and conversations, we are excited to announce Unnamed Fund’s first funding experiment. We’re seeking to raise $10k in ETH to distribute to our creative community using quadratic voting - read ahead to learn more about what we discovered in our research, how we will run this experiment, and how to support us.

Who we are

NEW INC is an inspiring community of forward-thinking creative and social entrepreneurs, often working on meaningful projects where social or impact returns are prioritized over financial returns. As a community, many of us have experienced frustration with both existing for-profit and non-profit funding models. This project represents an experiment in a community-led grant fund, democratically determined by us. As NEW INC members, we believe that we are collectively in the best position to identify meaningful and impactful projects to support.

Unnamed Fund is a cooperatively-controlled creative ecosystem fund. We seek to re-imagine existing models for funding creative, artistic, and entrepreneurial projects by sustaining those underserved by traditional funding through the equitable distribution of capital, across multiple impact outcomes. We plan to start our work within the context of the NEW INC community, and branch out from there.

Over the past few months, we’ve gone through a research phase: we ran a workshop with our NEW INC community to understand the needs and wants around funding, developed models, raised questions, and conducted conversations with funders and community members across the arts, venture capital, and Web3. You can learn more about our findings and process here.

Outfitted with this valuable, actionable research, we’re move into the next chapter: funding experiment #1. We’re using this experiment to test key hypotheses and strengthen our investment thesis.

This effort has been stewarded by a small crew of NEW INC members and alumni, including Alex Darby, Noya Kohavi, Jonah King, Austin Robey and Bhavik Singh.

What we found

Our first funding experiment is a fast one and highly focused on cooperative funding. Our goal with this experiment is to stress test our ability to support practitioners without burdening them, engage our community in an accessible and meaningful way, and enable the fund itself to sustain over the long term.

The experiment is created, executed and reflected on in close collaboration with the NEW INC community, and we will publish key expectations and findings along the way. Using principles of Solidarity and Commons, we anticipate that through messy action, the fund’s thesis will sharpen.

Unnamed Fund Key principles These principles arose as critical needs from our community. We believe they contribute to the success of the fund and its fundees.

• Frictionless: Application materials and reporting requirements are minimal.
• Unbiased: We seek to remove bias from the application, selection, and voting process.
• Quick: The turnaround between application and receipt of funds should be as quick as possible (> 1 week).
• Unrestricted: Funds may be used for anything.
• Transparent: Information about funders, applicants, voters, and fundees will be made public.

The experiment

This funding experiment will distribute 3.5 ETH in varied sized grants to creatives in the NEW INC Community. Our fundees will be determined by quadratic voting of community members.

We are choosing quadratic voting because we believe it represents our community’s desire for powerful, democratic expression of support.

We see this as the first of many experiments on the road towards a long term, sustainable fund that enables new opportunities for creative ecosystem funding. At the end of the experiment, we will publish our findings and engage the community in conversation for next steps, so that we can build this future collectively.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

• Eligibility: Applications are open to NEW INC current community members and alumni.
• Voter population: Voting will be open to all NEW INC, including current members, alumni, admin and mentors
• Voting style: Quadratic voting for all submitted projects, including Unnamed Fund!
• Timeline: We will raise funds to May 15. On May 15, applications open for a week, after which we will have a 5 day voting period. Funds will be dispersed on May 31, and findings published in a blog post on June 15.

How we measure success

Our funding experiments are designed to help us expand the ways in which we measure impact beyond just the bottom line. For this experiment, we’re interested in collecting and understanding our impact through the following lenses:

• Impact on applicant/project: How did the applicant measure their own success? What measurable/non-measurable metrics did they use to report success? Did the funding contribute to the applicant or project/s success? What is the timeline for impact?
• Community Impact: Did the fundee success have impact on the larger NEW INC community and/or the fundee’s broader community? What are some ripple effects we can trace?
• Fund sustainability: Was the experiment sustainable for the fund? Did we exhaust our financial and human resources? Did the experiment contribute to the fund’s longevity? Did we develop enough interest and/or resources for a second round of experiments?
• The unknowns: What kinds of measured or non-measurable impact can we identify and be more attuned to in the future?

Support us

Our funding round for this experiment will open on April 15, 2022. Our goal is to raise 3.5 ETH. If we exceed our goal, we will continue subsequent rounds within the parameters of this experiment until funds are exhausted.

We hope you’d like to be a supporter of the Unnamed Fund initiative and help us launch our first ever funding round. Funds will be collected to our transparent shared treasury.

If you’d like to keep in touch, you can join our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, or email us at unnamedfund@gmail.com. We looking forward to hearing from you.