If I have personally referred you to this page, hello and here's what I'm talking about. What I'm calling microgrants fall in the $500-5000 USD range and are aimed at enabling substantial personal leverage for trusted friends and allies. In more detail, good candidates for a microgrants have these characteristics:
- substantial — at least a significant fraction of the total need. I know this dollar range regretfully won't be substantially relevant to many circumstances. Sometimes a "matching funds" campaign can scale impact.
- personal — this is something that you yourself are doing/making/causing, not a pass-through to some other person or organization (which generally rules out friends-of-a-friend).
- leverage — the funds will be applied in a way that will make something possible, noticeably hasten/accelerate a timeline, and/or prevent a friction/consequence/spiral from lack of cashflow/capital.
Examples of past microgrants include:
- Matching crowdfunding to buy a new laptop for a writer
- Enabling the purchase of a more reliable car (with a lower long-term TCO)
- Seeding funding for the production of an animation project
- Helping pay off legal fees in order to avoid debt
- Living expenses to extend personal runway in support of career transition
If you're a stranger that has stumbled on this page, don't bother asking. If we have any connection, please do ask — I will never hold it against you. You might hear a "no," but regardless of outcome I do not expect this to substantially affect our relationship. There are no strings attached, and yes these are specifically grants and not loans.
Other areas not eligible for microgrant funding include donations to registered charitable organizations, business investments, and/or steady-stream income (e.g. Patreons). You're welcome to talk to me about those cases, it's just not a microgrant context.