Have a project you’d like to undertake for the e-NABLE volunteer community? e-NABLE’s Mini-Grant program has some funding available to support worthy initiatives!


The e-NABLE Fund needs funding!  You can help.

The e-NABLE community collectively manages a funding pool called The Enable Fund.  Since its establishment in 2017, we have allocated money to projects proposed by community members, and by funders whose proposals were ratified by the community. The system works, and has helped extend e-NABLE’s model of “distributed do-ocracy” to decision-making and finance.  

But for this program to work, we need to keep new funding coming into the Enable Fund! One of our volunteers, Bob Rieger, has had good success recently in bringing in new funding, and he’s written up some thoughts about how you can help out.

  • Donating yourself
  • Approaching corporations
    • Many corporations match employee contributions.  Details differ. Inquire with your company, and coordinate with JSchull@e-NABLE.org.
    • Many corporations have Corporate Social Responsibility budgets and may be able to:
  • Taking the lead on coordinating e-NABLE fund-raising efforts.
    • e-NABLE is a do-ocracy, and right now, we lack fundraising expertise in the leadership team. If it’s your forte and passion, and you can commit time to leadership, follow-through, and accountability, let us know!

The e-NABLE Mini-Grant Program

The e-NABLE Mini-Grant program is administered by the Rochester Enable, and the funds are managed through the Open-Collective platform. Funding decisions are made by the e-NABLE community using the Loomio decision-making platform.  enablingthefuture.org is not involved in approving Mini-Grant proposals or administering funds.

To apply, follow these steps:

  1. Create a free account on Loomio.
  1. Join the “E-nablio” group on Loomio.
  1. Create a new thread in the E-nablio group to discuss your initiative and get feedback.
  1. Once you’re ready, write a proposal (click on “Proposal” in the Decision Tools panel) in that thread to allow the community to vote on whether or not the project should move forward. Project proposals may include a request for funding, but this is optional (some projects may not require funding but still benefit from community assent).
  1. If your proposal is funded, create an invoice for the approved amount and submit it to the e-NABLE Fund page on Open Collective.
  2. Report your progress and results to the community! It is very important that you share data and results from your initiative so the entire community can benefit from your work.

Contents of a Mini-Grant Proposal

To help community members make informed decisions, each mini-grant proposal should include:

  1. Clear description of work to be performed
  1. Expected results/impact on the community, the world, etc.
  1. Estimate of work effort involved (# of hours)
  1. Estimated timeline for completion of the effort
  1. Names of individuals responsible for completing work
  1. Amount of funding being requested (if any), and a breakdown of costs – please specify an exact amount, not a range. If the project is approved, we need to know how much funding to allocate
  2. A brief overview of your background with e-NABLE (work you’ve done in the past) – so people know who is proposing the project.  

Feel free to include a link to a Google Doc with a more detailed project outline.

Human Research Initiatives

If your initiative involves research and you want access to e-NABLE’s Research Pool (recipients of e-NABLE devices who have volunteered to be available for follow-up research programs), please carefully review this presentation before creating your proposal.

Ownership of work products

In the spirit of the e-NABLE community, any work products resulting from a funded project will be considered open source and available for anyone to use. Please be prepared to share your work so others may benefit from your results.

To Submit a Project Proposal

To submit a project proposal, go to the main E-nablio page on Loomio (https://www.loomio.org/g/z6anwdt7/e-nablio) and create a new thread for your proposal (unless you’ve already done so). Within that thread, click on Proposal (in the Decision Tools panel). Copy and paste the template content below and provide the details for your proposal. Set the voting duration to at least one week (preferably longer) to allow sufficient community input.

Project Approval

Each project proposal must receive at least 15 Agree votes with at least 80% of the total votes in support of the project in order to be approved. For determining the approval percentage, “Abstain” votes are not counted in the total. So the formula for the approval percentage is:
(A / (A + D)) * 100
Where A = # of Agree Votes and D = # of Disagree Votes

To be approved, both criteria (minimum number of Agree votes and percentage agreement) must be met. For example, if a proposal has 20 “Agree” votes and 10 “Disagree” votes, that would meet the minimum number of Agree votes, but it would not meet the required percentage of agreement (since only 66.7% of the votes are in support of the project). In this case, the project would not be approved.

If a proposal receives even a single Block vote, it will require discussion in the Strategic Planning Committee before a decision can be made.

Note: This process is self-organized by the e-NABLE community.  To guard against abuse, the process is overseen by e-NABLE’s Strategic Planning Committee (which invites new contributors) and by Rochester e-NABLE Limited (the 501(c)3 organization that bears fiscal responsibility for the fund and accepts donations.)

Project Proposal Template (copy and paste the below content to create your own Loomio proposal)

NOTE: Proposals can also include images, links, etc., using Markdown.

A convenient markdown editor can be found here.

# Description of Proposed Project:

[Replace with your content]

# Expected results/impact:

[Replace with your content]

# Estimate of work effort involved:

[Replace with your content]

# Estimated timeline for completion:

[Replace with your content]

# Names of individuals responsible for deliverables:

[Replace with your content]

# Amount of funding being requested:

[Replace with your content]

# A brief overview of my background with e-NABLE:

[Replace with your content]

NOTE: The “#” above will cause those lines to be formatted as headings. The “#” itself will not be displayed once you post your proposal.