Ideas to get some smaller Hive projects funded

The DHF

There is often a lot to do about the Distributed Hive Fund. A part of the inflation of Hive goes into the DHF.
If you run a project on Hive, you could create a DHF proposal to get funded by the DHF.
Although I have never made a proposal myself, I do think it needs a lot of effort to get it funded.
After you create s proposal, you also need to collect enough votes for your proposal to get it funded. This means you need to do a lot of promotion of your project. Votes from whales really help in that matter.
You can have your opinion about the projects funded by the DHF, but I think the idea is nice.
But I also think it doesn't work for smaller projects...

Hive projects

One thing about Hive that is really think cool (at least, I think it is cool) is that there are quite a few interesting projects. A lot of these projects are beneficial for Hive and run by volunteers that spend time and sometimes to keep the project running and updated. I think these projects are important for Hive. They are either beneficial for the Hive users, like tools and curation initiatives, or they help to attract or onboard new users.
Since most of them are not funded by the DHF, they often use the upvotes on their project posts or delegations to fund and grow their project.

Here is a selection of projects I came across on Hive that I find interesting:
Snapie (@snapie); A project by @meno who created an app for PeakD Snaps. He's been spending quite some hours building it and adding features and is in the process of getting it in the Google Play Store. He did create a DHF proposal, but it is the question if it will get funded.
HiveTools by @ecoinstant and @thecrazygm provide a large set of Hive tools which they fund from donations (https://thecrazygm.com/hivetools)
Then you also have the different curation initiatives like @discovery-it, @ourpick, @commentrewarder and my own @topcomment.
And there are many more that I haven't mentioned yet.

Funding smaller projects

I think a lot of these projects are really good for Hive and that it would be good when these projects can grow bigger and make more impact on Hive.
Earlier this week I wrote a post about the potential power of orcas and dolphins. After I published this blog I had some thoughts on this subject and the funding of projects.

I thought: What if we made it easier for Hivers to find interesting project posts they can upvote?

Would making it easier to do this incentivize Hivers to support these projects with periodic upvotes?
Maybe a lot of them wouldn't change their voting habits and keep auto-voting the same users or manually upvoting posts from the trending page, burning Hive or even wasting their Hive Power at 100%. But I do think there is a group that will upvote these projects to support them. And the more people do that, the more it will benefit the projects.

But then the question is: How are can we make these posts easy to find by those who want to support them?

I have two ideas for this:

A shark tank
A #hiveproject tag

I'll explain the two options in this blog. Please share your opinions on them or contribute by sharing your own ideas on how funding of smaller projects could be improved.

Shark Tank

The Shark Tank Community would be a place where ideas meet investors. Just like the American TV show.
Do you have a project or initiative on Hive? In the Shark Tank Community you can pitch it to other Hivers.

Everyone with staked Hive can be an investor. From minnows to whales.
Support can be as simple as a periodic upvote, a delegation, or even voting for a DHF proposal.

Because only pitches for projects and initiatives are allowed to be posted in the community, the community feed should give a clean list of projects and initiatives.
As a stakeholder, you can quickly discover new projects and decide which ones deserve your support.

It would be great to have a centralised list of projects, but to get itnup and running you need a lot of promotion I think. And the community also needs to be managed to prevent abuse.
We can't exactly see how the funds are spent. But on the other hand, we don't know that for many DHF projects eithers. It's a matter of trust I think.

UPDATE:
The Shark Tank Community has been created:
created/hive-178895

The second idea is a bit easier to implement. We could agree to use a dedicated tag for Hive related projects, for instance #hiveproject
It's easy for project owners to add the tag to their project posts. And it's also easy for voters to check out all the posts with this tag.
Just like with the Shark Tank Community idea, we don't have insight on how projects spend their funds. We could agree that only projects that support Hive could use the tag, but we can't prevent people from using it.
Everyone who wants could add the hashtag to their posts. The question is if they will receive upvotes when they add it to a non-project post.

What do you think?

First of all would I like to know if you are willing to give some Hive projects an upvote every bow and then.
Would you take the trouble to find these projects either via a centralized community or a hashtag?

And if you do. What option would you prefer?
Or do you have a good idea yourself?

Or if you have a Hive project that could use some funding, please let me know in the comments too.

Please share your thoughts on the comments.
And feel free to spread the word in chats or via reblogging.

Friendlymoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
Check out my projects below!