SFF-2026 Main Round S-Process Recommendations Announcement

† Parentheses indicate a Speculation Grant awarded to certain recommended organizations, prior to the completion of the S-Process round. If the Speculation Grant amount was higher than the S-Process recommendation, it subsumed the S-Process recommendation, so only the Speculation Grant amount is meant to be granted. If the Speculation Grant was less, it was deducted from the S-Process recommendation, so the total granted is meant to be the amount of the S-Process recommendation.

‡ Curly braces indicate a Matching Pledge awarded to certain recommended organizations, as part of their S-Process round recommendation. This is funding that will be distributed conditional on the organization raising outside funds.

“*” Asterisks demarcate recommendations that were “controversial” in that one or more Recommenders wished to publicly disendorse the recommendation. Two asterisks on a recommendation indicate that there are two or more disendorsements.

Note that the S-Process system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one Recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every Recommender is excited to fund. As such, the grant recommendations above do not especially represent the “average” opinion of the group in any sense.

Matching Pledge Amount: The maximum amount the Funder will give to the organization as matching funds for outside donations they receive.

Matching Rate: The rate chosen by the organization at which the Funder will match outside funds, ranging from 0.25x to 4x.

• A rate of 0.25x means $0.25 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds
• A rate of 1x means $1 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds
• A rate of 4x means $4 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds

Matching Pledge Deadline: The date chosen by the organization by which they must receive outside donations in order for those donations to be eligible for their Matching Pledge.

As an example, suppose an organization receives a Matching Pledge Amount of $100,000, and has chosen a Matching Rate of 2x and a Matching Pledge Deadline of December 31, 2026. They would be eligible to claim $2 of matching funds for every $1 of outside donations they raise by December 31, 2026, up to a maximum of $100,000 of matching funds for raising $50,000 of outside donations.

Freedoms compatible with the S-Process

The S-Process is designed to allow a lot of freedom and autonomy for the Recommenders and the Funders. Funders retain the right and freedom to make and/or recommend grants that the S-Process, as a whole, did not endorse, based on information the Funders learn from the S-Process. As well, the S-Process structure doesn’t impose restrictions on Recommenders and Funders communicating with each other as much as they want outside of the S-Process. As such, while the S-Process might be useful in helping the Funders learn about grant-making opportunities and opinions, the Funders need not be limited by the outputs of the S-Process in order for it to function.

Sharing of Recommender input documents

Each Recommender’s own inputs to the process (both initial and final versions) are free for that Recommender to share privately or publicly in any form and for any use-case, as long as they anonymize any other Recommenders who have requested anonymity, and respect the privacy of the organizations who applied to the round. In particular, the S-Process does not require Recommenders to avoid sharing their own (appropriately anonymized) inputs, even when sharing some documents might make it somewhat easier in principle for an adversary to reverse-engineer the inputs of other Recommenders. The spirit of the S-Process is, however, to discourage this sort of intentionally adversarial de-anonymization, as it is disrespectful of the Recommenders who contributed their time and effort under the conditions of anonymity.