Reddit is extending its Community Funds program, the business revealed this week and aims to invest $1 million in various projects throughout the network. “We will invite communities to contribute ideas for projects, events, contests, giving, and nearly anything else you can think of to bring people together for inspiration and delight,” the business stated in a statement. Projects can request funds ranging from $1,000 to $50,000, and Reddit will begin granting grants in June.
This is, in some ways, Reddit’s version of the creator money that Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and, well, pretty much everyone else has been offering to people who use their platforms. And, in that regard, Reddit’s commitment here is quite limited: Facebook promised to spend $1 billion on creator-related financing, and Snap spent $1 million each day on the items people were generating on its site. There are many internet places to produce goods, and one method to convince them to build them for you is to back a dump truck full of money up to their house!
But, because Reddit isn’t a creator-focused site in the same way — the best thing about Reddit isn’t the individual users, it’s the subreddits – it appears to be trying to enable groups to achieve things without getting too involved. Over the last few months, as it experimented with the Community Funds concept, Reddit paid for two billboards that displayed art from the winners of a BTS subreddit contest, provided prize money for a couple of other competitions, assisted the Random Acts of Amazon crew in purchasing Christmas presents for children, and funded a variety of other projects.
