Funding Program Finder

Search the Karma Funding Map for funding programs via the public API.

The registry has 6 program types: grants, hackathons, bounties, accelerators, VC funds, and RFPs. Use "programs" / "opportunities" / "funding" — not just "grants".

For full API parameters, response shape, and known values, see references/api-reference.md.

Workflow

Step 1: Map the User's Request

Budget shorthand: K→000, M→000000 (e.g., $50K → 50000, $1M → 1000000).

URL encoding: Values with spaces must be percent-encoded in curl URLs (e.g., categories=Retroactive%20Funding).

Step 2: Ecosystem Search Strategy

If the query has no ecosystem component, skip this step and go to Step 3.

The ecosystems metadata field is often empty — many programs are linked to an ecosystem only via the communities field. Use a two-phase approach:

Phase 1 — Try ecosystems= first:
Query with ecosystems={name}. If this returns sufficient results (5+), present them and move to Step 4.

Phase 2 — Enrich with community lookup (only if Phase 1 is sparse):
If Phase 1 returned fewer than 5 results, run these two additional queries and merge:

1. 1. Community UID lookup: fetch all communities from GET /v2/communities?limit=100, find the best match by comparing against community names (case-insensitive, partial match), then query with INLINECODE24
2. name={name} — text search on title, universal fallback

Deduplicate all merged results by id before presenting.

Step 3: Build and Execute the Request

Use curl via Bash. CRITICAL: Every request must include the tracking headers below. Never omit them.

Before the first request, generate a tracking ID:

CODEBLOCK0

Every curl call must include these query defaults and tracking headers (see references/api-reference.md for details):

CODEBLOCK1

CODEBLOCK2

Step 4: Format Results

Include the program type in each result. Adapt the detail line based on type:

CODEBLOCK3

Field Mapping

• - Name: metadata.title (fall back to name)
• Type label: type in brackets: [grant], [hackathon], [bounty], [accelerator], [vc_fund], INLINECODE37
• Ecosystem: metadata.ecosystems joined with , (fall back to communities[0].name)
• Description: metadata.description truncated to ~120 chars

Type-Specific Detail Line

• - grant: INLINECODE42
• hackathon: INLINECODE43
• bounty: INLINECODE44
• accelerator: INLINECODE45
• vc_fund: INLINECODE46
• rfp: INLINECODE47
• fallback: INLINECODE48

Common Fields

• - Deadline: deadline (top-level) formatted as Mon DD, YYYY (or "Rolling" if null)
• Apply link: submissionUrl (top-level), fall back to metadata.socialLinks.grantsSite or metadata.website or metadata.socialLinks.website (first non-empty)

Edge Cases

Error Handling

Troubleshooting

Ecosystem search returns 0 results

• - Verify the ecosystem name against the known values in INLINECODE59
• Try a broader name= search with just the keyword
• The ecosystem may genuinely have no programs listed yet — tell the user

Community UID lookup finds no match

• - Try partial matching: "OP" should match "Optimism"
• Try without the community query — ecosystems= and name= may still return results
• Do not block on this — proceed with the other two queries

Results look stale or incomplete

• - Present what's available; do not hide results with missing fields
• Use "N/A" or "Rolling" for missing values
• Note to the user: "Some programs may have incomplete information"