Core Benefits of Lumin

Lumin aims to make long-term collaborative initiatives such as joint ventures, open source work, on-the-ground projects, or research much simpler to get co-funded by reducing the administrative burden and; increasing accountability and transparency for both funders and contributor teams.

Joint Funding with Reduced Administrative Overhead

Lumin allows anyone to start a project open for co-funding and collaboration from an infinite number of entities. We provide an easy-to-use platform for the owners of these projects to manage and record the receipt and disbursal of collected funds from various organizations to a group of contributors.

With Lumin, project teams will have one common project profile that can be used for applying to multiple funding programs. This method allows a clear reference point for discussions, and participants can easily keep track of information. That way, projects can tap into grant funding without the headaches of navigating a myriad of governance or application processes.

Project Owners can keep their funders up to date and access funding without needing to repetitively engage with each funder's internal governance processes to unlock funding for the next milestone. By uploading Proof of Deliverable completion documents, Project owners communicate the development with all the funders at once and are able to unlock funding for their next milestone. Lumin provides assurances to funders via Milestone funding which allows funders to withdraw funds in case of dissatisfaction with the project team's work - Read more below in Accountability.

Accountability

The project owner can define success metrics for each checkpoint, effectively setting milestones for the journey. Lumin adopts an optimistic approval process in which the work is considered satisfactory until a funder objects and decides to withdraw the funds. If a project isn't capable of producing a satisfactory Proof of Deliverable Completion report, funders can withdraw their funds (except their funding amount towards milestone 1, which is treated as a guaranteed payment for the project, and the funds assigned for the ongoing milestone). That way, funders are guaranteed to have their resources spent only if they are satisfied with the progress of the project's ongoing work based on their committed deliverables and budget planning.

The clear advantage for contributors working on exploratory or open-ended projects on longer timelines is that project teams do not need to repeat bureaucratic application processes for different organizations while still held to an accountable process for reporting their progress to their funders.

Transparency

Through a detailed Project Dashboard, Lumin provides anyone, including funders, with quick and clear access to a wide variety of key information, including:

• Who is already funding this project

• Who is contributing to this project

• Public discussions about the project in community forums

• The project’s target funding goal

• Established Milestones and Deliverables

• Proof of Deliverable Completion reports

By becoming aware of the talent pool that the project has, funders will be more confident about the team’s ability to complete the project. Creating transparency around the flow of funds into and inside the project allows funders to evaluate their capital management and funders also benefit from seeing already contributed funders to make strategic decisions.

In general, being able to easily assess this important information from one place helps funders to make better-informed decisions.