Stop tweeting about your world-changing solutions to global problems and submit them to the MacArthur Foundation instead.
On Thursday June 2, the foundation announced its new 100&Change competition, a public contest designed to recruit the smartest solutions to the world's most challenging issues. The foundation plans to hold the contest every three years, each time awarding $100 million to the best proposal submitted.
That sounds a lot cooler than a couple likes and a retweet.
Instead of turning toward billionaire philanthropists or government agencies, the MacArthur Foundation wants to use the competition as a way to give everyone a fair shot at changing the world.
"Potential solutions may go unnoticed or under resourced and are waiting to be brought to scale," MacArthur President Julia Stasch said in a press statement. With 100&Change, the foundation hopes under-the-radar forms of genius can get the recognition they deserve.
According to MacArthur, any nonprofit of for-profit organization can apply — but individual people and government agencies are ineligible. Proposals can come from any industry, from engineering to human rights to medical science.
The contest's format looks a lot like that of Xprize, a collection of privately-funded competitions that focuses on global challenges and offers a substantial amount of money — typically in the millions — to teams who present novel solutions.
One of its most famous contests has been the Google Lunar Xprize, which offers $30 million to a team with the best proposal to explore space on the cheap. Other contests have tried to cull solutions to adult illiteracy and rising carbon emissions, and promote collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence technologies.
The new 100&Change competition requires that proposals be "meaningful, verifiable, durable, and feasible," according to the foundation. A panel of expert judges will review each application, focusing specifically on how well the impact of that solution can be measured in its target area.
To join the competition, entrants have to fill out an online application on the foundation's website by September 2. The application must include an explanation of a particular problem, a detailed solution, a budget, and a video elaborating on the proposal. Semi-finalists will be announced in December.
The MacArthur Foundation will select finalists in the summer of 2017 and announce the competition's winners after a live event in the fall.
