Community Contribution Award

Twenty thousand dollars, set aside for work that helps other people compete rather than for competing well. You do not need to win the competition, and you do not need to be entering it at all. A tutorial that gets thirty people to their first submission is exactly what this is for.

What it is

Total: $20,000
Per person: Up to $200 per contribution . Not a cap on the person. Make several contributions and each can be awarded separately, so there is no total limit on what one person can receive.
Who can apply: Anyone. Competing teams included, and you do not have to be competing at all. An account is enough. We especially encourage students and early career researchers.
Deadline: Rolling. Reviewed as they arrive, until the fund is committed or the Challenge closes on 11 December 2026, whichever comes first. Earlier is better on the merits: a tutorial published in August helps more people than the same one in December.
Already done it?: It still counts. There is no start date. Work published before this award was announced is judged on the same basis as anything else.

What counts

Awards recognise original, substantive work, judged on usefulness, quality, reach, openness and impact on the community. Nothing here is about size. A contribution does not have to be huge: a clear tutorial, a useful notebook, an improved baseline or a small tool that saves everyone time can make a real difference. Every award is subject to organiser review and to the overall budget.

Useful: It helps someone else do something they could not do as easily before. Lowering the barrier to entering counts. So does saving everyone the same hour.
Quality: It is finished enough to rely on. A clear, short piece of work beats an ambitious one that does not run.
Reach: How many people it can help, and how easily they can find it. A translation reaches people no English resource does.
Openness: Public, so others can use it. This is why the form asks for a link rather than a file: the work lives at its own address, not in our database.
Impact: What it changes for the community. Original and substantive work, judged on what it does rather than on its size.

Kinds of work we have in mind. The list is a prompt, not a boundary:

A standalone public repository is eligible. Nothing has to be merged upstream into ours, and it does not have to be in English. A Chinese tutorial is a contribution to this community exactly as much as an English one.

How to apply

File it below. You need to be signed in, but you do not need a registered team. We review as they arrive and reply either way; if the work is accepted it goes on the register at the bottom of this page, credited to you as you ask to be credited.

Sharing it in the WeChat group, Slack or Discord still works and is still welcome, but file it here as well, so the claim exists somewhere we can review it and you can see what happened to it.

Community resources

Accepted contributions, credited to the people who made them. This is the list the announcement promised, and it is the same record the reviewers work in, so it cannot drift out of step with what was actually accepted.

Nothing here yet. The first accepted contribution will appear on this list, and it may as well be yours.

Questions about the award, or about whether something would qualify: [email protected], or ask in Slack or Discord. Asking first is fine and costs nothing.