Variant A
Lottery
A ticket purchase is required. Only buyers can win.
Strategic building block
Allocation modes
How do we distribute funds to founders? A lottery among vetted applicants, a community panel, an expert panel, hybrid models. Which modes are values-aligned, fair, and legitimate, and what effects do they have on whom?
Concept
Allocation workflow
How an application moves through the system
Working hypothesis: each application follows this path. Pre-screen, phase check, one of four allocation modes, SROI assessment, payout, monitoring. A re-investment loop is possible.
Knotentyp
Eingang, User-facing Einstiegspunkt
Entscheidung, Verzweigungspunkt
Workflow, Verarbeitungsschritt
Speicher, Persistenter Zustand / Bericht
Konzept-Reifegrad
Entschieden
In Konzeption
Offen, kritisch
Notiert
Engagement models
Three lottery variants: who pays, who wins?
Three mechanics under review for acquiring micro-backers. Compared along three axes: who funds the pot, who takes part, who wins. Status: under discussion.
Variant B
Prize draw
Everyone receives a free ticket. About 5% top up the pot with a donation.
Variant C
Externally-funded prize draw
External backers fund the pot. Only the target group enters.
Real-world precedents
Two models we measure ourselves against
Both allocate in different contexts than ours, both yield sound lessons. One shows how a lottery scales to millions of participants. The other shows how chance and an expert panel can complement each other without devaluing either.
Full lottery
Mein Grundeinkommen e. V.
Unconditional allocation, charitable association, since 2014.
Around 1.1 to 1.2 million registered participants, 2,343 winners over ten years, €12,000 per draw (€1,000 × 12 months). The 2025 DIW companion study finds no labour-market withdrawal, around a third of recipients save, and just under 8% pass donations on.
Our takeaway: A lottery scales to millions of participants when the entry barrier stays low and the winner story stays tellable.
Peer review + lottery
VolkswagenStiftung, "Experiment!" programme
Partially randomised procedure in research funding, since 2017.
A two-stage allocation: an expert panel screens first, then a lottery draws from applications that fit the programme aim and clear the quality bar. Chance kicks in only after that bar, not before. The foundation aims for greater diversity in the funded pool and better odds for risky research. A 2018 to 2022 companion study (Röbbecke and Simon, "Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung" 2/2023) reports high acceptance among applicants and reviewers.
Our takeaway: Chance and expert judgement don't have to compete. The order matters: quality filter first, lottery second, which guards against arbitrariness and reduces bias.
Lottery landscape in Europe
Who in Europe already allocates by lot
Lottery-based allocation exists in Europe in three clearly distinguishable areas. A multilingual search (DE, EN, FR, ES, NL, IT) plus a cross-check against the German federal funding database found no established programme in a fourth area: funding for entrepreneurs.
Research funding
Five European funders
- DE · VolkswagenStiftung "Experiment!" — jury-then-lottery, 183 grants × €120,000 (2017 to 2021) · volkswagenstiftung.de
- DE · Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre "Freiraum" — pre-lottery, societal cost down 68%, women among funded applicants up 23% · stiftung-hochschullehre.de
- AT · Austrian Science Fund "1000 Ideas" — partial-with-bypass · fwf.ac.at
- CH · Swiss National Science Foundation — tiebreaker lottery since 2019 · nature.com
- UK · British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grants — partial randomisation 2022 to 2028 · thebritishacademy.ac.uk
Funding for artists
Four European programmes
- IE · Basic Income for the Arts — 2,000 × €325/week × 3 years, permanent from 2026. Mechanically the closest model. · citizensinformation.ie
- UK-Scotland · Take Me Somewhere ABI — small 2022 to 2023 pilot, 2 artists, £213/week · takemesomewhere.co.uk
- DE · Berlin Stipendien-Sonderprogramm 2020 — 1,995 of 8,075 applications drawn by digital lottery, €9,000 one-off, notary-witnessed · kulturprojekte.berlin
- DE · Deutsche Bank Atelier-Stipendium — 50 grants drawn by lot from a pre-selected pool, €500/month · socialimpact.eu
Generic basic income
One German programme
- DE · Mein Grundeinkommen e. V. — see precedent card above · mein-grundeinkommen.de
The gap
For entrepreneurs: not a single programme
No established programme in Germany or Europe currently allocates entrepreneurial funding by lottery or random selection. What the Unternehmer:innenfonds is proposing would be without precedent across Europe.
Strategic building block
Work in progress
This page is part of our ongoing exploration, where we collect research, meetings, materials, and discussions on this block. Content is still taking shape. If you’d like to join in or get access, a short message is enough.