Use the operational planning software
Use the bounty desk to write acceptance, partial-result and appeal rules before considering a public call. Record conditional pledges, evidence claims and reasoned review packets separately. A conditional pledge is not money received. The software selects no winner and pays no award.
The workspace includes separate institutional-readiness records. Those records track what responsible people still need to establish; they do not grant approval or verify a legal, funded program. The longer-term charter below remains an institutional proposal.
Save each form, inspect the generated kit and export a backup. Your records stay in this browser. Imports are validated, destructive changes offer undo and newer work from another tab is protected. Fictional examples contain no real commitments, participants or results.
What it is
Every one of the Open Problems of Charitology states what would count as progress. Question Bounties would put a cash prize on that test. Whoever produces a result that meets it, wherever they are, would win.
Prizes for hard questions have a track record. In 2000 the Clay Mathematics Institute put a $1 million prize on each of seven unsolved problems in mathematics. One of them, the Poincaré conjecture, has since been solved.
How it works
Each prize would be attached to one open problem. Its size would depend on how much the answer could change where money goes, which is the question Open Problem 23, the Question of Questions, asks. Rules would be published before any prize opens: who judges, what evidence counts, how partial results are rewarded and how disputes are settled. Winning work would be published openly so the whole field can use it.
Today every open problem says the same thing about its prize: unfunded. Prize money needs a legal home, either a legal entity or a fiscal sponsor, and judges with no stake in the outcome. Until those exist, the program accepts no money.
Why it matters for the system
The Missing Profession hypothesis asks whether a shared craft could help coordinate work on questions that cross fields. A prize pays for answers rather than positions, so a graduate student, a retired statistician or a team in another country can work on a question without first finding an employer. Many of the open problems are measurement problems, so prizes also put money into the Measurement Gap, which the program proposes to help close.
Risks and limits
Prizes reward people who can afford to work before they are paid, and they can pull effort toward questions that are easy to judge. The program would reward partial results and pair prizes with the Charitology Fellowship, so the work isn’t limited to people with spare time and money.
What success looks like
Within five years of funding, at least three prizes have been awarded, at least one of them for a partial result, and the winning work has changed how some money is given.
Question bounty specification and claims desk
Write a question, acceptance rules and appeal route; track conditional pledges, evidence submissions and an auditable local decision packet.
No prize is funded, opened, promised or paid here. No pledge is collected or verified. Local records do not create a contract or establish independent judging.
Your work stays in this browser. No account or server submission. Save each form, then export a backup before sharing or changing devices. Sample records are fictional. Backups support up to 500 records (250 per collection) and 8 MB, including formatting; large projects must be split before that limit.
Opening the local record snapshot…
Software and institutional readiness are separate
This workspace is available now. These requirements are not established by using it:
- Governance and legal home. Identify an accountable host and seek appropriate independent review before any external operation.
- People, resources and permission. Confirm real roles, resources, consent and any required agreements; this software creates none.
- Conflicts, safeguards and correction. Set independent review, recusal, access, retention and challenge procedures before launch.
Track evidence and outside authorization in the readiness records below. No local status confers legal approval, funding, accreditation or independent review.
1. Set the scope and assumptions
2. Review the current picture
3. Prepare a usable draft
Preview the generated kit below. It includes the context, every saved record, calculations, working documents and unresolved review prompts. Exports include all records even while a filter is active.
Read generated draft
Use Backups and recovery above to restore native JSON, remove this saved key, undo a record change or retry a failed save. Unfinished fields have a separate recovery download.
After a failed save, Retry keeps that exact change. To replace it instead, review the context or an existing record form below. Before adding a new record in another form, resolve the failed save; keep unfinished-field copies first.
Connect your program work
Keep chosen copies of records from Question Bounties and the other partner workspaces together. Explain how a plan, evidence note or decision connects to another record, then review that connection when a copy changes.
This private browser notebook records your own snapshots and explanations. It does not establish permission, independent review, causation or observed results. The original workspaces stay separate. Files and records are not sent anywhere.
The companion notebook is loading. The original workspace remains available above.