There’s no such thing as free money / ranting on granting
When you take a grant you psychologically commit to doing the thing you said you'd do, sometimes too early. You might still need time to traverse the idea maze — but to get a grant, you’re often forced into articulating a vision of what you’d do with that funding
Unrestricted funding is a bit better, but even if the grant is explicitly unrestricted, you’ll likely feel honor-bound to do things that the grant-giver would approve of.
“Audience capture” describes the phenomenon where bloggers, influencers etc are slowly manipulated into different people as a result of the audience they try and cater to.
I think there’s a lesser (but real) version of this, where by taking on money from a particular grantmaker, you end up adjusting you (or your org’s) values to appeal to that grantmaker.
When you make something to sell to customers, you’re playing the game on a fundamental, base level: is your product any good?
When you make something to “sell” to a grantmaker, you’re playing one level higher: does your grantmaker think that your thing is good for <the world/the future/some other value system>?
Feedback and discipline are good — they encourage you to improve, and become more sustainable
People care about where you get your money:
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to accept money from an unimpressive/unknown funder — money is money! — but it is something to think twice about.
(Obligatory note: sometimes FTX happens. TBH I think this wasn’t actually bad)