---
title: Question Bounties
group: Funding
order: 3
summary: Draft research questions and acceptance rules, record unverified conditional pledges and prepare evidence claims and award-discussion packets.
status: live
statusNote: Live local bounty-planning software is available. No prize is funded, announced, contractually promised or paid; judging, legal readiness and resources remain separate requirements.
conditions: [missing-profession, measurement-gap]
firstMilestone: Published prize rules and an independent judging panel, with a legal home in place to hold prize money, before any prize is announced.
help:
  - Open an issue labeled program proposing prize rules, such as how results are judged, how partial results are paid and how disputes are settled.
  - Make the case for which open problem should carry the first prize. That choice is itself Open Problem 23.
  - If your institution could hold prize money or judge results, open an issue labeled program.
related: [/open-problems/, /open-problems/the-question-of-questions/, /programs/the-open-problems/, /programs/charitology-fellowship/]
sources:
  - title: Millennium Prize Problems
    publisher: Clay Mathematics Institute
    url: https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/
---

## Use the operational planning software

Use the [bounty desk](#partner-workspace-question-bounties) 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](/open-problems/) 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](/open-problems/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](/diagnosis/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](/diagnosis/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](/programs/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.