What makes a MATC nominee more competitive?

The Award Committee makes the MATC selections, and they are free to decide as they choose within the general guidelines of the awards, so we cannot spell out any magic formula for MATC success.  With that said, here are some characteristics that tend to make projects fit better with the aims of the MATC awards.

• If the project serves one or more of the key Mellon constituencies: higher education, especially the arts and humanities; libraries; museums; arts organizations; and nature conservation. Serving more of these constituencies is better. Serving other constituencies as well (e.g., K-12 education, human rights, civic advocacy, etc.) is a plus, too, but only if the project meaningfully serves one of the key Mellon constituencies as well.  Thus, Linux as a project is not a particularly good MATC candidate, because it is hard to make the case that anything about Linux uniquely intends to serve the constituencies that Mellon cares most about.
  
• If the project has a large and thriving user community.
  
• If the project has a truly collaborative development and governance model. The 'C' in MATC stands for 'Collaboration:' the awards seek to honor leadership in the collaborative development of software, not individual entrepreneurialism.
• If the institution has demonstrated leadership in some important, strategic way. The Committee has interpreted the concept of leadership broadly in the past, but however defined, it is important that the institution's contribution stand out in some way.
  
• If the institution has committed extraordinary resources. Small institutions that make disproportionately large contributions tend to be more impressive than large institutions that contribute only tiny fractions of their resources. Institutions that have a cumulative record of contribution to many projects over many years will also tend to be recognized, provided that their contributions to the nominated project are substantial. In the past, the Committee has been responsive to contributions that show leadership by setting new expectations around the support of open source development; for example, budgeting for the purchase of a commercial product, and then allocating the entirety of that budget to the enhancement of an open source product, instead of trying to acquire the open source alternative 'on the cheap'.
• If the institution has acted in the interest of the greater good. This can take many forms: focusing on documentation or quality assurance, or some other aspect of open source development that is important but that is generally considered "unglamorous;" providing uncompensated support to other members of the community; acting to mediate and resolve disputes within the development community; responding to crises by intervening selflessly; and so on.