We do our part by helping to promote it through the various channels that we have. But they should also showcase their own value and build relationships with the public as well.

You could do what i do in the Nodeyez panel for Geyser and allow for randomly showing any project in a category or set of categories. This elevates visibility of lesser known projects as well as older projects. At the time I built that while at TabConf last year Geyser was still focused on only new projects or those already popular.

Consider adding a carousel, also on mobile, where the main page, when it shows e.g. Featured, has e.g. 3 projects instead of 1. Additionally, maybe an option with 'Similar' projects (after going to the page of a given project, at the very bottom under Details there may be 1-3 tiles with Similar Themes). Plus:

You have a lot of different tags, sometimes it's hard to find something, especially since each project can use more than 1. Maybe think about adding an option to preview these filters, e.g. to put them in bunches but also to show those frequently used (name xxx projects), least used (name projects) etc., if you add this to, for example, an advanced search page where there are also categories, e.g. Films - sample tags: e.g. videomaking xxx-number projects, youtube xxx-number projects, community xxx-number projects, if, for example, there are films that also used this tag) + a preview of, for example, 1-3 completely new projects in this category, 1-3 most frequently supportedbin this category, it should be easier for the user to see what is where how many itemts etc.