To be frank (and then polite and constructive), I think the relevant question is "What am I missing?" rather than "What is it missing?" ..and my guess would be

To be frank (and then polite and constructive), I think the relevant question is "What am I missing?" rather than "What is it missing?" ..and my guess would be that this is something like a cohort experiment. I'd bet they selected projects to have a broad sampling of kinds of projects, so they could see what working with them was like and what kind of impact they'd have - similar to a marketing trying out different audiences and types of ads, or startups running market experiments, or VCs shot-gunning to see what sticks, or developers doing 'probes' into problems and/or with technologies. AFAICT, GitHub wanted to get some data around the questions "What's involved in us getting funding to open source projects / developers, and what kind of impact can that funding have?" Even if your judgement of this specific project is apt (that it's weirdly small and inactive for receiving a grant), that may be the point.