Why not require them to allocate funds that is excluded with the amount of investments they can collect. For example, they can run a bounty that they wi pay bounty hunters base on their work (pay per posts, etc.)
This is why I gave a solution to pay potential cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether from the the funds they raise.
If any project is denying this, then it means they want to scam the bounty participants.
This can be one of the ways to identify scam projects because the genuine projects should not have a problem if they are raising enough funds.
You need to take into consideration that each distribution takes time, effort and gas in order to be distributed.
And it still doesn't protect you from projects that end up dead without any exchanges. You'd be getting worthless tokens which you can't sell
That's exactly rolling in my minds when i was reading OP's post. Reward just worthless if you can't use it. I got hundreds of tokens/coins which are valueless, so i worked for them and i got literally nothing. In that case if some projects offer 50% eth (or btc or that based token which it created from) and 50% project token/coin then it'll be great. It's a win win situation for both side i guess. Cause bounty hunters got paid no matter project reach their goal or not and project also spread their coin through the bounty hunters.