TLDR:
We are seeking community alignment around Gitcoinâs Vision and Mission statements.
Context:
A few months ago, we proposed a new Vision statement and Mission statement to inform the brief for our brand visual refresh.
Today, we are looking to come to an agreement that it is safe to move forward with these new statements.
These are meant to complement our previously ratified Brand Purpose which can be found here, which will remain the same
These statements are not meant to be overly prescriptive, but instead serve as part of a framework and tools that give us a clear sense of direction and complement our already ratified Brand Purpose.
You can read the original post on Mission and Vision here and learn more about Brand and Brand Strategy here
So what?
These statements will appear on the NEW Gitcoin website and may also be used in other marketing or partnerships materials, thus we are looking for community buy in.
Gitcoin Vision (Vision is the message telling our audience(s) why weâre here - our north star, the impact we intend to have on the world.)
Gitcoin inspires people to imagine alternate futures, advancing a world shaped by community led positive change.
Gitcoin Mission (Mission is how we work towards our vision â or the âhow we do itâ complement to the âwhy weâre hereâ and âwhat weâre here to do.â )
Gitcoin creates tools that enable communities to build, fund and protect what matters to them.
Action Requested:
Please record your response in the below poll.
AGREE - It is safe to move forward with these statements.
DISAGREE- It is unsafe to move forward with these statements.
Really appreciate the resurfacing of these. Mission and Vision are so underrated in their importance to align everything from product strategy to community engagement to culture building.
Iâm a bit biased because I worked closely on these with you but I think they are really succinct and on point as to what weâre doing in a nut shell. I understand that historically weâve aligned with messaging around funding public goods or even supporting OSS but we are growing into so much more than that and these statements should reflect this.
If you DISAGREE with these statements, please do tell us why so we have something to work with.
If you AGREE, youâre welcome to elaborate down below as well.
I unfortunately donât have a lot of time to elaborate but I voted no because I think these statements are a bit too all-encompassing, although I totally understand why (and read and commented on earlier posts).
If this is our north star I fear it really is a bit too vague and wide. How I read it is that we inspire people to imagine (basically anything) and that we will support a future that is community driven. I agree with the second part to some extent although I do think it can still mean ⌠a lot, the first part is in any case too vague imo. Itâs however a really tough one.
Here I really would recommend for the foundation to write out an RFP for a strategic note that should be deeply informed by csdo and can be ratified by stewards. Defining our long term vision is a lot to put just on MMM. I think MMM is responsible for the wordsmithing but might be tough for you to decide the actual vision by yourself or through a community poll. This is not a failure by MMM, but shows we need more work on our internal decision making processes and domain ownership.
To me it makes sense to simplify this to âGitcoin creates tools that enable communities to fund what matters (most).â If you add âbuildâ you imply we are providing all sorts of SDKâs for communities to build, so this comes across as software that seems to be able to serve any purpose, whereas (for now) we focus mainly on driving usage of our products, the Grants Stack and Passport, and allowing others third parties to use Allo, which is primarily an open-source funding allocation platform.
Passport indeed protects communities as a (crucial) identity service but is (for now) mostly in service of our most important thing, our funding platform. To keep us focused and our intents clear for the outside world I would limit our mission to funding (for now).
Note: I would in any case change from âwhat matters to themâ to âwhat matters mostâ, as the âto themâ is a bit double imo - to me itâs a given that itâs about what matters most to them. Plus, âmatter mostâ has some memetic power (works really well on the schwag).
My feedback is inspired by what we currently ratified as being our most important thing(s) through CSDO, but Iâm definitely just one little node in our network. Iâll support whatever MMM decides here!
Disclaimer: I am new here so there is a very high probability that my comments miss some context.
I really like how you structure all your work around defining the mission, vision, values etc. Very easy to follow your rationale, and appreciate how youâre guiding us through the process.
My main comment is regarding the vision
To me it looks like there are a lot of ideas put into one sentence. It might make sense to simplify this to make it easier to understand and to communicate.
Right now you have both:
Gitcoin inspires people to imagine alternate futures
Advancing a world shaped by community led positive change
My first suggestion would be to pick one of the two. That would make it easier to understand and to communicate it to others. For example:
A world where people can imagine alternate futures
or
A world shaped by community led positive change
Final feedback point, and apologies if this goes too much into the detail: I find that the double adjective, i.e. âcommunity led positive changeâ, makes the sentence sound very complex. It could make it even more simple if you were to rephrase this, e.g. âA world where communities drive positive changeâ
Hope this is helpful. Happy to elaborate if itâs not clear.
Hey @wutwut - Iâve seen you around in Discord too! Great to have you here! Thanks for this awesome feedback.
What Iâm gathering from your comment is that this feels conceptually aligned but it would benefit us if the vision was less complicated and really drives home one or the other.
If the vote is tight, then weâll definitely take it to a CSDO strategy call for further direction. FWIW, these statements were created in the brand working group, sanity-checked with CSDO members who opted-in to support with the brand work at the time (almost 5 months ago now?! time flies!) and then these were surfaced on a community call in which we did a lengthy back and forth on these. So we do feel as if weâve worked in lock step with both CSDO and the community to create these.
We just wanted to surface them again because we suspected that they may have gotten lost given the initial post introducing them didnât get much love on the forum due to the length of the post and the context it was being presented in (which was the brand refresh).
Heyy! I would love to +1 what was already well said by @krrisis and by @wutwut -
Iâll just add to elaborate on my vote:
these are a bit of a mouthful⌠I would really hope for some clear distillation.
when I say these aloud to myself, I am not tangibly any closer to making clear decisions in my day-to-day workâŚ
I hope this doesnât sound harsh- I know this is a hugely iterative process and ultimately, Iâll second Kris in my generalized and ongoing support! I just really would love to see us parse down further + get cleaner. If we say yes to everything we canât be good at anything⌠similar to the aphorism that a party starts with a guest-list. âAlternate futuresâ doesnât tell me a lot. âPositive changeâ leaves me with tons of questions.
Blockquote Gitcoin creates tools that enable communities to build, fund and protect what matters to them.
Very small nit- but after all our brilliant swag and MMM work- I donât know why this sentence doesnât read: â⌠fund and protect what matters.â period hard-stop the pronoun here seems redundant. Plus I think weâre already coming to a crossroads: do we create dev tools that everyone can use to build anything or do we just build a funding protocol? Do we create ML models that positive ID networks of sybil wallets, or do we just run QF rounds that our communities can trustâŚ
âJustâ of course being deeply rhetorical hereâŚ
Echoing @Viriya - intent here is to solicit community wide feedback as we are in need of a mission and vision to complement our already ratified purpose. These statements were tied to the prior brand work and as part of that work it was said we would revisit to wordsmith and align, so this was a natural next step.
With regard to some of your feedback, @krrisis, I want to clarify that these statements were not only an effort of MMM. They were developed after numerous conversations across the DAO and I was in no way acting by myself.
@wutwut that brings me to your comment - definitely hear you on length and @ale.k your point on being overly verbose. I too am a fan of simplicity. Iâm looking forward to hearing other comments here because there is definitely potential for us to revisit conciseness and directness.
I also want to share some other mission/vision statements here to give some context - and encourage everyone to DYOR because thereâs quite a range of approaches out there (I just picked these randomly):
Thank you team for all of the thought and effort that has gone into this! I like the overall direction of these statements but also echo the previous comments that they could be simpler and punchier. If it helps, here are some specific thoughts that came to mind:
Vision
This statement feels like it centers on a very general people, where I think weâre crystallizing around communities being our center of gravity. I would be much more supportive of saying that weâre inspiring communities to create better/sustainable/positive futures, or something along those lines.
Mission
âCreating tools that enable communitiesâ feels like the right âwhat we doâ phrase, and Iâd +1 making that âwhy we do itâ phrase a little more succinct.
Thank you for sharing. I echo @wutwut 's point on deciding between alternate futures or community led positive change, personally the second one seems more concrete. I also agree with @krrisis on simplifying to âfund what matters mostâ
Thanks for posting and I love reading through other peoples thoughts too. The co-creation is what really enables buy in
Vision thoughts
I would like to echo some of the sentiment on the vision of us picking one over the other, and Nateâs feedback on us being community focus resonates. Below is the current suggestion and then I also modified it slightly to honor those points:
Alternative that offers insight into the âhowâ which is often true for us (protocol dev is innovation, cultivation is our grants program and growth we encourage with others, and coordination is Schelling Point, our rounds, and general presence in the space). âGitcoinâs vision isâ
Mission thoughts
This one is much closer to what we already have in place and I love it.
Current
minor tweaks. âGitcoinâs mission isâ
I really like keeping build in there for a number of reasons. Our Project registry may quickly enable use cases like Job boards and Bounties are darn close to a direct grants program. I would want to be expansive here, and then backfill technology versus being too narrow here and have to adjust these frequently.
From a vision perspective, this works for me. I love how we aspire to inspire change. That is worthy of a lifeâsâ work.
I like that we fund and protect what matters, but âtoolsâ feels limiting. Gitcoin is (today) a single node in a network that has the potential to deliver a step change in public goods funding. That is a great thing. But what do we do once we have done that? Let all the devs go and put protocol on autopilot with upgrades here and there? Remember to run a couple rounds a year too?
If I look at the amazing humans we have assembled in the DAO, we could be so much more than tool-makers.
Consider the impact we have already had, we helped launch some pretty impactful web3 projects - tangentially. Meaning, we helped get them funding, thatâs about it. What if we could leverage the passionate people in our DAO to explode the PGF ecosystem using our unique vantage point, capabilities, and connections to turn the Optimism/Uniswap/POAP/Coin center Cinderella stories into every-grant-round occurrences?
We could be thinking about ways to use our platform to catalyze movements, build impact ecosystems, and help those new nodes maximize their impact.
I am not sure tools will change the world. But I do think capabilities, passion, and focus just might.
âGitcoin builds the capabilities, platforms, and networks to fund and do what matters the mostâ
so there is a very high probability that my comments miss some context.
the pronoun here seems redundant. Plus I think weâre already coming to a crossroads: do we create dev tools that everyone can use to build anything or do we just build a funding protocol? Do we create ML models that positive ID networks of sybil wallets, or do we just run QF rounds that our communities can trustâŚ
(I think itâs