TLDR
- Gitcoin’s community is now being fostered under the banner of the Ecosystem Collective
- The 360 Team is the team responsible for guiding the EC’s strategy, holding context for Gitcoin Citizens, and acting as points of accountability for Citizens who spin up new initiatives through the Citizen Grants program
- All work will be centered around 3 focus areas: People, Impact, and Innovation
- Budgeting will be done in 6-month intervals, with 2 separate budget requests: a 360 Team budget request (core work) and a Citizens Innovate budget request (emergent, community-led work)
Description of the Ecosystem Collective:
The Ecosystem Collective (EC) shares Gitcoin’s purpose: To empower communities to fund their shared needs.
The Gitcoin ecosystem encompasses all of Gitcoin’s activities and expands to any place where Gitcoin’s brand or products are being used.
The Ecosystem Collective is the network of builders, creators, champions and stewards of these efforts.
Our Mission is to steward Gitcoin’s brand, community and governance in support of the overall growth and health of the Gitcoin ecosystem and advance the web3 grants industry as a whole.
Scope of Work
Our focus areas:
- People: Deepen engagement and grow participation in Gitcoin’s ecosystem
- Innovation: Experiment with Gitcoin’s products and build prototypes to advance our mission
- Impact: Forward Gitcoin as a powerful impact-driven brand
People: Deepen engagement and grow participation in Gitcoin’s ecosystem
We know that an empowered community means an emboldened vision for Gitcoin. Gitcoin’s diverse and talented community has always been at the core of its success.
Our primary aim as a DAO is to:
- Bring more participants into our orbit and have meaningful pathways for them to deepen their engagement with us (ex: governance, Citizen Grants program, community activations, etc.)
- Expand opportunities for growth of everyone in our orbit – both team members and Citizens (ex: personal and professional development, sense of belonging, purposeful work, etc.)
Innovation: Experiment with Gitcoin’s products and build prototypes to advance our mission
From early projects like Kudos and Quests, to later ones like EasyRetroPGF and Round Report Cards–Gitcoin has always been a hub for experimentation. In this iteration of the DAO, the EC will continue to push the limits of Gitcoin’s product suite and explore new concepts and tools that advance Gitcoin’s mission. We will do this through rapid prototyping initiatives, Citizen Grants Programs and dogfooding our products to advance DAO governance.
Impact: Forward Gitcoin as a powerful impact-driven brand
With the business units solely focused on driving business objectives, the Ecosystem Collective is responsible for stewarding the impact of our collective and our brand. This is important for the Gitcoin ecosystem as it aligns us to a greater purpose and positions Gitcoin uniquely as a crypto-for-good organization that seeds, nurtures and grows web3 communities.
The EC will approach this from a few directions:
- Gitcoin Grants Governance: Gitcoin Grants has historically mostly been run by Gitcoin core contributors along with community input and contribution. The EC’s mandate will be to continue the progressive decentralization of the Gitcoin Grants program to community members and trusted external stakeholders. The first instance of this is already underway with the election of the GG20 Community Council.
- Impact reporting: We will continue to invest in impactful initiatives that make a difference in web3 and beyond. As such, we will work to share the stories, data and learnings fostered in our community through meaningful impact reporting initiatives.
- Brand stewardship: We will continue to leverage brand love to grow our ecosystem to accomplish our goals through a variety of community activations, such as engaging online content, strategic brand partnerships, and more.
- Advancing the grants industry as a whole: We will continue to support and expedite the success of the web3 grants industry by funding and publicizing impactful research reports, running kick-ass events and other knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Org Structure
The Ecosystem Collective’s structure is holacratic in nature. There will be an always-on team of contributors with functional skill sets that will form emergent cross-functional pods based on specific pieces of work.
360 team: The EC plans to employ a team of always-on, skills-specific contributors to ensure the integrity and execution of key always-on initiatives. This team will be directly responsible for driving the success of intent-aligned OKRs and act as a bridge to the Business Units to ensure org alignment for Citizen-driven initiatives.
Having an established team will enable more seamless context sharing and strategic alignment with Gitcoin Citizens.
The 360 Team will also be responsible for key initiatives that directly impact product and/or brand such as strategic decision-making, product-related events, Gitcoin Grants governance, etc.
Pods: Emergent group of individuals (either exclusively from the 360 Team or a mix of 360 Team members and Citizen/s) working on a funded initiative. Pods are held accountable by the 360 Team.
[Future] Guilds: A pool of trusted, medium-context contributors that meet regularly to sharpen their skills and be preferred contributors when new initiatives spin up.
Note: The work of establishing Guilds will be part of the 360 Team’s scope of work for the coming season.
Motivations behind the structure:
- 360 Team:
- Retain talented, high-context contributors
- Allows the DAO to hold someone accountable for emergent work
- Drives organizational strategy and goals, ensuring all work is moving in the same direction
- Pods:
- Allows for emergent work, sourced from the edges of our network to be funded
- Creates opportunities for Citizens to increase their involvement
- [Future] Guilds:
- Creates a pool of talented and medium context contributors
- Helps with retention over the long run
- Benefits participants by creating a sense of community for freelancers
- Creates a path to invite full-time, high-context contributions
Budgeting Structure & Cadence
The Ecosystem Collective will take a two-pronged approach to budgeting:
- 360 Team-based budget
- Citizens Grants Program budget
Each season the EC will request budgets as separate requests (vs. one large budget request) to be voted on by GTC token delegates.
360 Team-based budgeting
The team will request a single budget every 6 months for the following 6 months, with funds distributed every 3 months. A 3-month check-in will take place on the governance forum prior to releasing remaining funds.
A Strategy Lead will be responsible for driving the creation of seasonal OKRs (with other 360 Team members and the Foundation acting as consultants) and will be held accountable by GTC token delegates.
Citizen Grants Program budgeting
We will be using the Citizen Grants Program (CGP) as the gateway for Citizens to spur and fund community-driven projects. Therefore, a separate request will be made in parallel (i.e., at the same time and cadence) to the 360 Team request to fund the initiative.
Note: S21 CGP request will be reorganized to track the EC focus areas (vs. the DAO Essential Intents) but will not request additional funds. The initial EC budget will be posted within the next couple of weeks.
More details on funding of each aspect of the program:
- Citizens Innovate: Proposal for funding to the Citizens Innovate will be submitted as per the CGP guidelines, ensuring alignment with focus areas.
- Citizens Forward: Currently this initiative is planned to be funded by Unit budget:
RFPs are pre-specified by Workstreams and are supported by workstream budgets.
- Citizens Retro: This initiative is currently funded through a GCP.
Once an initiative is approved by the Citizen Grants Council, a pod will be formed to complete the initiative. Pod drivers will go through an onboarding process which includes:
- Gitcoin contributor onboarding
- Assignment of 360 team member to help build context and to hold the pod accountable to proposed KPIs
- Introduction to our accountability matrix (DACI charts) to clarify roles and responsibilities
The 360 team will provide varying levels of support depending on the project’s needs, from hands-on direction/support (ex: design support, coordination work, etc.) to casual accountability check-ins.
Accountability
Budget changes and amendments
Any drastic changes to the objectives or strategies of the original budget request will be surfaced on the governance forum with new proposed objectives and strategies to be ratified in a vote by Gitcoin Stewards.
The EC may also request amendments to their budget should they be inadequately resourced to accomplish an emerging need. These budget amendments are subject to GTC Delegate approval through the same voting process that any budget request would go through.
Reporting and Evaluation
Every budget request will be accompanied by intent-aligned OKRs that ladder into EC’s focus areas. The EC will be responsible for delivering on these OKRs and will be held accountable by GTC token delegates.
Every 3 months, the EC will report into the governance forum on how they are tracking their finances and execution of their initiatives.
Financial Sustainability
At the outset, the EC is primarily a cost center, responsible for overseeing a number of functions at the DAO focusing on community, impact and innovation within the web3 ecosystem without competing with the technology side of the DAO.
Funding of the Citizen Grants program (specifically the Citizens Innovate portion) will have its own metrics to be evaluated upon, ensuring that emergent work continues to be high-value and worth funding.
Seeking Feedback
This being a net new structure at Gitcoin and being wholly focused on empowering the larger Gitcoin community, we would love to get feedback and input. Should you have any questions, comments or concerns, please drop them in the comments below.
Otherwise, stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks as we roll out initiatives seeking community involvement.
