[PROPOSAL] Allocate Increased Funding to Community Rounds in GG21
This proposal is to request an additional $150k of funds from the Gitcoin matching pool for the upcoming GG21 round.
TL;DR
Proposal to increase funding for Gitcoin Grants 21 (GG21) Community Rounds by $150k, bringing the total to $400k.
This would allow funding for the top 10 selected rounds instead of just the top 5, aiming to empower more communities and drive ecosystem growth. The proposal requests approval to allocate these additional funds from the Gitcoin matching pool.
Details
Earlier this year, we ratified updates to Gitcoin Grants, which include “matching on matching” funds for Community Rounds up to $125k per quarter. This allowed Gitcoin to enhance Community Rounds’ matching pools through our governance process.
Since we are only running 3 GG rounds this year, we earmarked an additional $125k to Community Rounds in GG21, as outlined in this post, totalling $250k for GG21.
On top of this, the grants operations team would like to request an additional $150k from the Matching pool multisig, making the total that we’re allocating to Community Rounds in GG21 $400k.
The additional funding we’re requesting from the multisig will enable us to distribute matching funds to the top 10 selected rounds instead of only to the top 5. This being the first round we’ll run without a Gitcoin-hosted round, we’d like to experiment with allocating more funding towards a GG round that isn’t hosting the OSS Program, aiming to drive further awareness and growth within our ecosystem.
Why This Matters
Empowering Communities: A key learning from GG20 was that the rounds outside of the top 5 selected felt excluded and some felt disempowered to run. Our hope is that funding all 10 community rounds further drives ecosystem growth and empowers communities in a more robust way.
Sustainability Commitment: This approach still aligns with our commitment to program sustainability while equally providing significant benefits to our community.
Implementation
The Community Council will decide on how to distribute the matching funds across the 10 rounds, with the top 5 still receiving the largest amount of matching, and the remaining rounds receiving a reduced number.
The passing of this proposal would mean we would be $150k over the budget set out for 2024. Reminder: we are only running 3 rounds this year, with the remainder $125k is already earmarked to GG21.
NOTE: With this proposal, we aim to experiment with this format of boosting Community Rounds matching, and does not set a precedent for future rounds.
Voting Options
Yes, provide an additional $150k for GG21 bringing the total to $400k of matching funds
No, do not provide an additional $150k for GG21, leaving the total at $250k of matching funds
I fully support this proposal to increase the matching available to community rounds in GG21. Without the OSS rounds running, GG21 will be much smaller than GG20. This proposal, if passed, will help protect against some of that.
As a Community Council member i fully support this proposal as this will turn #GG21 into a Community Festival & showcase amazing grantees and their community initiative.
It does makes sense to increase the matching funding based on the quality of the proposals we received.
When @MathildaDV spoke about possibly increasing the funding to community rounds, i had advised waiting until we know what quality of applications there was.
I just finished my review of all the rounds (as I’m a council member) and was pleasantly surprised at the calibre of teams running their own round. Increased funding to the top 10 we selected will certainly help grow network effects of gitcoin to new communities and so I am supportive of the increased funding request.
I love @thedevanshmehta’s insight on this above and am in support of this proposal.
When I think about this request, there’s a niggle in my mind about ROI (return of impact). I know @MathildaDV has been discussing the importance of reporting impact of funds allocated. I would love to see some effort put towards better tracking and reporting for Gitcoin-led rounds and also creating accountability and support with reporting for community rounds.
It’s a tough nut to crack and not many programs are doing this weel, but it is an effort that will be well spent for a variety of reasons (legitimacy for our program, easier fundraising, creating a case for larger matching pools, creating impact flywheel effects, etc)
Part of me wants to vote no on everything that comes through as the DAO has become basically a multisig given it’s current distribution, and I would LOVE to see that change.
But I don’t have the heart, this is a great proposal. I love how gitcoin is sponsoring smaller rounds, it’s a great community action.
I think Gitcoin has come along way in its decentralization by decentralizing the legal, governance, protocol, round operations, etc layers of Gitcoin’s operations over the last 3 years. Sometimes, it has been 2 steps forward and sometimes it has been 1 step forward + 2 steps back.
From where we are now, I do agree there is room to progressively decentralize the DAO’s governance further. Though I think it is one parameter to tune along with others (market success, financial sustainability being the other primary ones). Would be keen to work with you (or others) on a roadmap for that when the time is right!
