[Proposal] Budget Request for ETHDenver Activation

🧙 🧙‍♀️ Ideas and Open Discussion
1

Introduction

We are excited to announce our plans for an exciting and engaging ETHDenver activation. This proposal outlines the budget for the activation, including expenses for events, merchandise, and travel. This proposal aims to be in line with our 2024 IRL Events Plan.

Events

Below is our scheduled events for the week:

Tuesday Feb 27 - Grantees Day @ Gitcoin House (half-day event)

Wednesday Feb 28 - Metagov Program Managers Day @ Gitcoin House (private full-day event)

Thursday Feb 29 - Gitcoin Presents: “Welcome to Denver” Get Together @ Gitcoin House (half-day event)

Friday Mar 1 - Ecosystem Growth Summit @ Green Spaces Co-working (half-day event)

Saturday Mar 2 - Schelling Point Sessions: Impact Reporting w/ Impact Plus @ Gitcoin House (half-day event)

Saturday Mar 2 - Passport Dinner & Whiteboarding @ Gitcoin House (private evening event)

Unscheduled - Grants F&&&-up Night @ Gitcoin House (private evening event)

Total Budget

The total budget for the ETHDenver activation is $71,750.

Fund Allocation

Events: $44,000

  • Metagov Grantees Day ($2,000)
  • Metagov Program Managers Day ($4,000)
  • Gitcoin “Welcome to Denver” Get Together ($2,000)
  • Ecosystem Growth Summit ($30,000 - $15,000 for the event space, $5,000 for food and beverage, $10,000 for production costs)
  • Schelling Point Sessions: Impact Reporting ($2,000)
  • Passport Dinner & Whiteboard ($2,000)
  • Grants F***-up Night ($2,000)

Merchandise: $7,750

  • Passport merch ($1,500)
  • Gitcoin merch ($5,500)
  • Stickers ($750)

Travel reimbursements for individuals running all of the events: $5,000

Gitcoin House: $15,000

  • House cost (50% Gitcoin, 50% WEST Group): $14,000
  • Cleaning service between events: $950
  • Event insurance: $50

Sponsorships

There are several conversations happening around sponsorships. Should there be any additional funds raised from sponsorships, those funds will go directly to offsetting these costs.

Return of Funds

It is very likely that most of these event costs will come under what has been budgeted. The last thing we want is to have a bill that is higher than what has been request, so many of these estimates have been rounded up, with the expectations of creating wiggle room in our budget for unforeseen expenses (which tends to be an inevitability when running events).

The team is also 100% committed to being prudent with any spend, only using the DAO’s treasury for mission critical items.

Any leftover funds from the activation budget will be returned to the Gitcoin treasury.

Voting Options

If the vote is successful, funds can either be sent to the MMM multisig (since MMM is responsible for most of the planning).

  • Yes, fund the full EthDenver activation for $56,750
  • No, do not fund the full EthDenver activation for $56,750
  • Abstain
12 Likes
2

I think that this proposal is in line with the 2024 Essential Intents, especially Community First and Product Adoption (which leads to Network Effects), and so I will be voting yes on this proposal.

6 Likes
3

Call me biased, but aye in favor

2 Likes
4

Generally in favor of this proposal and looking forward to seeing many of you in Denver. It would be good to have long term view of event budgets and their resulting quantifiable RoI as opposed to individual asks for each event

4 Likes
5

I do remember you mentioning some Gitcoin merch wasn’t able to reach Istanbul due to customs. Is that forever stranded in Turkey or is there a possibility of getting it back so we can reuse it here?

Is there some cosponsorship from the MetaGov team or is this a branding event for them on our dime?

I do know Jonas was keen on this idea so sharing the cost with them would be ideal if we can manage that.

Overall I vote yes as leftover funds will be returned and I trust the team to be prudent

4 Likes
6

Hey everyone, oversight on my side - I did not include the cost of the Gitcoin House where we will be hosting the majority of our events. My apologies.

This cost comes out to $15k for the week and has been added into the total. This will also serve to offset accommodation expenses for several members of the Gitcoin team that will be in town doing talks or running events.

@jengajojo @thedevanshmehta @quaylawn @owocki please make sure to comment if these costs no longer seem reasonable to you. Otherwise I will assume this budget still has your approval.

3 Likes
7

Going to reply to a few of the comments:

The stickers are definitely stranded forever in the depths of the Turkish customs abyss :frowning:

For the Grantees event on the Tuesday - this is a co-hosted event.
For the Program Managers day, we are essentially event “Sponsors” by donating the space.

In both instances, we’re seeing a great opportunity to partner with a leading figure in the grants space (Metagov) and positioning ourselves at the center of all things grants (imo for minimal cost as well).

This would be great news and, if this is true, this event will likely cost much less, with more funds returning to the treasury,

Thank you for your vote of confidence! :saluting_face:

Curious about what you’ve seen at other DAOs. Are they posting their budgets for the year ahead? How are you seeing this be more advantageous than event-by-event asks?

Agreed re: ROI. Events are always tough to measure this - would love some guidance on what you’ve seen work at other DAOs to help make funding these an easy “yes”.

4 Likes
8

I will also plan to vote in support of this – I really like the focus on Product Adoption/audiences which as @owocki notes are a key EI. See you all in Denver!

4 Likes
9

No objections from my side on the additional costs

DAOs usually plan in quarter or 6 months

The question is what is the goal from doing events? Is it PR? Fundraising? Parties? Increasing token utility? etc… Once the DAO is clear on the one thing they want to optimize for from their events budget, they can plan in well advance and measure the RoI for each event compared to the previous year as well as with other events. With this experimentation it is possible to find out the best return on investment from event budgets. As an example, I run an events project in BanklessDAO on a shoestring budget and we figured out that small events have ridiculously high returns in terms of engagement and partnership building as compared to main stream events.

3 Likes
10

All IRL activations for 2024 will align with the Event Strategy outline I shared in the gov forum. Apologies for not sharing this in the OP - I have adjusted it to include this link.

For product-focused events, ROI will mostly be tracked on the basis of the number of leads and opportunities generated at events.

For brand activations, ROI is much more difficult to track and we’ll mostly be focused on feedback surveys.

I agree re: small budget activations - these tend to be super high value for Gitcoin & everyone attending. The majority of our activations will be like this with the exception of our Ecosystem Growth Summit.

3 Likes
11

Really excited for this events activation. We’ve worked hard to coordinate with the Grants Stack and BD teams to make sure that this is aligned to their goals. Most of what we have here are field marketing initiatives mixed with a sprinkle of Gitcoin vibe events that we know and love.

Am really keen to get feedback on the effectiveness of this initiative to actually meet product adoption goals. @CoachJonathan can you and @quaylawn make sure that there is a post mortem so we can work to make these effective this year?

lfg!

3 Likes
12

This vote is now live on Snapshot here: Snapshot

2 Likes
13

This snapshot has closed and option 1 “Yes” has won.

The full text for the option was: Voting “Yes” fund $71,750.

Metrics:
2,165unique votes
~4.8M GTC tokens cast.

Thank you to all the Stewards who commented and cast their vote.

1 Like
14

Hi everyone, I wanted to provide an update on EthDenver, the results of our activations and spend.

TLDR

  • Original request = $71,750
  • Total expenditures = $75,248
  • Total sponsorships = $31,000
  • Total cost to Gitcoin = $44,248
  • Amount being returned to Gitcoin = $27,502

From a qualitative standpoint, all of our events were well received and well attended. We had a difficult time getting feedback (as many of these events do) and are still waiting for more to trickle in.

Costs indicated below are approximates. There are many costs that are divided between all events, such as several costs for the Gitcoin House (doorman, cleaning service, insurance, the house itself which also served as accommodation for 8 people, etc.), merch, food/drink purchases, travel costs, etc. that were spread across multiple days.

Below are the activations we hosted and some of the associated statistics.

Note: Though impressions on Twitter tend to be a vanity metrics, it gives us a quick pulse check on how many folks were scrolling through their feeds and over our grants-centric content.

Web3 Grants Summit - Grantee Day

Total registration requests: 168
Total registrations accepted: 70
Attendees: 35
Attendance rate (attendees/registrations accepted): 50%

Impressions on Twitter for event-related posts:

Total event cost: Approx. $2k

Web3 Grants Summit - Program Manager Day

This event was invite-only and done in 2 parts - 1 day-time event and 1 evening event

Total day time attendees: ±30
Total evening time attendees: ±40

Total event cost: Approx. $3k

Welcome to Denver Social

This event also served to launch Kevin Owocki’s Mycofi book.

Total registration requests: 89
Total registrations accepted: ±65
Attendees: ±50
Attendance rate (attendees/registrations accepted): ±75%

Total event cost: Approx. $2k

Ecosystem Growth Summit

Total registration requests: 1,312
Total registrations accepted: 950
Attendees: ±200 (there were folks that entered from an event happening next door that did not get scanned in)
Attendance rate (attendees/registrations accepted): ±20%

Total event cost: Approx. $45k

Impressions on Twitter for event-related posts: 80,300

Schelling Point Sessions: Impact Reporting

Total registration requests: 221 (over 350 additional indicated “not attending” after a capacity message was sent out)
Total registrations accepted: 116
Attendees: 50 (we were at capacity for this event)
Attendance rate (attendees/registrations accepted): 43%

Total event cost: Approx. $2k

Impressions on Twitter for event-related posts: 37,500

Passport Invite-only dinner

This event was an invite-only dinner for Passport partners and prospects.

Total event cost: Approx. $2k

Sales goals

  • 7 net new opportunities
  • 3 leads

Additional unforeseen costs

  • We ordered more merch than initially anticipated, bringing the total up by ±$3k
  • We hired a doorman for the Gitcoin House to ensure that we were honoring our 50 pax capacity at the Gitcoin House
  • The projector screen at the Ecosystem Growth Summit came in $4k higher than expected because we wanted a higher resolution screen for the event (and didn’t it look great??)

Sponsorships and Cost offsetting

We had one sponsorship and one offsetting event in Denver.

  • The sponsorship was on behalf of Electric Capital who co-hosted the Ecosystem Growth Summit with us for $30k.
  • The offsetting event was with Consensys who hosted a gathering at the Gitcoin house and chipped in for food/the space for $1k.

Summary

Total costs for Denver were outlined above. Instead of sending funds back to the Gitcoin treasury,
the remaining amount will stay in the MMM multisig and be accounted for in the Ecosystem Collective’s budget request.

Happy to answer any additional questions regarding the events and how we’re using insights from events for future planning.

4 Likes
15

Thanks for sharing this update. I’d like to add a few soft metrics:

  • Owocki delivered a solo talk at ETHDenver on public goods and capital allocation. While not directly related to the events hosted in Denver, enhancing our reputation as thought leaders.

  • Meg joined the People’s Choice Panel to chat about Quadratic Funding with Griff Green, Co-Founder of Giveth, and Shawn Anderson, from the Token Engineering Commons. Similarly, Meg’s participation in the panel expands our visibility and credibility.

  • Jeremy participated at the Encode.Club hacker house to discuss grants & airdrops with Federico Sarquis, Head of DevRel at Mode Network. Jeremy’s involvement demonstrates active engagement with developer communities and initiatives beyond our own.

  • The Gitcoin lu.ma page created ahead of ETHDenver grew to 1,709 subscribers.

  • The Whitepaper launch was featured by DAO Times, a niche publication with 4,711 unique readers monthly, and we are actively working on additional opportunities.

  • Our Space recap reached 285 listeners, giving us a gauge on active engagement.

3 Likes
16

Thanks for the cost breakdown @CoachJonathan appreciate the level of detail that went into this.

Would love to see learnings highlighted in your next retro. Specifically, what worked and didn’t work about each event (if that feels safe to share). What would you repeat? What would you not repeat?

I’d also love to help map objectives and track against those for our events so we understand what our targets are and report against them specifically.

One more thing: IKYK, I’m really bullish in experimenting with revenue generation for our events and also making them more sticky w/ time-boxed GTC or ETH staking to help improve attendance metrics.

Thanks for all you and @quaylawn do. I heard Denver was a huge success!

3 Likes