[Proposal] Gitcoin Programs Team (GPT) S20-21 Budget Request

TL;DR

Gitcoin has always placed community and impact at the forefront of its endeavors. Gitcoin Grants, often hailed as “the soul of Gitcoin,” have pioneered Quadratic Funding and served as a profound catalyst for recognition and impact in the decentralized world.

Starting in Season 20, we propose that PGF, the group primarily responsible for the Gitcoin Grants Program and Gitcoin Partnerships, bifurcate into two distinct workstreams: the Grant Programs Team (GPT) and GSD.

This proposal will articulate the vision, structure, and budget for the GPT Workstream. We will post a similar proposal for GSD here on the forum for the community to review very soon.

GPT will be responsible for the success of both Program and Community Rounds during the Gitcoin Grants cycles. GPT’s Top Goals include Growing/Operating our Program Rounds, Supporting Community Rounds, Dogfooding/Protocol Adoption, and Educating the Community.

Essential Intents

GPT operates on grants.gitcoin.co and is primarily responsible for ensuring the success and integrity of both Program and Community Rounds during quarterly Gitcoin Grants cycles.

As we navigate through the evolution of the Gitcoin Grants Program, our essential intents will guide our strategic and operational decisions, ensuring alignment with our core values and objectives. These include the following:

  • Enhance the Program Quality and User Experience: Continuously improve and innovate the programmatic offerings and user interactions, ensuring they are intuitive, accessible, and valuable to our community.
  • Bring Clarity and Transparency to Grantees: Ensure transparent communication, clear guidelines, and supportive interactions that empower and inform our grantees throughout their journey.
  • Further our Journey Toward Progressive Decentralization: Continue to decentralize decision-making and operational processes, empowering the community and aligning with the decentralized ethos of the broader ecosystem.

Core Functions

GPT will ensure the strategic and impactful execution of Gitcoin Grants. Core functions include:

  • Program Rounds Ownership: These rounds include Core Ethereum Infrastructure, Open Source Software, and Web3 Community.
  • Community Rounds Support: Steward the execution of Community Rounds.
  • Dogfooding and Protocol Adoption: Leading the way in using Gitcoin’s Product Suite and defining the standard for how others can adopt for their ecosystem.
  • Community Education and Brand Distinction: Championing awareness on the GPT Workstream, Gitcoin Grants, and Program Rounds while differentiating our unbiased protocols from the specialized products they support. Further, establishing distinct brand identities and consistent program funding mechanisms.

Definitions

To understand the various rounds that GPT will oversee, influence, and support, it’s essential to differentiate between the Gitcoin Grants Program and the Grants Stack. For those keen on diving deeper into the terminology, such as the distinctions between Gitcoin Grants, Gitcoin Grants Stack, Program Rounds, and more, a comprehensive vocabulary guide has been curated here on the forum. This guide is a valuable resource to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding Gitcoin’s ecosystem and its various components.

Workstream Composition

The GM (Sov) will be responsible for top-level oversight and management of the group. The group will have two Co-Leads as Round Operators. Grant Ops team members will support these Round Operators and provide community support. In addition to these team members, we will have Data + Dev optimizing our operations and ensuring data availability and accuracy. A breakdown of the roles and who from the team will fill them is shown below:

Role Contributor(s) Role Description
GM Sov Overarching leadership, strategic direction, and Program team management.
Co-Leads Ben, Connor Leadership, Mentorship, and Cross Workstream Collaboration. DRIs for Program Rounds.
Grant Operations All GPT Team Members Managing and optimizing grant operations, ensuring alignment with program objectives.
Community Jon Responsible for community calls and gatherings (internal and external) along with Community Support and general vibes.
D&D (Data + Dev) Umar, Gerritt Optimizing operations, ensuring the availability and accuracy of data.

In addition to the roles within GPT, a broader group across Gitcoin consisting of GSD/MMM for Marketing and Demand Generation, Product Workstreams for in-depth subject matter expertise, and DAO Leadership providing support where needed.

Top Goals

These top goals serve as our compass, ensuring that every step we take aligns with Gitcoin’s overarching vision and amplifies the collective strength of the decentralized community.

Top Goal Sub Goal
Grow and Operate Program Rounds Achieve, at minimum, a medium maturity level as defined in the Program Maturity Matrix below.
Grow and Operate Program Rounds Program Rounds achieve goals outlined in Round Strategy. Preliminary goals are outlined in the GG19 strategy and will be evaluated and adjusted post-round for GG20/21.
Grow and Operate Program Rounds Build trust in Quadratic Funding outcomes through improved fraud/Sybil detection, QF mechanism experimentation & refinement, transparent processes, and detailed reporting.
Community Round Support Provide support, as needed, aligned with Community Rounds Service
Dogfooding and Protocol Adoption Be the primary use case example for Grants Stack and assist in developing (and documenting) best practices.
Dogfooding and Protocol Adoption Provide constructive feedback to Gitcoin Product Teams that help to improve and evolve products.
Dogfooding and Protocol Adoption Leverage subject matter expertise to onboard and support external parties as needed.

Program Round Maturity Matrix

Maturity Level $$$ bellwether Round traction bellwether Brand bellwether
Low Drawing money from matching pool Less $$$ total user contributions than the matching pool amount It is an unknown brand; no one knows it exists.
Medium Breakeven with matching pool Equal(+/- 10%) $$$ total user contributions to the matching pool amount Established program brand.
High No longer drawing $$$ from the matching pool round over round. Funded for >1 round out. Recurring/Trustless Funding More $$$ total user contributions than the matching pool amountCompetitive Offering in the market. Creating inbound leads to fund programs.

Budget

The costs for these resources, along with travel and expenses, necessary tooling, and necessary operating costs, are as follows:

Budget Estimates S20 S21
Contributors $212,754 $212,754
Travel & Discretionary $6,750 $6,750
OpEx $6,750 $6,750
Software & Tooling $1,250 $1,250
Total $227,504 $227,504

The workstream will recognize all revenue generated and flow back to the DAO treasury or be rolled over to the next season.

Economics

The GPT Workstream requests $455,008 for S20/21, excluding reserves and rolled-over amounts.

The target address for transfer is The GPT Multisig (previously known as the PGF Multisig).

Note: GSD will take 50% of the current reserves from the PGF Multisig to fund initial reserves after the formal creation of that workstream.

Note: The GTC amount requested and reserves will be added when this proposal moves to Tally, using the lower of the current price or the 20-day moving average.

Conclusion:

As Gitcoin continues its growth and diversification trajectory, we believe the evolution of PGF into GSD/GPT is essential. This renewed focus for this team on Gitcoin Grants will ensure that Gitcoin thrives in the current ecosystem and pave the way for future innovations and collaborations.

We welcome your thoughts and questions on what is proposed.

20 Likes

Thanks for the thoughtfulness that has gone into this budget proposal. It feels like a big step in the right direction in terms of rationalizing program costs, articulating value of the program to Gitcoin, and decentralization. I’ll vote in support of this and look forward to continuing down the path on the goals above together!

8 Likes

Sov, thank you for submitting this proposal. I’m excited to support it and I think this is the natural next step for the program. Excited to see the program continue to develop and grow with a specialized, focused team.

4 Likes

Supportive of this. Thanks so much for leading the efforts on execute here.

4 Likes

@sov do you think the GPT team can get to high on the maturity matrix over the course of these seasons? I’ll vote yes for this budget

3 Likes

Yes I believe we can get to where we need to be on the maturity matrix

2 Likes

I support this proposal.

I recognize that this is an important moment in terms of restructuring and decentralization, and hope that if there are any concerns or flags that they will be aired (or have already been addressed) in the appropriate forums, including this one. The people I’ve spoken to within the PGF workstream have all seemed to be in support of this new direction.

Finally, I’d like to recognize the incredible work of the PGF workstream over the past several years. I’m optimistic that two teams will emerge that are even leaner and meaner.

7 Likes

Really supportive of the strategic work that this team has put into the evolution of Gitcoin Grants. It’s really exciting to see frameworks emerge that can support a brand narrative that feels thoughtful and strong and (afaik) is aligned across the DAO. Thanks team!

4 Likes

Excited to see what GitcoinGPT will do over the upcoming seasons. I hope it gives ChatGPT a run for its money :wink: I could not find the definition of GSD anywhere, what does it stand for?

3 Likes

Thanks for the comments and support. GSD stands for Get “Stuff” Done :grinning:

3 Likes

I love the split of the two functions and the explicit naming of the work that has been happening. I am supportive of the budget and hope we can continue to decentralize as much of the round execution as possible.

2 Likes

I’m very excited by this direction and appreciative of the way the team is approaching their strategy. I’m supportive of this budget and can’t wait to see what comes next from this team!

1 Like

Thanks for putting this together @Sov and driving the path forward for both workstreams in the split. I’m fully supportive of this new structure and excited to see what the team can do.

3 Likes

Definitely supportive of this proposal and workstream split.

Normally we have a comparison in the budget requests on how much it will be compared to the previous seasons. I know this is a bit difficult given this is a new workstream, but now that the GSD budget is up as well, would it be possible to make a comparison how both budgets combined can be viewed vs S18-19?

I see you are GM (general manager?) over the two workstreams. Is this a term other workstreams will start using as well? If there is a GM overseeing two workstreams, does this not make this de facto one workstream with two departments? Just trying to grasp the logic here entirely.

Thanks so much for the clear proposal!

2 Likes

Sure I can provide this. You can see below a breakdown of QoQ what budgets were for the PGF Workstream. The combined budgets for GSD/GPT is ~$421K in S20 and ~$430K for S21. As you will see there is a slight uptick in combined costs against S19 but this is mostly due to adding part-time assistance from Gerrit for (D&D - GPT) and Sejal (Grant Ops - GPT). We are way down from previous costs of the PGF Workstream in Seasons 18 and prior.

Season Budget
S19 $392,000.00
S18 $618,500.00
S17 $606,000.00
S16 $868,750.00
S15 $664,550.00

I guess if you are looking at this from the perspective of top-down management then yes it is more of a departmental structure but if you are looking at it from a functional structure it is two separate groups with two separate sets of goals and objectives. Each of the WS have Co-Leads that will act as team leads, you can read more on the job descriptions and organizational structure at this link.

2 Likes

Thx for the quick answer, and great to see budgets are staying pretty stable.
That’s a yes from me!

2 Likes

I wil be voting yes on this proposal.

Things Ill be tracking

  1. I’m looking forward to seeing the programs climb the maturity matrix.
  2. Does GPT get good at supporting other programs? Going from “fish for you” to “teach you to fish”…
4 Likes

Absolutely. Both are critical and very doable.

Especially love #2. I think this needs to be our north star for sure.

Absolutely something we can double down on.

1 Like

This proposal has met the minimum amount of comments and time required to take this to a vote.

I have gone ahead and moved this to Snapshot: Snapshot

2 Likes

I (cryptobenthic🐠.eth) am a member of the Gitcoin WalletGuard. :shield::shield::shield:

I’ve verified that the code on this proposal matches the intent of the proposal.

If you are interested in joining the Gitcoin WalletGuard click here. …