[Proposal] MMM Season 13 Budget Request

📜 Proposals
1

TLDR

The MMM workstream is requesting a total of 30k GTC for Season 13.
The focus for this season will be on:

  • Building Gitcoin’s lean, mean web3 marketing machine
  • Shaping and grow a leading web3 brand
  • Supporting GitcoinDAO & Workstream initiatives

Progress so far

The goal of the MMM Workstream is to increase the awareness, engagement, and impact of Gitcoin, its Workstreams and its mission. We accomplish this by building sustainable channels, campaigns & content. If we’re successful, we will help establish Gitcoin as the world’s preeminent community of web3 builders, building for the public good.

MMM was created in July 2021, in true bottoms-up fashion, via a Gitcoin grant. It has grown over the past 8 months to become a fully fledged Workstream with 6 core contributors and a talented, growing community of dozens of marketing personnel around the globe. Over the past quarter specifically, MMM has grown and evolved its mission significantly, from running grassroots meme & merch projects to where it’s now well-positioned to create & own the bulk of Gitcoin’s core events, products, and campaigns.

This past quarter, the MMM Workstream focused on building out a team of contributors, setting up scalable structures and delivering on the initiatives outlined in our previous Workstream budget. The following are notable deliverables from our Q4 budget period:

GitcoinDAO Digest:

  • The GitcoinDAO’s official weekly newsletter which aggregates updates from Workstream leaders and contributors across the GitcoinDAO ecosystem. Contains links and clear call to actions for both Stewards and contributors. Each edition is posted on the forum and via email. A succinct version is also posted on Twitter.

Social media channels:

  • Includes Twitter presence and external communication via @Gitcoin & @GitcoinDAO. The MMM Workstream assists with comms for other Workstreams as well, including designs and hosting for the regular “Public Goods Are Good” Twitter Spaces hosted by Alisha & Lani and regular comms for the Moonshot Collective.

Steward Report Cards

  • The Steward Report Cards provides the most valuable metrics on engagement for each Steward in the Gitcoin DAO. The back-end received a large upgrade as a stepping stone for the larger v2.0 upgrade that’s in the works. We’re exploring ways to provide deeper insight into both Stewards and Workstream through a collaboration with the Stewards Council initiative.

Memes.party

  • A MMM development project launched in Q4 to aggregate and curate great memes on the topic of Digital Public Goods, Web3 and the culture and values of Gitcoin. A version 2 of the site with added features is currently in development.

GitcoinDAO Primer

  • A short, ELI5 description of the GitcoinDAO vision and mission that will be used for onboarding & education for new contributors to find their way and get involved with GitcoinDAO.

Other items:

  • The MMM Workstream continues to engage the community through bounties, community building, and virtual events such as Memepalooza. We have created over 500 memes, numerous POAPs and merchandise to expand the reaches of the Gitcoin brand. We’ve also worked closely with the onboarding team and other DAO-wide initiatives to assist with design, branding and marketing needs.

Treasury:
Funds spent to date from Q4 budget: 18,000 GTC
Funds to be carried over to Q1: 10,000 GTC, 2 ETH, 2,411 DAI

Continuing Activities and Proposed Budget

In the upcoming Season 13, MMM will take another significant step forward by establishing specific objectives for 4 key areas: Channels & growth, Brand, Workstream marketing, and Team management/health. This Season 13 budget request is designed to align with these goals and is split into 7 key areas: MMManagement, Software & tools, Events, Development, Brand & design, Content, and Growth.

This Season, we are formally adopting OKRs for Workstream priority setting and planning, with 4 key objectives laid out below. Our formal budget requests will follow these objectives and key activities.

Objective 1: Build Gitcoin’s lean, mean web3 marketing machine
Examples of key activities that support this objective:

  • Revamp the welcome email program, retention program and enable “abandoned” cart email
  • Perform an a SEO and keyword analysis to identify top ranking goals, and create a content program and calendar that aligns to this
  • Create web analytics tracking for GR13 to track conversions and make a tracking template for all marketing activities.

Objective 2: Shape and grow a leading web3 brand
Examples of key activities that support this objective:

  • Develop and publish brand perceptions to focus marketing campaign content & Brand Guide to ensure our visual & written content is consistent across all marketing and brand design.
  • Create pilot co-marketing project to create foundation for future partnerships
  • Launch “Can Devs Do Something” meetup in 5 cities with at least 120 participants & create a forkable program that allows community to host their own decentralized global meetups
  • Shape Gitcoin’s external perception & grow our global media presence, potentially by hiring and onboarding a leading Web3 PR agency

Objective 3: Support GitcoinDAO & Workstream initiatives
Examples of key activities that support this objective:

  • Expand connections and collaborations with Workstreams, and ensure every Workstream has a designated marketing point of contact
  • Establish a streamlined marketing resourcing request process
  • Host and promote community-building virtual events such as weekly contributor meetups, happy hours, community hangouts etc
  • Create and promote digest of key DAO activities to increase stakeholder understanding & engagement

Objective 4: Grow & support team health and accountability
Examples of key activities that support this objective:

  • Recruit 3 top contributors - core and project-based. Ensure clear process for posting & completing work and prompt contributor compensation
  • Propose, refine and gain approval for 2022 Q1 marketing plan including budget, OKRs and project plan
  • All core contributors create & publish accountabilities, and receive regular performance feedback from peers and workstream leads
  • Empower contributors to start and lead grassroots initiatives with minimal ongoing management

Clarification re: organizational changes:
For the past several months, Gitcoin has had two marketing teams: one run by Sean MacMannis in Gitcoin Holdings, and the Gitcoin DAO’s MMM workstream. We plan to consolidate into one team in the current quarter. All marketing headcount and resourcing related to non-revenue generating products that are currently being staffed/subsidized by Gitcoin Holdings, will move into GitcoinDAO.

We anticipate that all core marketing contributors will move to the DAO on or around April 1, 2022 as part of this organizational alignment. Therefore, this budget request includes only one month of compensation for the following 3 core contributors: Sean MacMannis, Fred Mannen, and Jonas Jahnsson. Future budgets are expected to increase as a result.

Budget Breakdown

MMManagement | 13k GTC

  • MMM-Workstream stewardship
    • Team ops, coordination and management, onboarding, treasury management and accounting
  • Cross Workstream collaborations & project management
  • Cross-DAO collaborations

Software and tools | 2k GTC

  • Marketing SaaS & tools
  • Gas costs

Events and community engagement | 4k GTC

  • Developer meetups
  • Contests and bounties
  • Virtual events

Development | 8k GTC

  • Steward report cards v.2 - adding metrics & functionalities
  • DAOMart - A novel way of rewarding delegators and contributors with merch & NFTs
  • Memes.party v.2 - Aggregating, editing and sharing regen memes to boost our message

Brand & design | 8k GTC

  • Full-time design lead (TBH, expected April 1, 2022)
  • Retained PR agency (expected March 1, 2022)
  • Part-time design contributors
  • POAP design bounties

Content | 3k GTC

  • Gitcoin DAO Digest
  • Blog posts
  • Social media marketing

Growth | 2k GTC

  • SEO Audit
  • Experimental acquisition campaigns

MMMbudgetseason13
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On behalf of the MMM Workstream, we’re proposing a budget of 40,000 GTC covering Season 13 from February 1 - April 30, 2022. Our current Workstream treasury balance is 10,000 GTC. Therefore, our request to the stewards is for 30,000 GTC for Season 13 (0.6% of the current GitcoinDAO treasury).

Thank you for your review. If you have any questions or feedback about this budget proposal, please comment below.

Signed by the MMM Workstream co-leads,
Brittney, Fred & Sean

9 Likes
2

I’m supportive of this proposal and appreciative of the work that MMM workstream is doing.

4 Likes
3

The primer looks great folks! Keep up the good work!

5 Likes
4

I wonder if the DAO Mart is needed - Gitcoin has a swag store, are their more needs that the existing store cannot meet? I would love to see the dev effort go into the steward report cards, all else equal.

which agency are we considering?

This Budget overall seems really sensible, and I love the outcomes (OKRs) listed. I am supportive pending some questions on DAO Mart

1 Like
5

Thanks for your feedback on the budget proposal overall and DAO Mart, Kyle. We’ll keep that in mind.

On building our proposed work with a PR agency, we’re leaning toward working with Yap Global. We received an updated proposal from them, which I’d be happy to share if you’re interested.

6

I would love to review, mostly as someone who is interested in learning the details of what services to expect from a PR agency. I don’t feel it appropriate for me to judge the work outlined as I trust you and the rest of the team on HOW to achieve your OKRs :slight_smile:

I see my role as offering a sounding board on budget requests, sharing other market knowledge of what others are doing and what I see as potential blindspots in the plans for consideration.

7

I’m very happy with the direction Brittney, Fred, & Sean are taking this stream! Fund them!

5 Likes
9

I support this proposal and the MMM workstream for the great contributions made and those that are yet to come!

MMM has become a voice for the DAO by organizing various events and Twitter Spaces.

3 Likes
10

Thanks for this detailed proposal!
I will vote yes on this proposal, below some thoughts that popped up while reading this:

Very happy we have this, I think it’s a crucial element in informing the community. I think for the next quarter we can further invest in streamlining the process of creation, and we should definitely make time to look into the data. How many people read this? Who makes it until the end? In marketing terms how can we grow the audience & engagement to improve the ROI? :slight_smile:

Very much looking forward to seeing this become a more integrated whole. The goal of the two twitter separate accounts have become less clear imo (as mentioned to Sean), if the main account also starts sending ‘vibe’ tweets, what is the ‘raison d’ĂȘtre’ for the vibes/dao account? If none, we could close it down. But I hope we don’t and will just spend more time on defining both, would love to be involved, hope I’ll find the time to dive (back) in in Q1/Q2 :slight_smile: Ps. @angel-fire is a genius ‘vibes shitposter’, let’s make sure we never lose her :slight_smile:

Here I hope we can work more towards an event that actually creates output that suppports Gitcoin’s mission, even if it’s just by creating memes that are actually ‘going places’. I think more time should be spent on the format and objective & quantifiable outputs, without taking away the fun - see the earlier discussion we had (end of Q3) on ‘gemes’.

Tbh I think this is an example of how we still work too much in silos, as this project - although it looks beautiful - ‘competes’ with at least two other projects within the DAO. Hopefully we can further join forces in Q1.

Definitely clear collaboration should happen here with the onboarding team within DAOops to ensure we don’t confuse our audience (as discussed).

I think an important part of this could be clearly defining who we want to reach and where we should focus most. I read ‘Can do devs something’ under this, but are we sure this does not create too much overlap with what the hackathon&events team is doing? Is this in collaboration with them?

A general note/thought on this: what is the overarching communication strategy for the DAO and how can we formulate MMM’s mission better ? Who does Gitcoin want to reach in the coming year? And how do we measure success? (without becoming too corporate-y or rigid)
I think more work on our DAOs mission and short-term & long-term objectives is needed for this, and this goes beyond just the scope of MMM. However, I’ve seen you bring in this bigger picture view Sean, and massively appreciated this, so I think we are moving in the right direction here.
Combined with @seedphrase & @Fred’s limitless energy, talent and collaborative, open spirit I think you are a power team that can move mountains. MMM is a beacon of positive, playful energy within the DAO and I hope you’ll keep on bringing that. Looking forward to see what’s coming next!

Edit: extra notes after re-reading other comments plus budget breakdown:

1/ I agree with Kyle’s thoughts on DAOMart and I hope we can merge the work done here with the Gitcoin Store which already exists and improve upon it. The goal of DAOMart was to boost stewards’ engagement, I think this can be done within the existing store, and I hope the next steps for the latter will be talked through thoroughly with @Pop, who’s working on steward engagement.

2/ PR agency: what will their role be exactly and how much experience do they have in the DAO world?

3/ Blog posts, I hope we’ll heavily invest in a number of on-call copywriters because this is definitely needed, so much to review. Also I’d set as an internal goal to beat @owocki when it comes to ‘proactive’ quality content producing, this forum is a treasure trove for leadership thoughts on DAOs & Gitcoin’s mission - we need more Owockis in '22 & imo this content should find lives beyond a governance forum to get more eyes on it. I’d personally move more funds towards content and taka away a bit from development. (see DAOMart comment)

6 Likes
11

Thank you for your detailed proposal and your work. I voted in support of the funding proposal.

2 Likes
12

Very delayed :rofl: This will have to be a goal for Season 14, def not going to get there in 13 when it comes to posts. :wink:

3 Likes