[Proposal] Public Goods Funding Workstream Season 18 & 19 Budget Request

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Public Goods Funding Proposal for Seasons 18-19

Introduction:

This is a funding proposal for Public Goods Funding (PGF) during Seasons 18 and 19, a period from May 1st, 2023, to October 31, 2023, co-authored by @maxwell, @m0nkeyfl0wer, and @connor. It provides a foundation for PGF’s strategic initiatives.

The financial request outlined has undergone evaluation by CSDO and stewards. That feedback integrated in, along with positive endorsement of the validity of the PGF budget request which we hope the community agrees with.

TL:DR:

In the upcoming integrated Seasons 18 and 19, Public Goods Funding (PGF) has outlined a plan aimed at achieving a series of key outcomes to contribute to the DAO’s sustained growth and success. The strategy encompasses various aspects, ranging from fundraising and operations to business development and stakeholder engagement.

  1. Operate Gitcoin Grants Program rounds with Core and Featured Rounds.
  2. Driving towards 13 Quadratic Funding (QF) rounds, 5 Quadratic Voting (QV) instances, and 5 direct grants programs. And achieve a total Gross Marketplace Value (GMV) of $10 million.
  3. Enrich grantee pipeline to bolster Gitcoin’s reputation as an early predictor of web3 success.
  4. Generate income through services model and Aqueducts.
  5. Formulate and execute a plan to expand self-serve adoption of Grants Stack.
  6. Support Passport workstream with business development to facilitate their six-month objectives: 1 million Passports, 5x integrations, and earn at least $1.
  7. Work with the Allo workstream to funnel qualified leads for custom development atop the Allo.

PGF Organizational Structure Updates:

Throughout Season 17, PGF has prioritized efficient execution and displayed exceptional performance. It also is important to acknowledge recent leadership changes: Janine’s departure to focus on Zuzalu, Scott’s transition to Public Works for more strategic work with the foundation, and Annika transitioning to a new role at Eco Association. Ben West, Connor O’Day, and Azeem Khan have stepped up as co-leaders of PGF.

Azeem spearheads the partnerships and business development initiatives for the Gitcoin Grants Program, Grants Stack/Allo Protocol, and Passport. Ben manages the quarterly Grants Program, ensuring its seamless execution. Connor drives growth by collaborating with ecosystem partners to deploy featured rounds in the Program and independent rounds on customized timelines. All three co-leads contribute to partnership fundraising, relationship management, and overarching strategic planning and management of the workstream. The collaboration of this team amplifies efficiency and fosters synergies through comprehensive relationship management, bolstering growth and business development for team members across workstreams.

As we transition into Season 18, we are confident in PGF’s position and eagerly anticipate the opportunities that lie ahead. For more information about S17 goals and achievement, visit this public document here.

Public Goods Funding Budget Request for Seasons 18-19:

Public Goods Funding (PGF) is submitting a budget request for Seasons 18 and 19, seeking an allocation of 773,125 GTC, which equates to $1,237,000 USD based on the current GTC-USD exchange rate of 1.60 USD per GTC. This financial request is exclusive of reserves and amounts carried over from previous periods.

Budget Evolution

Gitcoin Season Season 15 Season 16 Season 17 Season 18 Season 19
Season Budget $664,550 $868,750 $606k $618,500 $618,500
Under/overspend** $46,158 $70,262 $TBD N/A N/A

A comprehensive breakdown of the Public Goods Funding (PGF) budget request for Seasons 18 and 19 is provided at the conclusion of this report.

Please note that the GTC amount requested and the value of reserves will be subject to adjustment based on the prevailing market value at the time this proposal is moved to Tally. The lower of the current price or the 20-day moving average will be utilized to determine the final figures.

PGF has devised a two-step release strategy for the requested funds. Although the funding request will be made through a single Snapshot vote, the actual disbursement of funds will be divided into two Tally votes – one at the commencement of each season. This approach ensures enhanced accountability and mitigates potential risks associated with price fluctuations.

** This section highlights the variance between the requested budget and the actual expenditure, excluding reserves.

Outcomes, Projects, and Milestones:

  • Aligning with the DAO-wide objectives of achieving 13-5-5 and a $10 million GMV by October 2023.
  • Successfully run Program distribution at least $2m total per round.
  • Support business development for Allo, Grants Stack, and Passport to achieve six month goals of each product.
  • Generate income running Featured Rounds.
  • Establish Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) through Aqueducts

See longer strategy document here.

Measurement:

Members actively support each other as we deploy a train the trainer model.

Outcome Priority Initiative/Project Milestone/deliverable Due date
Successfully running Gitcoin Program High Gitcoin Program Distribute at least $2m per grants round between funders and donors.

Build key infrastructure for the scalable growth of the grants program and to enable smooth operations of featured and independent grants rounds via runbooks, guides, templates and other assets \ \ “Smooth operation” will be interpreted to mean a shrinking number of support tickets related to eligibility decisions or other operational factors.

July, 2023
Grants Round Operators Guild Operational High Gitcoin Program Grants Round Operators Guild fully resourced with runbooks, guides and other assets.

October 31st, 2023
Charge 3% fees for Featured Rounds in the Program and earn at least $1 High Gitcoin Program Earning at least $15,000 in S18+S19 October 31st, 2023
Onboard 25 grants programs to using Grants Stack High Business Development for Allo/Grants Stack Successfully onboard 25 across QF, QV, DG. October 31st, 2023
Assist Allo partners on boarding High Business Development for Allo/Grants Stack Support 5 projects for Allo delivery October 31st, 2023
Established ARR High Recurring Funding $100,000 ARR by end of Season 19 October 31st, 2023
Close at least one prominent non-profit foundations, Fortune 2000, and/or government entity High Gitcoin Program At least $50,000 from a major organization to fund the Program October 31st, 2023
Support business development for Passport High Business Development for Passport 5x Passports to 1 million created and custom implementation with high profile partner. October 31st, 2023

Breakdown staffing, contracting, operational expenses

Function Description Amount USD %
Core Contributors (FT) PGF Co-Lead - Connor - Growth

PGF Co-Lead - Azeem - Partnerships

PGF Co-Lead - Ben West - Program

Ecosystem Development Manager - Juanna

Partnerships and PGF Operations - Maxwell

Grants Operations Manager - Kieran

Grants & Data Research - Umar

Data & Program Reputation Lead - Alex

Allo Stack Sales Lead TBD

Senior BD TBD

Additional hire accounting for key growth (i.e., Services Lead) - TBD

Janine tentative return FT

$991,000 79%
Trusted Contributors (PT) Grants Support - Coleen

Grants Support - Jon R.

Grants Strategy - Sov Administrative Assistant - Lyl

$96,000 8%
Operational Expenses Travel Fund $90,000 8%
Discretionary Funds for Retroactive Rewards for Program Contributors and Eligibility Review Support 60,000 5%
Total $1,237,000 100%

Total request including reserves & budget rollover

Total [Workstream] Budgeted Spend S18-S19 $1,237,000
60 Day Reserves $412,333
S17 Treasury Balance, incl unspent reserves and any source of revenue* $500,000 (accounting for April payments, currently around $679,000)
Total S18-19 Request $1,149,333

* Any and all revenue generated during the past season will flow back to the DAO treasury or will be rolled over to the next season.

* During the season we will transparently report to CSDO and Stewards on revenue plus efforts to remediate currency fluctuations and report on these in the next budget request. *

We look forward to your comments, thanks for your consideration!

15 Likes
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So proud to be part of this stellar team. Such a big thank you to all the people who helped shape this proposal. @connor and @azeem and @Maxwell of course and also all the stewards and teammates who offered constructive feedback and suggestions. Thanks to @annika and @kyle and @nategosselin and @kevin.olsen and @CoachJonathan @Viriya and everyone else who took the time to weigh in. Excited for the next 6 months!!

15 Likes
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PGF is the revenue engine of the DAO … I have high expectations for this workstream to lead us out of the bear market!

I am also excited to see new leadership stepping into the (big) shoes left by others in this workstream. @M0nkeyFl0wer @connor @azeem are proven leaders with complementary skillsets and deep credibility in the space.

Finally, I’m happy to see that budget is flat/declining at a time when the level of ambition is increasing.

This proposal has my full support :sparkles:

12 Likes
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I so appreciate the effort from this team to step up and lead this workstream under so many changes. @connor @azeem @M0nkeyFl0wer @Maxwell thank you all for wrangling PGF and continuing to drive toward outcomes. This team has consistently delivered on round objectives - timelines and funding.

I’m happy to see the budget is flat while our ambition is increasing and that we’re even adding in taking on BD for Passport. We have room to deliver more impact with the same resources.

One thing I’ll add here that I’d love to see more of in the next two seasons is how can we help maximize productivity as a team through more strategic decision making to drive overall financial AND operational sustainability?

Allo and Grants Stack shouldn’t just be more of the same of what we did in prior Gitcoin QF rounds. How can we not just grow the number of users in the same way as we have previously but instead think about strategic partnerships that help us unlock funding public goods and communities projects that matter to them at an even greater scale?

I appreciate that we’re charging fees but I’m confused as to why we’d only earn $15,000 from them?

I appreciate the ARR goal and what else can we be thinking about to drive recurring funding?

Appreciate all the effort from this team while I’m out and am supportive of the budget.

6 Likes
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I highly appreciate the updates to this since the early drafts. This team did a great job of taking feedback and making a concise proposal. I am in support of this proposal and would echo what Carl said in my reasoning. I’m very happy seeing how the new leadership has quickly and effectively stepped up this last season.

One side note, I have decided to take a role with a company rather than focusing on my original plan of starting a business servicing users of the protocol. This is partly because of the uncertainty around whether or not I would be directly competing with Gitcoin for business.

7 Likes
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Hey Janine! Thank you for these thoughts :slight_smile:

I’m equally excited about PGF helping Passport with BD, we have such a blue sky ahead of us!

To answer your questions:

  1. PGF will 100% work towards maximizing productivity and ensuring financial and operational sustainability. Our main mode of achieving this will be shifting to more strategic decision making based on modeling, data, and long-term vision. Through doubling down on strategic decisions I’m confident we’ll be able to maximize team success.

  2. Building on the first point here, we will without a doubt consider more strategic partnerships with larger organizations at a greater scale. Candidly, this will likely happen towards the end of the season. In order to properly field these conversations we need our product to be perfect, and we view the next few months as working through bugs and opportunities for growth before we can start executing on these highly strategic long-term partnerships (which we’ve already begun early convos with). Frankly the issue here is that if we approach these “house-hold name orgs” with a buggy product that doesn’t work 110% of the time, we risk tarnishing any opportunities for future use. We need to time these right, and the time will likely be perfect in the coming months.

  3. We got to the $15,000 number based on modeling we performed. I agree we could hit higher, but we are proposing this number as we work through and finalize the fee structure.

  4. There is a variety of things we can consider w.r.t. recurring funding. Principally we believe aqueducts will provide sustainable funding, but also sequencer fees and exchange fees are another promising avenue. We will continue to explore this in S18-19.

1 Like
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Great points!
I have some tangible thoughts on this if you ever want to have a conversation.?

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Firstly, PGF is the key part of GitcoinDAO, which supports the public goods!
Btw I’d like to see the co-lead with Ben West, Connor O’Day, and Azeem Khan for PGF (aha, experiment).
So I definitely vote for this proposal, and based on above proposal, I have some questions:

Last, I would support this proposal.

2 Likes
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Hey Bob! Thanks for the Q’s!

  1. The 13-5-5 number is how we’ve chosen to align with product and the DAO overall. These were metrics ultimately solidified through Kyle and CSDO, and we are on our way to hit them! QV instances and direct grants programs are also items that product has envisioned. QV = quadratic voting, so an instance here would be an example of a quadratic voting event. Direct grants = giving out grants directly. These are items defined and decided upon by product, and as product builds them out we will work to solidify adoption + partnerships.

  2. The grantee pipeline is when a grantee comes through Gitcoin in it’s very early stages and then becomes a successful project that supports the matching pool down the line. 1inch, Uniswap, Yearn, Optimism, etc are all great examples of the pipeline in action.

  3. The service fee is Gitcoin taking a % of the matching pool of certain self-service rounds that opt into receiving Gitcoin support when running their rounds. This is part of our overall service model approach @connor defined.

Thanks for your support, Bob!!

2 Likes
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@azeem - This proposal has met the minimum requirements to move to snapshot for a vote (as of 2:24pm est this afternoon). When you are comfortable with the proposal and the input and would like to move to snapshot, lmk and I can help.

  • 5 day posting period: met
  • Steward comments: met (5 of 5) (ccerv1, j9leger, DisruptionJoe, PaigeDAO, bobjiang)
1 Like
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This proposal is now live on snapshot. Follow this link to cast your vote:
https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0x60507e452ec1b13184cdff8168f0461096cd13cef12c57b8d32390581a51db53

This vote will close on May 8, 2023, at 8:06 PM EST.

3 Likes
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I am excited to see PGF continue to grow and mature under its new leadership. Overall, lots of opportunity as the protocols come online to really see exponential growth again in how our grants offering (QF, QV, direct grants, etc.)

RE the budget numbers:

I want to confirm that when we go to Tally, we will nly request the 33% reserve, correct?

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Quick update, this snapshot vote has passed with ~72% approval rate.
Metrics:
1872 unique votes
~6.4M GTC tokens cast.