[S15 Proposal - INTEGRATED] PGF Budget Request

annika · August 2, 2022, 6:31pm

Essential Intents

In S15, PGF has components of our work that focus on all four of the DAO’s Essential Intents - though we primarily emphasize EI1 and EI4. As a reminder, the EIs are:

EI1: Protocol Adoption
EI2: Financial Sustainability
EI3: DAO Organization
EI4: Grants Program Success

TL;DR

In S15, PGF will focus on setting up the grants program for a transition into a protocol world.

If successful in S15, the workstream will define – with the rest of the DAO’s involvement – where the grants program is headed, will help the DAO better track partner conversations, and will continue to iterate on ops structures (e.g., horizontal scaling, more self-serve for partners and clear managed service tiers) within our cGrants rounds today.

In the context of the program specifically, PGF will continue to improve the overall round experience, meaningfully engage grantees, funders, and partners, and in turn increase the number of measurable success stories rounds help create.

Beyond grants, PGF will help spin out a public goods coalition (pgDAO) that will act as an investment DAO allowing partners to commit long term to empowering large scale internet-native communities to fund their shared needs and create a sustainable funding source for the grants program.

Based on what we learned from S14, we will be more intentional about what sub-rounds we fundraise for – and what constitutes a “minimum viable round” for side rounds – in GR15. We will decouple the main and side rounds in GR15, a step toward a permissionless protocol and improve our scalability processes, based on some of the challenges (e.g., tagging) in GR14. We will also add a focus area within our grassroots efforts on engaging grantees to drive higher quality grant applications. Finally, we intend to better define the distinction between the program and the protocol heading into a nascent grants 2.0 world.

Our Always-On Goals, which our S15 objectives map to, are as follows:

1. Increase Sustainable Funding for Gitcoin Grantees

S15 Objective 1: Grow net new S15 matching funds and partners by 25%
S15 Objective 2: Define Service Levels & Model for the Protocol (based on continued learnings from the design partner program)

2. Improve Overall Grantee Quality & Success

S15 Objective 3: Leverage grassroots efforts to increase grantee quality & engagement
S15 Objective 4: Improve grant eligibility & round timeline processes alongside FDD

3. Scale Grants Program Process & Workflow

S15 Objective 5: Define Program & Protocol Structure in a Grants 2.0 World
S15 Objective 6: Scale PGF team + contributor processes to reach a healthy homeostasis

Amount

PGF is requesting $664,550 (232k GTC at a spot price of $2.87). This is a decrease of 31% vs. our S14 requested budget of $960,000.

The budget is broken up into three key areas of focus, aimed at creating a sustainable grants program and, eventually, protocol.

Grassroots
Grants Operations
Partnerships

This budget does not include the additional 60 days of reserves. Breakdown of the budget by workstream, plus reserves, is detailed at the bottom of this post.

The GTC total will be determined, based on (a) the current market value at the time this proposal is moved to Tally, and (b) the remaining balance in the PGF Multisig (which will determine how much net new funding we require).

Milestone Report

In our previous budget, we outlined a number of key objectives, many of which were less precise than in our revised format for S15. We have done our best to highlight the wins and losses, but welcome any questions about precise metrics used.

Initiative/Dept	Objectives Past Season	Value Delivered
Inspiring Spaces: Sustain and grow the Public Library community as a gateway for new contributors	Continue regular Public Library sessions and invite salient thinkers on Public Goods and Web3 as our speakers and moderators while inviting new participants interested in Gitcoin’s mission	Develop and operationalise an onboarding flow for reliable participants to contribute to the Public Goods Funding workstream or other workstreams around GitcoinDAO. Kickstart initiatives hosted by our Public Library participants beyond Gitcoin to discuss Public Goods We hosted a great mix of salient thinkers, including the President of RadicalXChange and the CEO of Ethelo. During GR14, we specifically hosted topics related to GRs. We have 236 members and consistently engage 20 every week. We created a PGF-specific 90-day onboarding flow which we operationalized with two S14 hires, and will continue iterating going forward. Interviewed 20 potential contributors for the PGF workstream and GitcoinDAO. Developed best-practices for WS-wide meetings, prioritizing updates asynchronously and using synchronous time together to discuss important topics. We experimented with an intimate reading club exploring Ivan Illich’s work, and will continue to experiment with how we can provide grantees non-monetary value through library-offshoots in S15. Continued to explore Gitcoin-sponsored courses.
Accessible dialogue: Host the “Public Goods are Good” Twitter Space consistently	Maintain a regular space for people curious about Public Goods and interact with key organizations and people through Twitter Spaces Support GR14 by hosting discussions on cause rounds and showcasing grantees	Throughout S14, we held 10 spaces, and each space highlighted past/present grantees or past/present funders, with guests ranging from Solarpunk Girl and Austin Griffith to Filecoin and Coinbase. We had an average of 182 attendees at each Twitter space, with the range being 268 (GR14 Funder Feature) and 142 (GR14 Diversity Equity & Inclusion Panel).
Nurture ideas: Kickstart a publication on Public Goods	Grow awareness of Public Goods and inspire action to contribute Create a public good (non-rivalrous, non-excludable open publication) about Public Goods to move beyond synchronous community interactions	During S14, we authored a manifesto for the publication Explored working with writers and former editors of major publications, but failed to operationalize the publication in its entirety
Community Cartography: Support and grow the ImpactDAO mapping initiative	Complete an initial map of ImpactDAOs in the space to provide a baseline for evaluation and insight generation Explore mental models, narratives, relationships, and culture around ImpactDAOs to help foster the growth of the Public Goods ecosystem through educational material and research	An initial map and book was launched by Owocki and Ale during EthAmsterdam at the end of S13. Narratives, relationships, mental models, and the culture surrounding ImpactDAOs have been thoroughly explored during S14. The ImpactDAO Cartography Telegram group remains active with over 570 members and recurring weekly sessions to ideate and track progress on initiatives. The term ‘ImpactDAO’ has been cemented into web3 as a canonical term encapsulating the ability for web3 to produce positive externalities.
Community Lore: Create art for Gitcoin’s lore with collectively-owned IP	Grow a collective of lore-builders, creatives, and builders shaping a solarpunk future through the Gitcoin mythos	Funded Comic #4 which will be released at an upcoming conference in Q3.
Scale: Grow grants program	Increase number of high quality grants that raise >$5K/quarter by 50% (pending market condition) * Increase the number of side rounds by 100%	GR14 had 155 grantees who raised over $5K total, compared with 157 in GR13. We actually don’t think we yet have the right metric to track here – “high quality grantees” being synonymous with those who raise $5K/quarter is not quite accurate. Defining better grantee quality metrics is a focus for the grantee engagement work slotted for S15. Side rounds grew by 100% in H1 2022 – 9 in GR12 to 18 in GR14
Sustainability: Set ourselves up to execute grants on a larger scale	Minimize the number of hiccups during the round Achieve NPS for participants, partners, and donors of >70 Test at least two new constructs for funding grants (e.g., public goods coalition, aqueduct)	We didn’t have any major outages or program-related issues during GR13 or GR14, and most friction points were the result of inter-WS coordination, which we hope to address during GR15 We shared surveys with grantees and donors, and have conducted retros with partners. Grantees and donors have been slow to respond, and we were able to get rough estimates for an NPS from partners by asking “How satisfied are you?” Based on low partner-response for retros, we will send out a survey for GR15. We’ve made considerable progress in launching a public goods coalition in the form of pgDAO, and this will remain an ongoing priority for S15.
Decentralization: Continue to decentralize grants program	Move grants ops completely out of Gitcoin Holdings & into the DAO Increase role of stewards/community in grants strategy & decision-making; define governance surface area	Grant ops has been successfully moved out of holdings and into the PGF workstream! We’ve continued to welcome and encourage steward and community feedback on grants strategy and decision-making via the governance forum post and following discussions (i.e., Annika’s post about GR14 Round Structure & Grants Eligibility Update has 1.7k views and 64 comments).
Ecosystem Funders: Test Grants 2.0 assumptions	Run a new Ethereum Infrastructure round in GR14 and solicit funds from ecosystem builders Run 15-20 Ecosystem Rounds in GR14 Assess which ecosystem funders are equipped & motivated to self-run rounds Share survey / interview results from post-GR13 partner discovery work	We successfully ran a new Ethereum Infrastructure round in GR14, deploying $500K in matching funds in this round alone We successfully ran 14 ecosystem rounds and 3 cause rounds. As a result of running so many rounds, we were able to get good data points on funders & their motivation/ability in self-running rounds We shared survey and interview results from GR13 internally
Scale: Grow the size of matching rounds executed by the DAO	Increase the number of net new partners we work with by 20% Increase the average size of side rounds (with emphasis on cause rounds) by 50% Continue to level up new full time and part time contributors towards the above	During GR14, of the 28 total partners, 16 were new partners - meaning that new partners increased by 57% Overall - cause round totals increased by 28% vs. goal of 50%, and ecosystem rounds increased by 52% In GR13 - we had: $1.2M main round $489K Ecosystem round total $700K Ukraine round $465K Climate round $40K Longevity round ($1.2M cause round total) $3.169M total funding In GR14 - we had: $1M main round $742K Ecosystem round total $530K Climate round $500K ETHInfra round $350K Advocacy round $150K DEI round ($1.53M cause round total) $3.417M total funding This is especially meaningful considering GR14 happened in a bear market - with wildly different funder sentiment than GR13 (more headwind), yet we were able to make substantial gains. We also added much-needed capacity to the team in the two strong fundraisers with strong Web3 ecosystem context.
Sustainability: Tighten processes to scout and execute partnerships (Growth Ops / Partnerships)	Refresh partnerships process to handle a larger load of potential partnerships while ensuring that we seek out the most aligned partners to work together by growing the partnerships team’s capacity Continue to build out new documentation to ensure members of the team have full context on each other’s responsibilities and current objectives (e.g. robust relationship tracking) Formalize our evaluation process to support partnerships across the DAO with support from Stewards via the mutual grants committee	Hubspot is live, allowing us to both define a process for handling a larger load of partners and increase our team’s overall capacity. Hubspot and its previous iteration on Notion have resulted in accessible “sources of truth” that enable all contributors to share context and view each other’s responsibilities. Mutual Grants Committee is live and active, with several grants in the pipeline and one recently completed with Radicle. We have a robust v0 framework which is now being used to evaluate ongoing potential mutual grants.
Measure impact: Help set the stage for new cause rounds that augment our mission (Growth Ops / Partnerships)	Fundraise for the Ethereum infrastructure round to bring Gitcoin back to its roots Focus on bringing in new values aligned web2 partners like Fifty Years and double down with other existing values aligned partners like Protocol Labs	Ran a very successful Eth Infra round - funding core projects in the space with funds from high-signal partners. During GR14 we brought in 28 partners, 16 of which are new values-aligned partners.
LARP together: Experiment with fundraising efforts around art, open-source partnerships, and collectively-owned IP	Kickstart a new team focused on experimenting with different methodologies to raise funds for Public Goods Raise at least 20 ETH through 1-3 net new NFT sales	Ultimately, this initiative did not fully come to fruition. While working on the project, market conditions shifted such that we couldn’t fully resource the project as we had hoped to - due to comic production involving fiat-heavy costs. This led to contributor churn and the project didn’t end up actualizing its initial goals. We will be sunsetting this initiative, and going forward we will operationalize better treasury management practices

S15 Objectives

In order to streamline our work, we have consolidated our initiatives and cut low performing areas to arrive at 6 key objectives for Season 15.

Outcome Description	Essential Intent Connection	Steering Metrics	Likely Projects/Initiatives
“What impact will we see?”	“How does this align with our most important work?”	“How will we know if we’re making progress?”	“What will the work likely look like?”
Objective 1: Grow Net New S15 Matching Funds and Matching Partners by 25%	Aligns with: EI1: Protocol Adoption EI4: Grants Program Success	Matching funds distributed exceed $4M (vs. $3.2M in GR14) 100% of those funds are raised this round (i.e., not pulled from any existing multisig balance) 75% of those funds are paid by round start Total round partners are scaled up to 35 (vs. 28 in GR14) At least 15 total ecosystem rounds	Reach out to more GR15 partners than ever before Improve cross-selling across partners Enable better tracking in Hubspot Improved payment process Launch novel funding experiments (e.g. pgDAO)
Objective 2: Define Service Levels & Model for the Protocol (based on continued learnings from the design partner program)	Aligns with: EI1: Protocol Adoption EI2: Financial Sustainability	Ratified model of flow of funds both for endorsed / program-led rounds and broader rounds by protocol users Partial ordering of types of projects that fit into scope for the program vs. those that are likely to be self-service	Working across PGF & with GPC / partners to outline initial service offerings Continuing to advocate for and bring in new, large-scale deals that help push forward the protocol vision (e.g. the Optimism partnership)
Objective 3: Leverage Grassroots Efforts to Increase Grantee Quality & Engagement	Aligns with EI1: Protocol Adoption EI3: DAO Organization EI4: Grants Program Success	Stand up a sub-squad in Grassroots to define our grantee engagement priorities Hold 10 discovery interviews with successful grantees about how we might better engage grantees in subsequent seasons Identify and define specific, measurable objectives to assess grantee quality in subsequent seasons Create an implementation plan for the specific objectives in order to collect data & measure impact starting in S16	Build onboarding playbook Notion doc for grantees to get involved with Gitcoin and the larger ecosystem interested in public goods Sustain the library while refactoring it to kickstart grantee engagement Continue to highlight grantees and funders in weekly Twitter spaces Kickstart a sustained effort to engage grantees for overall grant program success Experiment with providing non-monetary support to grantees through relationship building and knowledge-sharing opportunities
Objective 4: Improve Grant Eligibility & Round Timeline Processes	Aligns with: EI1: Protocol Adoption EI4: Grants Program Success	Returning partners’ assessment of whether the process improved or not Grants Ops hours spent dedicated to eligibility reviews decrease Confirm and announce rounds by Aug 8 More grant applications in before the round begins vs. during round	Execute on the playbooks we’ve written out in a more structured / planned way Decouple main and side rounds Advise FDD on their reviewer training Hire Eligibility Analyst with an eye to PGF owning Grant Eligibility & Policy as of S16
Objective 5: Define Program & Protocol Structure in a Grants 2.0 World	Aligns with: EI1: Protocol Adoption EI4: Grants Program Success	Forum post outlining protocol vs. program vs. services Defined mapping of ecosystem legitimacy within program scope Alignment across teams	Setting a bi-weekly cadence with GPC to iterate on and ratify the proposed model Writing & socializing across the DAO
Objective 6: Scale PGF team + Contributor Processes to Reach a Healthy Homeostasis	Aligns with: EI3: DAO Organization EI4: Grants Program Success	Increased efficiency of work across sub-streams At least half of PGF contributors experience a thorough performance review 100% of contributors have their roles + responsibilities documented and accessible to other contributors	Creating and solidifying workflows + runbooks across Grant Ops, Partnerships, and Grassroots (e.g. via Hubspot) Designing a performance evaluation process established beyond peer reviews Leveling up current contributors to reach their fullest potential Iterating best-practices for cross-functional work

Budget Breakdown

The objectives above can be mapped to three main departments or “squads”. For simplicity, we have marked the objectives [O1…O6] to these groups, since they are the key functional units of the workstream.

Category	Description	Amount GTC	Amount USD
Grassroots O4	Two full-time contributors Lead (QZ) Twitter Spaces Lead (Lani) Three part-time contributors Twitter Spaces Ops (Vermeer) Library Ops (Linh) Library Ops (Madison) ImpactDAOs (Ale) Other expenses Library Slush Fund	TBD	$96,800
Grants Ops O2, O5	Five full-time contributors WS Lead (Annika) Grants Ops Lead (Janine) Ecosystem Rounds Lead (Connor) Cause Rounds Lead (Ben W) Account Manager (Sage) Budget for two full-time hires Marketing Ops Manager Grant Eligibility One part-time contributor Design Ops (Madison)	TBD	$301,500
Partnerships O1, O3	Four full-time contributors WS Lead (Scott) Partnerships Lead (Vishnu) Partnerships co-Lead (Azeem) Fundraiser (Drew) One part-time contributor Partnerships ops (Eli) Budget for one part-time hire Fundraising Account Manager	TBD	$220,000
PGF Operations O6	One full-time contributor Talent Lead (Maxwell) Travel slush fund	TBD	$46,250
Total S15 Request			$664,550
` + 60 days’ reserves			$443,033
` - Existing Multisig balance			TBD at time of posting
Amount Requested from Treasury			TBD at time of posting

Fred · August 2, 2022, 7:01pm

Visualization of the budget draft above. I intend to post these under each budget and keep them updated as proposals incorporate feedback and changes. Please reach out if you have any questions or input.

linda · August 3, 2022, 5:01pm

I reviewed this budget and also had a call with the PGF workstream this morning to clarify any questions I had.

I am supportive of this proposal. I was happy to see the milestones that were achieved the past season and that there was a sizeable decrease in the budget requested this season.

My main concern was around work duplicated in other workstreams. For example, it seemed Grant Eligibility FT hire has some potential overlapping work with FDD. I would like to see workstreams make sure we are not paying salaries for duplicated work in a season. I also gave feedback that given the current market environment I have seen many teams I work with cut back on hiring for new roles unless absolutely critical. I would like to see all workstreams, not just PGF, evaluate if the new role is a nice to have vs an absolutely critical hire so we can ensure long-term DAO sustainability.

J9leger · August 5, 2022, 3:59pm

Thanks Linda, appreciate your time and review. To address your concerns around the Grant Eligibility FT hire and overlap with FDD. Currently there is a discussion around GrantOps taking over grant review starting from GR16.

As it stands currently, grant reviews are an extremely time intensive process for GrantOps with our current GrantOps team reviewing all side round grants with our round partners. There are a lot of upcoming changes with Grants 2.0 on the horizon, Passport, the work in moonshot around Identity staking and FDD’s work with Data Empowerment that will all have an effect on Gitcoin Grants and how eligibility works. There is a lot of operational effort that we need to put in to rethink the manual process for grant review and overall grant policy in a protocol world.

Given the operational and coordination lift behind this, importance of our grantee population as a whole for the success of our program, and future grants protocol to achieve long term success, we consider this an important additional role that is being discussed closely with other workstreams, like FDD and we hope will help sustainable scalability of grants 2.0.

epowell101 · August 8, 2022, 12:56am

Thank you for the work that went into this - and the work you are all putting into helping Gitcoin lead the public goods space. That s14 succeeded despite the bear market is a great validation for PGF and Gitcoin.

Of all of the budget proposals this is the one that as an outsider I found most difficult to get my arms around. I think this is largely due to the sheer scope of efforts and where I am in my learning curve.

Additionally, I believe there are cases in which we are still listing as objectives tasks that one might be able to logically group as tasks within overall objectives. Also, even though it was a big achievement to go from 13 objectives to 6, that still may be too many.

To nit pick - objective 3 is listed as “leverage grassroots efforts to… increase grantee quality & engagement.” The objective here is “increase grantee quality & engagement” and the excellent work of grassroots would be considered a means to that end IMO. We put a tactic into the statement of an objective - unless I’m off base here. What do you think?

Continuing on that thread - and here comes an actual question - am I right that we currently lack metrics that are agreed upon that measure “grantee quality” and “grantee engagement”? Could we set for example an imperfect metric such as “host at least X grantees in weekly Twitter spaces”? What about success metrics for past cohorts? Do we have such metrics and would it be useful to look at how many grow and prosper over time? I wonder if it will be a powerlaw like distribution, what do we expect?

Regarding engaging grantees - just wondering if grantees also receive GTC? If so they could be welcomed as owners, taught how to delegate, presented w stewards and report cards, and otherwise walked through Gitcoin governance 101. Just an idea re: engagement.

Overall objective 3 - because it does not have metrics associated w/ it - sounds a bit like a list of well-meaning efforts.

Objective 4 - while there are some metrics mentioned, the base lines are not provided which would help to set expectations and build confidence we are going to exceed these targets. For example, “more grant applications in before the round begins vs. during round” begs the question - what % of grants are received during or before the round NOW and by how much do we plan to shift applications from during to before?

I share @linda question about FDD vs. the new hire of an Eligibility Analyst and see your response. Nonetheless, I was still wondering whether the FDD crowd funding efforts (humble brag I got my NFT!) of grant reviews be impacted by this new hire and by PGF taking on this additional role?

Is Objective 4 mostly about improving the grant applicant experience, or mostly about controlling our costs, or both? At the risk of over stepping, this feels to me like the classic 2nd objective you see in a groups objectives. Objective #1 is often about top line as it is in our case. Objective #2 then is often about increasing throughput while controlling costs. Classic metrics here then are process metrics (for example reduce grantee wait time by X%) & also something like a NPS. Do we have the ability to measure or infer metrics from the customer or grant applicants perspective? If so, capturing 1-2 key ones here might be useful either now or in the future?

Regarding NPS like measures, when we list “returning partner’s assessment of whether the process improved or not” - do we mean we will survey or interview at least X% of returning partners and report on our findings within the DAO and for the next funding cycle?

Objective 5: here I was a little lost. What is meant by “defined mapping of ecosystem legitimacy within program scope”? Is this a mapping of the landscape?

Objective 6: seems clear. The lack of fully defined roles & responsibilities & the ongoing work on runbook development and usage does raise the question of whether additional hiring is appropriate right now, especially given the external environment. I think overall we are advocating for three hires?

partner account manager
marketing ops
grant analyst

The grant analyst work raises for me the question - again - of potential FDD overlap regarding crowdsourcing efforts.

Perhaps you might want to argue for why hires 1 & 2 are urgent and cannot be delayed while more work is ongoing to define roles and responsibilities and so forth?

Leaving the “best” or at least most quantitative for last - Objective 1 seems nailed down from my perspective. It is after all a quantifiable and strategic objective. Again, do you need the hire to hit these objectives? Also, do we have a sense yet of the funnel, “sales cycle time” and so forth for round partners? To get those additional 7 round partners (35 vs. 28), do we need to be in discussions w/ approximately 3x that number 60 days before the round? I know we just adopted Hubspot so I’m guessing we don’t yet know much about our funnel ratios?

Regarding objective 2 - it seemed to be another aspect of prepare for Grants 2.0 - which is also essentially what object 5 is. Is one more outward facing (I think objective 2) and one more inward facing (i.e. objective 5)? Or am I missing the gist of it?

As I mentioned, thanks to the scope of your activities and my location along a long learning curve about Gitcoin, this proposal was the most challenging for me to understand and hence to provide some feedback to. Nonetheless, I hope the above provides some questions that are worth responding to and some ideas on how to tighten up the objectives & metrics for understanding and possibly for increased focus. I look forward to your responses including any pointers I can follow for additional understanding about the work streams themselves.

Many thanks!

lefterisjp · August 8, 2022, 2:11pm

Hey thanks a lot for taking the time to write such a detailed proposal.

As per the call with Linda and you guys we had last week my biggest concern at the moment is seeing a lot of duplication between some of the budget points and items that should be DAO-wide.

Especially around accounting and hiring. Also the overlapping with FDD.

In short what Linda said too.

bobjiang · August 9, 2022, 7:11am

Thanks a lot for the detailed budget proposal, I only have one question.

From the proposal from @annika the budget request is about $664k, but in the post from @Fred it is about $207k. ([S15 Proposal - INTEGRATED] PGF Budget Request - #2 by Fred)

Is there something wrong for the number?

Fred · August 9, 2022, 7:26am

Each workstream presents their budget a bit differently, in order to be able to compare them I’m using the following terminology:

Season 15 budget = The funds the workstream needs to deliver on their goals in the upcoming season. Their projected spends. (See the bolded text under the Objectives)

Season 15 request* = The amount the workstream is requesting from the Gitcoin treasury.
Request = Budget - Reserves**. This is the GTC equivalent the Stewards will vote on in the actual Tally vote.

*The request amount is an estimate up until the Tally vote is initiated. The visual presents what the figure would be if stewards would vote on the proposal right now.

**The bar chart in lower right corner display the current workstream treasury. Some workstreams have not yet paid all expenses for July, this amount will therefore most likely continue to decrease until the day of the Tally vote.

I keep an eye on the budgets as they change and update the visuals accordingly.

Pop · August 9, 2022, 3:55pm

Having discussed this in the steward council and better understanding the concerns @linda and @lefterisjp had re overlap, I think I am comfortable with the budget request and the intention on better refining and aligning what each workstream prioritizes so that overlap is reduced to the point of removal as we collectively work towards next seasons.

DisruptionJoe · August 9, 2022, 7:12pm

I am not concerned about overlap outside of the naming they used for the role. We have discussed their need and I fully agree that they have a need for this role. The PGF stream is the connection to the funders and therefore should take the brunt of the policy legislation. FDD will remain working on enforcement and adjudication of platform and main round eligibility, disputes, and appeals. This role would likely be responsible for the side round enforcement and adjudication processes along with operationally driving policy updates for the platform and main round.

Ideally, we will build software based tools with the protocol to alleviate the need for FDD services around Grant Eligibility that are not connected to fraud.

CoachJonathan · August 9, 2022, 8:09pm

I was hoping to get clarification on a few things:

Grassroots

What is the high-level breakdown of responsibilities for contributors (esp. those who are FT)? Based on what I’m seeing, it looks like we have 2 FT and 3 PT contributors running the Library and Twitter Spaces. I’m not sure what it takes to do that, but intuitively it seems like a lot of hours to run these activities.
In line with the above, what have been some metrics that can be shared about # of participants at each of these events?
What is the overall strategy of running Library calls and running Twitter Spaces? Who are the audiences? What is it that we hope to accomplish by having people join us at each event?

I get concerned when I see a “slush fund” when we are trying to lock down our spending and bring more intention to our activities. What is the purpose of the slush fund? What have been some past unforeseen costs that have come up? How large is this slush fund? How important is it that it stays here?

Grants Ops

How is this different than the role @Viriya is playing right now? My understanding is that this role has now been filled by her and she intends to hold this role for the foreseeable future.
If this is a role in additional to what @Viriya is playing, how is it differentiated?

PGF Operations

I’d like to see more details on this - how much spending is being planned for S15 on travel? I imagine that any FT contributors that qualifies for this already has an idea of which conference they will attend, and therefore specific funds can be earmarked for them.

All in all, alongside the curiosities I am stoked on the work that PGF has been doing. I think they are bringing a TON of intentionality to everything they are working on, constantly trying to amplify and streamline all of their work and processes.

A larger question to ponder for the DAO is:

If we’re playing the game of “becoming profitable” with our work on the protocols side, how much do we continue to grow and amplify our grants program, which is purely a cost-centre? Alternatively, how do we start transforming PGF into a revenue-generating Workstream?

annika · August 10, 2022, 4:27pm

Thanks for your thoughtful questions @epowell101 and @CoachJonathan.

They seem to center largely around two areas:

Grassroots objectives/outcomes - which I’ll let @Fishbiscuit, Grassroots Lead, respond to
Grants Ops new hires - which I’ll respond to here

On the Eligibility Analyst - As @DisruptionJoe outlined above, we have coordinated with FDD on the need for this hire. This is, frankly, a hire we probably should have made months ago before scaling up Ecosystem Rounds. A couple pieces of context here: (1) In GR14, Grants Ops spent ~80% of its time, many nights and weekends, reviewing grants for ecosystem & cause rounds. We have scaled from zero ecosystem/cause rounds a year ago to 17 of them in GR14, and each round having its own policy and group of stakeholders to manage to is a ton of operational complexity that we haven’t hired for whatsoever. The solving of it has been very yolo to date. We need a systems thinker who can build this from the ground up and massively reduce our human evaluations.

On the Marketing Ops Manager - As you pointed out @CoachJonathan, as of recently @Viriya is indeed stepping up and playing much of this role. We are incredibly excited by what we’ve seen so far in her leadership of this! Here is the original JD for context - and, as you note, a good chunk of this is now covered by her work as of the past couple weeks. To be clear, given the progress we’re seeing, we do not plan to hire this role prior to GR15. That said, we want to budget for it for later in the season in the event that we (and @Viriya) feel we still need more marketing ops support within PGF looking ahead to GR16. For GR15, some of this budget will go towards Coleen (who is already contributing part-time) and we hope to keep some as a buffer.

@J9leger - feel free to add anything I’ve missed.

Viriya · August 11, 2022, 12:51pm

Thanks for the breakdown in thinking here, Annika.

Just to add to @CoachJonathan’s sentiment here - I plan to continue in this role and I feel it falls within the scope of what’s needed at the moment. That said, I am a big +1 for keeping Coleen on for strategic support around Cause Rounds - especially if we’re bullish on continuing to scale this area of our program (which I very much am, personally).

A separate thought re: Grassroots

Grassroots community engagement initiatives are the heart of any community-driven organization. The flag that has been raised about duplicative work between grassroots, MMM and DAO Ops’ community experience efforts is top of mind and I’m excited to see some focus on an audience that’s important to our success (i.e., Grantees). And I feel torn about having a budget this large for something for which the strategy is not clearly outlined.
That said, I think there will be a huge unforeseen impact if we were to cut grassroots initiatives entirely. I feel strongly that once we begin to align on a community engagement strategy, there will be more clarity and opportunities for grassroots initiatives to blossom towards the end of S15 and into S16.

kyle · August 11, 2022, 2:59pm

I love the thoughtful dialog from @CoachJonathan and @Viriya! Many of the items flagged by them are also similar sentiments I am feeling. This budget still feel really big.

The grassroots work likely needs a deep rework as we transition to launching our protocol and the grantee engagement is not inspiring as defined. Working to increase engagement and quality on the current platform should be a non-goal IMO. We would ideally build that engagement and momentum on the protocol. Overall, it feels a bit misaligned. Without the clear community engagement strategy from the DAO, It’s hard to understand the value of that focus area. IMO, there is a lot of momentum that will be coming from the launch of the protocol. We may have found ourselves (and the market) growing out of the need for us to plant the regen seeds. Public goods are good - that mantra is present in many places because of our hard work. The next phase of this discussion could shift to “say not that public goods are good - say I will fund them!” - but this likely needs to be deeply linked to the new protocol.

Our budget for the Partnerships work also seems large given we are pausing the mutual grants and have not been able to launch pgDAO. Round size has stayed consistent (in a bear market!) which is a great accomplishment, but we are not really seeing much gains by increasing that team size yet. I wonder if this because focus has been too spread, or that we are missing clear goals and accountabilities for the team.

I could see a budget reduction of maybe $75k-$150k and still have PGF be as effective as they are today. Those numbers assume pausing grassroots (to retool towards a protocol future and engagement strategy) and also scaling down the partnerships work given the pause in mutual grants and no pgDAO yet.

I am posting this thinking aloud to get other’s thoughts. I recognize as this impact’s contributors roles its a hard conversation to have in public.

Fishbiscuit · August 12, 2022, 3:43pm

Firstly, thank you for your feedback. I appreciate the guidance on helping to align our work across the DAO and to the future of the protocol. A detailed overview is in this document, broken down to a per-hourly basis. This is as detailed as it gets and even though it might not completely dictate how S15 might go, I hope this makes it clear how carefully and resource constrained we are now even as we try to meet our goals. I suggest reading this before continuing to the rest of the forum post. I’d like to emphasize that grassroots has cut a lot of initiatives from last season. We’ve gone from 210k to 96k while starting a pivot towards grantee engagement. In fact, every season we’ve had to reorient our community efforts to galvanise our community towards more pressing issues. For S15, that is grantee engagement.

To @kyle 's questions:

First, one can’t simply pause grassroots efforts and restart them at will. The rapport, community, and trust that goes into the day-to-day running of these safe spaces will be broken if we simply close them down.

Second, members of these grassroots efforts have gone on to be informal ambassadors of Gitcoin, helping other grantees or even being grantees themselves. Since the protocol is being built, keeping a space for potential users is key. Also, it’s not like we intend to close the grants program. Future Gitcoin will have both the program and protocol. More importantly, the program will be opinionated, and thus these spaces that facilitate discussions on the nature of the grants program will be even more crucial.

We are reworking our grassroots activities based on @annika and @J9leger 's feedback that the grants programs is looking to engage grantees better. Having run and kept the community for a year, I believe this is the best place to start.

We have been designing a clearer grantee engagement strategy referencing a hierarchy of needs that utilises Heartbeat, a community platform, and a community hub at Devcon to achieve this.

The user journey of grantees will thus be.

Grantee support prior to GRs that get them ready to become a grantee
Grantee engagement during and after GRs so that we can facilitate key conversations that help them become better grantees on the platform and beyond, achieved through creating a community
for S15 as devcon is near, we intend to host a community hub for public goods as many grantees new and old will probably be at Devcon.

To @CoachJonathan questions:

What is the high-level breakdown of responsibilities for contributors (esp. those who are FT)? Based on what I’m seeing, it looks like we have 2 FT and 3 PT contributors running the Library and Twitter Spaces. I’m not sure what it takes to do that, but intuitively it seems like a lot of hours to run these activities.

Your intuition is right. It does take a lot of hours to run a good community. Despite this, we have accumulated a year of experience running both Public Library and Twitter Spaces, and thus have optimized to only requiring 2 PT contributors for each initiative.

It takes 8-10 man hours to curate, guide, execute, and review each Twitter Space and Public Library.

In line with the above, what have been some metrics that can be shared about # of participants at each of these events? + 3. What is the overall strategy of running Library calls and running Twitter Spaces? Who are the audiences? What is it that we hope to accomplish by having people join us at each event?

The strategy is simple.

On average our Twitter Spaces have 181 active listeners and the Public Library has 20-22 attendees.

Even more important than mere metrics, our grassroots efforts have been the key to onboarding great members to the DAO. Something that DAO Ops has consistently promoted as a great way to take part in Gitcoin, and I’m glad to see @safder in several Public Library calls. Over the year, Public Library attendees such as Ale Borda, Alisha, Ben Percifield, Ben West, Colton Orr, Gary Sheng, Jason Cook, Jim Chang, Juanna, June, Kris, Kyle Jensen, Madison Adams, Maxwell Kanter, Michelle Ma, Sarah Drinkwater, Umar Khan (and of course, myself) have all gone on to become valuable contributors to the DAO.

We’ve also had speakers for the Public Library such as Amber Case (micropayments and calm design), Ale Borda (public goods ecosystem synergies), Bhaumik (designing inspiring learning communities), Aaron Maniam (digital public goods), Matt Prewiit (local currencies), Vivian (pluralism). You can find the full list of 50+ sessions here. During GR14 we switched our conversations to talking about the grant round itself and got speakers from Gitcoin to share about setting up the round and its challenges.

For the upcoming library sessions during GR15, we’ve had a great idea proposed by Sage from Grants Ops to utilise it as grantee 101s which we have cleared prior library sessions to execute on. August sessions are already fully booked with members from Taiwan’s g0v taking center stage.

For our Twitter Spaces we’ve had speakers such as Tina He, Jasmine Wang, Cyn Bahati, Lauren Luz, Eva Beylin. But since we are pivoting to focus on grantee engagement for the next season, our calendar line-up has changed accordingly.

August 11 (Thursday): Open Gaming Round
August 16 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
August 18 (Thursday): Advocacy Round
August 23 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
August 25 (Thursday): DEI Round - Host Gloria
August 30 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
September 01 (Thursday): DeSci Round
September 06 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
September 08 (Thursday): Climate Round - Host Ben West
September 13 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
September 15 (Thursday): Community Collection Curation / Shill Your Collection
September 20 (Tuesday): Open Hours Prospective Grantee Q&A
September 22 (Thursday): Funder Panel

The Twitter Spaces audience is a diverse mix of people who are: newly entering web3, interested in funding public goods, past and future grantees, and people who are simply curious about joining the Gitcoin community. This space creates an open, welcoming environment, and top level funnel for prospective contributors and community allies.

Our focus is shifting and expanding to encompass grantee engagement to better support grantees who are new to the ecosystem. We believe that the Twitter Spaces foster a sense of genuine connection and meaning to those who attend. Twitter Spaces are a vehicle for storytelling and provide opportunities for each guest to share their own pathway, perspective and experience—to help educate and inspire the community to think outside the box and dream big! Beyond supporting the grants rounds, spotlighting grantees, and highlighting funders, our core intention is to illuminate innovative projects within our community that probe the edges of what is possible and explore the ways in which blockchain tech can support communities in funding and sustaining their shared needs.

Library Slush Fund
I get concerned when I see a “slush fund” when we are trying to lock down our spending and bring more intention to our activities. What is the purpose of the slush fund? What have been some past unforeseen costs that have come up? How large is this slush fund? How important is it that it stays here?

The slush fund is USD 2k per month. It is important because we use it for onboarding contributors during our trial period. It is a small slush fund but has brought on writers that have ended up in MMM such as @umarkhaneth and @kylejensen .

edit: I agree with @M0nkeyFl0wer 's suggestion to not use the term slush fund, however that was a policy tool that Loie left us as a flexible fund that was agreed during the CSDO call sometime in… November’21 and hence we use this term.

To @epowell101 's questions:

To nit pick - objective 3 is listed as “leverage grassroots efforts to… increase grantee quality & engagement.” The objective here is “increase grantee quality & engagement” and the excellent work of grassroots would be considered a means to that end IMO. We put a tactic into the statement of an objective - unless I’m off base here. What do you think?

Firstly, welcome to Gitcoin I’m glad to see a fellow WildfireDAO person here, and I welcome your feedback.

We have been designing a clearer grantee engagement strategy that utilises Heartbeat and a community hub at Devcon to achieve this. Those would be the tactics. The reason why it’s not on the forum is because it’s being designed as we go, as we talk to more members of the community. This is because excellent grassroots work must come ground-up!

Continuing on that thread - and here comes an actual question - am I right that we currently lack metrics that are agreed upon that measure “grantee quality” and “grantee engagement”? Could we set for example an imperfect metric such as “host at least X grantees in weekly Twitter spaces”? What about success metrics for past cohorts? Do we have such metrics and would it be useful to look at how many grow and prosper over time? I wonder if it will be a powerlaw like distribution, what do we expect?

You’re right, however setting metrics that are merely counting how many times we do things bears no meaning. If you look up at the rest of the post, it is clear that we’ve been hosting regular Twitter Spaces and since it’s publicly hosted, we’re all held accountable.

Now, analyzing grantee success is practically a research topic in itself. However, we are willing to attempt this challenge this season too and kickstart the conversation of what a successful grantee is as it will inform our community strategy.

azeem · August 12, 2022, 5:59pm

Thanks so much for your feedback here, @kyle! I appreciate your call outs, and the opportunity to clarify the importance of partnerships.

Regarding Mutual Grants, we are targeting 1-2 mutual grants a quarter. You’re correct, we’ve decided to slow down this initiative for now, but it’s still an ongoing priority. As Owocki has talked about, we still think finding values aligned partners throughout the bear market is important, in addition to continuing to level up the structure of our relationships with key partners.

Regarding pgDAO, the launch has been moved to a key priority for S15 as we continue to explore the best partners for the initiative. It’s important that we do pgDAO right, and thus we didn’t want to rush it during S14, and want to make sure we give the formation and launch adequate energy during s15. While getting capital is important, having the right partners on board, and launching it in a way that is aligned with an ethos all of us would want to get behind is more important than getting something done a few months sooner.

Regarding grants fundraising, I agree - that we haven’t seen much increase in the round size by increasing the team yet, with yet being a keyword. I am confident that during GR15 and GR16 our team will be able execute above expectations, and that we will be able to positively steer the future of the program in combination with Grant Ops. I don’t think our focus has been too spread, but I do agree that we historically haven’t done the best job of tracking goals and accountabilities. This is an ongoing priority for PGF as a whole, and something we will remedy in S15.

But to zoom out, why do we need to raise these funds? The future of Gitcoin Grants relies on a protocol, but it also relies on showcasing the success of a canonical instance: the program. This is because the program is where many existing design partners have started, where are brand equity comes from, and in turn where a substantial amount of GTC utility could arise from. In addition, while it might be easy to see only the final number of what’s raised, it’s also important to take time to consider Gitcoin doesn’t take money from just anyone. We are highly particular about the kinds of organizations we would like to take capital from for grants rounds, this ensures that we have the best possible partners in a protocol world.

Again, to emphasize, there are lots of companies and individuals within the ecosystem who would be happy to brand align with Gitcoin allowing us to launder their reputations in exchange for tens of millions of dollars, but doing this in the wrong way would be short term thinking and reduce our long term success. Partnerships is about strategy as much as it is about execution.

Finally, it’s important to note that we are in a challenging macro environment, and the pool of companies we can raise money from continues to diminish given budget constraints. This will likely change over time.

With all that said, I’d like to push back on your call to reduce the partnership’s budget. We’re currently a lean team, and if you look across the web3 ecosystem, ecosystem and partnerships leads have extremely generous compensation packages (nearly 2-3x what we currently offer). People who come to work here are mission are aligned, but it’s important to remember it’s extremely valuable work we do that should be compensated in a fair way.

In an ecosystem so small, I’d hope everyone would understand how hard it is to find the right people for this, which is made even more difficult if we aren’t able to compensate those people well. Especially when getting another role would be extremely easy for them to do. Individuals who are able to raise funds within web3 need to have high context, understand the nuance of the space over the course of many years, typically have pre-existing relationships they can lean on (cold to close in sales for this work is impossible), and also have the ability to do sales.

Excited to work more closely with you to continue ensuring our future success.

M0nkeyFl0wer · August 12, 2022, 8:23pm

Couldn’t agree more with this. The hires PGF has made have been strategic and targeted in terms of expanding our network, reach and effectiveness.

M0nkeyFl0wer · August 12, 2022, 8:25pm

I wish we would stop using the term slush fund. It implies a lack of planning and intention which is clearly not the case. It’s good to have flexible funds allocated of course but they are allocated with intent and measurables attached to them.

M0nkeyFl0wer · August 12, 2022, 8:38pm

Kyle I’m loving the open dialogue about these issues. Thank you.

Have to disagree with this sentiment. I am, of course, totally on board with coordinating our efforts towards grants 2.0 but that needs to be an iterative process that flows from our existing grants program regardless of the platform. I feel we have a responsibility to continue to try to support our grantees and donors. Even more so in fact as we roll out new tools and there are bugs and other issues that need dealing with.

The Gitcoin community is growing to include many people who aren’t developers and this shift has brought some challenges with it that are worthy of attention.

Its worth noting that by running large cause rounds we have invited many n00bs and even people without their first wallets to engage with us and our brand. I think we need to do more engagement as our products are not fully built, not less. This has impacts on our ability to spread the adoption of the platform, which is a core strategic goal.

Furthermore, this is extra important as we are moving into the space of celebrity involvement and more non web3 brands (Serena Ventures, Schmidt Futures, Kimbal Musk etc). This will mean more scrutiny of our user experience and how we support our users. Our brand should be associated with positive web3 experience so our partners are happy to continue sponsoring rounds and we can leverage their positive response to bring on more high profile partners.

I agree we shouldn’t prioritize spending money or developer time on the existing platform but lets not conflate that with the efforts that are needed to continue to successfully build partnership and to run increasingly effective grants rounds.

azeem · August 12, 2022, 9:17pm

Yeah, I very much so agree with this, @M0nkeyFl0wer. tl:dr of my response would be +1.