[S16 Proposal] DRAFT Public Goods Funding Budget Request

[ceresstation]

Special thanks to @J9leger @Maxwell and the rest of PGF for helping to organize this draft.

Essential Intents

During S16, we will continue to prioritize the following EIs

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

TL;DR

In S16, PGF will prioritize collaborating with other workstreams across the DAO to test an alpha round of our grants program on the protocol.

Based on what we learned in Season 15, we are shifting our priorities to the protocol to ensure success at launch and not risk being torn between prioritizing running a round on c-grants and transitioning partners to the protocol. We saw this happen in S15, where during and after the round we had no way to continue pushing the protocol forward because 150% of our attention was on holding together our round on c-grants, a platform that has been in maintenance mode for many rounds and has accrued a lot of tech and process debt. As a result, we want to take all our learnings from running grants to date and shift our focus to the protocol, this will include re-thinking the eligibility policy requirements, designing robust processes, operations, and services to easily scale protocol rounds all while testing and delivering alpha rounds on the protocol in S16 (namely 2-3 design partner rounds and a as an alternative to GR16 we’ll be running an alpha test round on the protocol).

In S16 we will prioritize our team’s time around transitioning to the protocol and ensuring we’re attentive to our partners and grantees needs to guarantee a successful transition. To help operationalize this, we will also build out a services arm of PGF to further accommodate instances of the protocol. During S16 we will bring on a services lead full-time to help define, operationalize and execute this services arm. The abridged goal is to increase our internal capacity to meet the ongoing needs of design partners as we help serve their unique instances of the protocol. If successful in S16, PGF will run a few design partner rounds and an alpha Gitcoin test round for 2-3 focus areas on the protocol in January as a replacement of GR16.

Amount

PGF is requesting $868,750 for S16. This is a 30% increase from S15. Notably the increase is due to a developer relations budget (requested by GPC for us to take on) that will ensure protocol launch success, a new senior hire as a services lead, and a retreat for core Web3 ecosystem community leaders that have either been key supporters of Gitcoin or key figures in the community to rally around the Grants Protocol launch announcement during EthDenver.

When accounting for reserves, our total request will be $978,050, an 8% decrease from last season.

1) The amount of GTC requested and the value of the reserves will be adjusted based on the current market value at the time this proposal is moved to Tally using the lower of the current price or the 20 day moving average, whichever is lower.

2) The Treasury Request amount is an estimate using the price of $2.00 GTC to calculate the total of the reserves rolled over from Season 15.

Milestone Report for the past Season

Legend
Success
Incomplete, will hit goal or priority change
Incomplete, will not hit goal
Canceled - out of workstream’s control

Initiative/Project	Always-on [YES/NO]	Key Results	Value Delivered
Objective 1: Grow Net New S15 Matching Funds and Matching Partners by 25%	No	Achieved fundraising goals by increasing the matching pool to $4.4m while not pulling funds from the multi-sig. Increased operational excellence by utilizing Hubspot for better tracking. Failed to launch pgDAO.	Delivered value by increasing the matching pool and not draining the mutli-sig. Delivered value by utilizing Hubspot as a CRM, although will likely wind down Hubspot usage moving forward. Waiting for a restricting to a 2/20 fund that deploys management fees to public goods and majority of carry back to public goods over a 3 year period. This means we will have $50k to be donated each round with a total of $200k per year for 5 years, and a stream of up to $7m per year by 2024. New timeline for first close is January 7th, with consideration of counsel’s time.
Objective 2: Define Service Levels & Model for the Protocol (based on continued learnings from the design partner program)	YES	We agreed cross-functionally to de-prioritize this in order to focus on a reduced GR16 + to ensure the design partner program was defined successfully and given relevant owners. We’ve also worked cross-functionally to establish a plan for prioritizing initial design partners and we intend to start the process of executing on new partnerships with GPC in January (leaving Nov / Dec to prepare for reduced GR16). Additionally, we wrote up and shared a document team-wide that outlines our initial thinking on GTC utility.	Largely delivered value here, although we are not as ahead on this objective as hoped due to time dedicated to running the round. However, we’re making significant progress in defining the services and have shared an initial outline across different workstreams.
Objective 3: Leverage Grassroots Efforts to Increase Grantee Quality & Engagement	NO	Effectively re-oriented grassroots to support grantees, iterated on a grantee engagement pilot plan with DEI and DeSci Cause Rounds centering non-monetary support via a community management platform called Heartbeat. We also built and integrated the grantee onboarding playbook. Stewarded cross-stream collaboration by integrating the Public Library and DAO Vibes. Rather than interviewing grantees and defining success metrics on our own (as PGF), we decided it was in the DAOs best interest for us to collaborate closely with GPC on defining this, and thus we integrated our questions into GPC’s survey.	Delivered value by effectively merging Grassroots efforts with other WS initatives and experimenting with providing more opportunities for meaningful engagement with grantees.
Objective 4: Improve Grant Eligibility & Round Timeline Processes	YES	Effectively decoupled the main round from side rounds. Hired the grant eligibility role. Partners appeared pleased, although we are still in the process of completing retros. Confirmed and announced rounds early, enabling grantees to apply before the soft deadline.	Delivered value by improving grant eligibility through making a key hire, decoupling rounds, and confirming rounds in advance.
Objective 5: Define Program & Protocol Structure in a Grants 2.0 World	YES	Effectively gathered context internally and formulated governance forum posts in collaboration with GPC to gather wider community feedback.	Delivered value by publishing early definitions and thoughts publicly on the forum and soliciting feedback.
Objective 6: Scale PGF Team + Contributor Processes to Reach a Healthy Homeostasis	NO	Mapped out each contributor’s responsibilities with S14 OKRs. Payments were sent out each month with minimal hiccups. Peer review effectively facilitated.	Delivered value by ensuring PGF ran effectively, and we ensured our contributors in the right roles.

S16 Objectives and Key Results

List of S16 OKRs

Initiative/Project	Metrics	Key Results / Likely Deliverables / Projects
Transition Partners successfully to the protocol (EI: 1+2+4)	* Schedule at least 12 protocol rounds from previous ecosystem partners with a minimum round size of $50k by the end of S17 * Ensure we hit an informal partner NPS of 80% (positive vs. negative) comments about the transition	* Define partner onboarding roadmap and support * Have 1-1 protocol education conversations with all key partners explaining protocol value and create a runbook so conversations can be easily replicated * Define initial services contracts with partners according to their needs / requirements for round success
Launch Gitcoin Protocol Alpha Round Successfully (EI: 1+3+4)	* Run at least 2 successful rounds including a combined OSS and an Eth infrastructure round and then a Web3 Climate Solutions round together in late January. * Have all scheduled alpha rounds total more than $6.5M for the next two seasons (would exceed our current round over round matching pool funds) * Ensure at least 80% of grantees achieve a similar level of success as in past rounds (assessed based on average funds raised)	* Create the infrastructure and flow for partners to easily be onboarded with a clear runbook, and have clear processes in place for ongoing support * Create opportunities for grantees to easily ask questions and be onboarded carefully via a runbook
Transition 90% of selected & willing grantees successfully for Alpha round to the protocol (EI: 1+2+3+4)	* Adapt and create onboarding runbooks that best support grantee onboarding on their own * Grantees in the alpha round see the protocol as a better platform for the long term than their previous experience on c-grants based on qualitative feedback * Grantee support pod spun up to support grantees with cross-workstream connectivity across MMM, Support and Grant Ops	* Create, share, and iteratively refine a runbook and process for onboarding grantees * Clearly communicate with grantees about HOW they are engaging in the round and what to expect as an alpha partner * A streamlined process is implemented for grantees to ask questions, voice concerns, and share feedback or suggestions for our evolving protocol
Determine future of the program + services strategy + structure (EI: 1+2+4)	* Future of the program is determined and articulated publicly during S16 based on relevant stakeholder insights * First version of process playbook for the program is defined * First version of the services tiers are defined * Build pod working relationship with critical workstreams to increase speed of protocol delivery	* Services models version 1 are defined and ready to be implemented for rounds running in S16 and S17 * Service Revenue model is defined * Program strategy is defined and clearly communicated across the DAO * Aligned cross-functionally with ongoing brand + identity work + protocol messaging * Process defined for delivering the Gitcoin grants program season over season with a focus around scalability * Successfully launch and define measures for cross-functional pre-launch pods with GPC (e.g., developer relations)
Plan Partner + community retreat for Schelling Point protocol launch (EI: 1+4)	* Vision for the retreat is determined and articulated to and with our core community of participants. * Invite list determined and sent out * Logistics for retreat booked and programming partners confirmed	* Work cross-functionally with other pods to develop the event. Incorporate external contractors where necessary. * Book all accommodation and event space, event programming and vendors selected to support.

Budget Breakdown

View: USD per Initiative/Project

Initiative/Project	Amount USD	%
Grant Operations (Program, Protocol, and Services)	$327,850	37%
Partnerships	$196,500	23%
PGF Operations	$168,400	20%
Developer Relations^1	$176,000	20%
Total	$868,750	100.0%
Footnotes 1. PGF has agreed to fund Developer Relations yet the goals for launching a DevRel team will reside in GPC.

View: USD per Category

Budget Category	Description	Amount USD
Core Contributors	Former WS Lead on Mat Leave (Annika) WS Lead (Janine) Ecosystem Lead (Connor O.) Cause Round Lead (Ben W.) Grants Support (Madison) Grants Analyst (Kieran O.) Grant Services Lead (TBD) Grants Round Account Manager (TBD) WS Lead (Scott) Partnerships Lead (Azeem) Ecosystem Developer (Drew) Ecosystem Developer (Juanna) PGF Operations (Maxwell)	$544,870
Trusted Contributors	Cause Round Support (Coleen) Operations enablement (June) Virtual Assistant (TBD) Data Support (Umar)	$21,880
Hiring, Bounties, HIT Roles, Events	Traveling Stipend Schelling Point Retreat	$126,000
Developer Relations	Making critical hires	$176,000
Total		$868,750

[linda]

Thanks for sharing! This budget request was mostly clear and straightforward for me but I wanted to understand a bit more about the developer relations budget since it’s higher than I would have expected. How many new hires are you planning on making with the $176k for one season?

[ceresstation]

For sure, that’s a good question. We spoke with GPC and they suggested it made sense for us to take on the initial budget for this while the strategy gets set up, while they’ll take on the costs once the team is ramped up (we are co-managing hiring).

The costs here include:

• Consulting costs with key ecosystem players (names you would recognize, approximately $30-40k)
• Quarterly cost for a lead level hire (on market this can range from $250-400k per year so up to $100k / quarter depending on experience)
• Quarterly cost for an ‘integrations support engineer’ that can work directly with partnerships to help ensure those onboarding to the protocol have everything they need from a technical standpoint to get their instance started (likely around $150-180k total per year, so ~$45k in total)

The exact range of these will vary so we opted not to include an exact breakdown but in hindsight it probably would have been useful. Hope this helps!

[safder]

Very much appreciate the work PGF is doing and have been very impressed by the quick pivot this team has made to focusing on Protocol-oriented initiatives.
However this budget request intuitively seems very high to me, for a number of reasons:

1. Close to $550k for 13 contributors, some of which are part-time seems much higher than the average spend on salaries - this raises some flags for me also given the amounts being budgeted for new hires.
2. There is no longer a Grassroots team, which is a $100k expense removed from this team’s budget.
3. The amount of $126k budgeted for 3 months of traveling and a SP Retreat seems extremely high - are contributors flying business class? How much of this is for the SP Retreat, and if it’s a very high amount then is this what the DAO needs right now?
4. I’m not convinced that a “Services Lead” hire makes a lot of sense - I would love for this work to be done collaboratively by some of the existing PGF contributors (feels like there should be some bandwidth here), maybe along with other work streams, since the services model includes other work streams. I do believe there is an appetite and existing bandwidth that can be leveraged for cross-stream collaboration on this. Hiring a new external person to figure out our entire business model and deliver on the outcomes listed here doesn’t feel like the best course of action.
5. As a People Ops professional who has been following tech salaries for 4+ years, the numbers @ceresstation shared above for the DevRel + Services Lead hire seem highly inflated, which also makes me wonder if we’re also not overpaying on existing salaries. Where is PGF getting salary data from? Here is a posting for DevRel lead by Polygon with a range of $90-200k (important to note Polygon has a lot more money to play with than we do), and other data also points to no more than $200k for a top-tier candidate for DevRel - IMO we don’t need to be hiring a celebrity who asks for much higher than this.

Fully support the work this team is doing, would love for these concerns to be addressed before I’m willing to fully support this budget request.

[ceresstation]

Thanks for the comments @safder, happy to address in short and then other folks from the team can add details where helpful.

1. Regarding salary payments, the math leads to an average salary of ~$165k on a mostly senior team (FWIW there are 3+ members of the team that are paid more than me so I’m not speaking for myself here). This team is generally responsible for the only fund-generating activity within the DAO and importantly, everyone is currently compensated entirely in GTC which deviates from the norm across workstreams / reduces the burden on treasury. In future we’re planning to introduce delayed token grants to further align incentives.

2. This is true, but we are also taking on devrel + scaling up services in anticipation of the protocol launch. We removed grassroots because we wanted to align our efforts more with MMM and this has been going well.

3. I’ll let @J9leger speak more to the retreat costs but to be sure the decision to run this event was ratified in CSDO and was discussed across DAO leadership generally before being put into the budget. Costs here are for up to 150 community members and partners to really engage with us prior to protocol launch, which would lead to an average cost of about ~$600 per person with an additional budget left over for ETHDenver and related travel. For SP @azeem and the partnerships team intend to bring in sponsors to cover costs.

4. The services lead would work closely with @J9leger @azeem and the rest of the workstream to execute on the tactical / operational needs of partners + to leverage their existing industry context to reenforce / redirect our strategy as needed as we roll things out. Gitcoin has many partners and it’ll be important for us to hand hold them as they get spun up. In a world where we’re running 20+ rounds that are all serviced by the team, I think we’d be making a mistake not to have this role filled.

5. One thing that isn’t being accounted for in Polygon’s compensation is that it also likely contains some kind of token arrangement, which we currently don’t offer. Instead, we’re blending comp as noted in (1). If you look at roles like this one they explicitly mention this, although most posts won’t / generally won’t mention salary publicly at all.

Thanks again for the thoughts here and happy to dive in further!

[safder]

@ceresstation

Regarding salary payments, the math leads to an average salary of ~$165k on a mostly senior team (FWIW there are 3+ members of the team that are paid more than me so I’m not speaking for myself here).

Considering many of these 13 contributors are part-time, the average would actually be closer to $200k or more for a full-time role - this doesn’t seem on-par with the rest of the DAO or the space in general.

@ceresstation

everyone is currently compensated entirely in GTC which deviates from the norm across workstreams / reduces the burden on treasury.

From what I understand most, if not all other DAO contributors are also compensated entirely in GTC (this is definitely true of DAO Ops).

On (3), the discussion at CSDO assumed that most (if not all) of the cost of this event would be covered by sponsors. I think the decision might have been different if we were asking for $100k+ from the treasury for this.

Thanks for the additional context on (4)! This helps me better understand the need for this role - again would want to make sure their compensation makes sense though ($200k for this role seems excessive at first glance). I would consider this point resolved though.

@ceresstation

1. One thing that isn’t being accounted for in Polygon’s compensation is that it also likely contains some kind of token arrangement, which we currently don’t offer. Instead, we’re blending comp as noted in (1). If you look at roles like this one they explicitly mention this, although most posts won’t / generally won’t mention salary publicly at all.

From what I understand, the salaries noted (including in the posting you’ve shared) include token rewards - there’s no reason a company would advertise a significantly lower salary in a job posting than the total compensation they are actually offering.

[ceresstation]

Considering many of these 13 contributors are part-time, the average would actually be closer to $200k or more for a full-time role - this doesn’t seem on-par with the rest of the DAO or the space in general.

All contributors noted there are full time with the exception of Madison, so you could maybe use 12.5 instead of 13 I suppose which would be closer to ~170k on average. On GTC, while DAO Ops is compensated entirely in GTC IIRC, GPC and others are distributed stables.

On (3), the discussion at CSDO assumed that most (if not all) of the cost of this event would be covered by sponsors. I think the decision might have been different if we were asking for $100k+ from the treasury for this.

Happy to revisit this in a future CSDO call but I do think in general the DAO was aware that costs would be in this range, IIRC a ballpark was noted and @J9leger asked if folks were comfortable with the risk of funding not being fully covered by the sponsorships in the failure case (with the goal being to fully cover). The notes from that call can provide more context.

From what I understand, the salaries noted (including in the posting you’ve shared) include token rewards - there’s no reason a company would advertise a significantly lower salary in a job posting than the total compensation they are actually offering.

UMA notes that “packages include competitive salaries & substantial token options” and that “salaries range from $100-200K… while token allocations can grow with your voting rewards.” I think their goal is to set expectations going in on base comp while additional comp is potentially more flexible. Of course, we don’t currently offer any similar kinds of options.

In any case, I do know devrel leads that have total comp up to $400k. If you’d like I’m happy to connect you although I do want to avoid doxxing them publicly. For completeness I definitely hope comp ends closer to ~$200k total (in which case the remainder will be held over for future devrel budgets) and I’m certainly not negotiating against us, but I also believe we should be prepared to hire the best person for the job when it comes to such a critical role.

[safder]

@ceresstation

All contributors noted there are full time with the exception of Madison, so you could maybe use 12.5 instead of 13 I suppose which would be closer to ~170k on average.

I think the concern then becomes (1) This is still a significantly higher average than the rest of the DAO (work stream leads in other parts of the DAO are making less than this, and this is also higher than a team of highly experienced engineers), and (2) It doesn’t feel like the value created is enough to justify this spending.

I don’t think continuing to dig into the other pieces here will be very fruitful but however you slice it, this budget does feel a bit frivolous and like it’s not demonstrating the same level of accountability/intentionality in spending as we need in this moment (and as other budgets better reflect).

Again, I fully support this team and all your work + direction - it’s the cost + justification for needing the amount requested that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

[ceresstation]

For sure, those are all reasonable concerns. That said, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the value created vs. the cost of delivery at the end of the day. I’m always down to keep the conversation going and really appreciate the candid feedback though.

Ultimately, the success of PGF will be measured on its ability to raise funds for public goods and its ability to help other ecosystems fund their shared needs at scale, and I hope that the team can prove itself over time by delivering on this mission.

[J9leger]

Thank you @safder for the question and @ceresstation for your thoughtful responses here. I second everything said.
The two main areas I’ll add some extra info around are:
3) retreat: @ceresstation covered all the necessary points here but to reiterate that the vote by CSDO explicitly called out that we will move forward with this and try bring in sponsors and set ticket prices but don’t want covering these costs for a 100+ person event to shift focus and detract from launching the protocol vs be additive. I believe this will be a major value add to deepening connections with our community and not only building stronger support for our protocol launch but also be a real schelling point for collaboration between others in our ecosystem.
4) Services will be a large part of our protocol future and one clear avenue to an essential intent of ours around financial sustainability. We have many partners and we’re going to be shifting our grants program model to allow anyone at any time to run a round. This is vastly different to our current quarterly only cadence. Supporting anyone who wants to run a round so we build to our goal of 1000s of communities using our protocol and deliver on our essential intent of grants protocol adoption and growth, should be a priority.
5) Heard on the DevRel perspective @safder and will consider these thoughts.

Thanks again for the time put into this discussion everyone. Really looking forward to S16.

[Lunacat]

Tech companies across the globe are instituting massive layoffs, crypto specifically is experiencing a black swan event that is leading to contagion that we can barely even begin to comprehend, and this workstream is requesting ~$550k to pay 12.5 developers for a quarter (not to mention the $125k earmarked for to pay for fun trips) to deliver results of fuzzy value? Okay

[safder]

Appreciate the response here Janine!

@J9leger

3. retreat: @ceresstation covered all the necessary points here but to reiterate that the vote by CSDO explicitly called out that we will move forward with this and try bring in sponsors and set ticket prices but don’t want covering these costs for a 100+ person event to shift focus and detract from launching the protocol vs be additive. I believe this will be a major value add to deepening connections with our community and not only building stronger support for our protocol launch but also be a real schelling point for collaboration between others in our ecosystem.

I don’t doubt that this is a valuable initiative, and I supported this in the CSDO vote mentioned. The proposal didn’t mention a cost of ~$120k, or any cost at all for that matter - it was posed as mostly free/minimal commitment from the DAO and that PGF wouldn’t even have to spend any time organizing this (it’s mostly organized by external supporters) - which is why I’m taken aback seeing this huge number. If we don’t end up raising any sponsorship money, $100k+ is too big of an amount I’d be comfortable supporting. One approach here could be that if we don’t raise enough money from sponsors, we downsize this from a multi-day retreat to a single-day event that costs no more than $25k - this is more than enough to host a well-organized 1-day event, and is also a more realistic amount to raise from sponsors. It’s not like expected returns/support gained for the protocol launch increases proportionally to the lavishness of the event. Again, it feels like there’s a serious disconnect between this budget and prevailing sentiment of doing more with less/higher accountability across the rest of the DAO.

On (4) - I received some additional context on this from other contributors, and I do now support the hiring for this role (granted I’m not sure if it the salary of $180-200k is justified). I think more reasonable numbers across the budget would also make this feel more digestible.

I feel like a broken record on this point haha, but this team and the general direction of this budget are excellent and have my full support. There’s a strong dissonance between how much I trust this team and my disagreement with the numbers proposed. I don’t think I’m the only steward who feels this, and I hope we can work together on resolving this dissonance in subsequent seasons.

[DisruptionJoe]

I’ve been following the conversation and the points made back and forth here. While I share some skepticism around salary amounts and a couple other points @safder brings up, I don’t have the conviction to bring them here. (yet???)

I would like to address this part.

@safder

I don’t doubt that this is a valuable initiative, and I supported this in the CSDO vote mentioned. The proposal didn’t mention a cost of ~$120k, or any cost at all for that matter - it was posed as mostly free/minimal commitment from the DAO and that PGF wouldn’t even have to spend any time organizing this (it’s mostly organized by external supporters) - which is why I’m taken aback seeing this huge number. If we don’t end up raising any sponsorship money, $100k+ is too big of an amount I’d be comfortable supporting. One approach here could be that if we don’t raise enough money from sponsors, we downsize this from a multi-day retreat to a single-day event that costs no more than $25k

I was not in sticker shock here. Perhaps I heard through different conversations, but I did expect the $120k price tag with the hope that we would recoup most.

The important thing for me is that this protocol launch is a big deal. Spending $25k in an effort to execute the retreat plan as cheap as possible isn’t it for me. Getting our partners, funders, and community supporters to truly understand what the protocol/program can do to benefit them is a top priority worth a significant amount of funding. We are lucky to be in a position where it may be possible to recoup the expense, but this is not the event we should take shortcuts in execution.

In the case it was not fully recouped, I still think this initiative is worth it’s weight as a strong signal to the community that we are interested in the Principle of Subtraction and THEY are the critical variable in creating a flourishing Gitcoin ecosystem.

[safder]

Grateful to @J9leger for reaching out to help clear up some of my concerns on a call yesterday. It helped bring clarity to some of my main concerns:

1. There is agreement that we probably shouldn’t use this full Devrel budget to hire someone at $400+k/year, and a commitment to ensuring that these funds roll over and can be used to continue to support these efforts in future seasons. I’ve shared my opinion that hiring someone at that cost would be a failure in recruitment, and I’m confident that we can find a very strong candidate with a much lower amount.
2. On the retreat, our conversation helped me better understand the purposes and costs associated with the event and why a multi-day retreat makes more sense than a 1-day event. Some insight into the structure also gave me some confidence that this will in fact help develop Gitcoin’s brand/protocol adoption among key partners rather than just being a fun/vibey weekend. I still hope that the majority of these funds end up being covered by sponsors, and that a big chunk of this ~120k can be used to support future seasons.
3. PGF has recently gone through the exercise of increasing accountability and decreasing costs across its staffing, and is committed to continuing to maintain strong standards in this realm. This work is ongoing, and I have confidence in this team’s ability to deliver on high expectations here.

Overall while I still believe the ask of ~$870k is excessive, the understanding that a significant portion of this amount will be used to cover upfront overheads/costs that will be recuperated and further tightened throughout the season gives me some confidence that we won’t be draining our treasury as quickly in future seasons.

This definitely help resolve some of the dissonance I felt upon initial impressions here, and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to see increased transparency and commitment to responsible stewardship of treasury funds from this team. Very much appreciate the thoughtful engagement and learning that has come out of this conversation, and looking forward to a great Season 16!

[krrisis]

Supportive of the PGF budget although I agree with some of the hesitations expressed by @safder.
I’ve read up on the above comments and replies and hope as well that some of the planned costs will be lower or recovered through sponsoring. In the context of the ‘light’ budget approach as decided in CSDO and combined with the earlier live session we had to review the draft commitments and budget I’ve gathered enough feedback to vote yes here.

[SLBK123]

I am supportive of the PFG Budget and very excited to see the progress as the protocol transitions. I remain positive that all of the partners and grantees will be well supported during this time of change. Hats off to everyone in advance for the hard work and challenges ahead this S16.

[griff]

I think the PGF team is the team that is most responsible for the success of Gitcoin. Fundraising is hard and getting groups to commit millions to be matched is amazing.

That said, I might need one of those phone calls from @J9leger to feel good about this proposal.

The salaries here are just too high. We are a Public Goods project and can find intrinsically motivated aligned individuals from lower income countries that will be stoked to work for 1/3rd of this rate, then we can give them raises as they succeed, and still be solid.

I appreciate that the payments are in GTC… which makes me feel somewhat better about the amounts… but are there lock ups for the GTC? The amounts are just sooooo high!

This post sums up some of my concerns pretty well:

Is Gitcoin over its skis? should we hold spending flat while addressing unavoidable risks?

In today’s Steward’s call, I raised the question of whether Gitcoin might be “over our skis”. In this post, I’d like to explain my question and offer some evidence in support of the hypothesis that we are actually “over our skis.” Skiing? The metaphor to be over one’s skis refers to emphasizing a course of action to such an extent that it constrains freedom of maneuver - implicitly in conditions in which one might want to be able to change direction. When you lean far forward when sk…

This proposal is asking for $868,750 which = 579,167 GTC (if GTC is $1.50)… That is about 4% of the circulating supply, being spent on just this working group for the next 3 months. If that hits the open market, that is a huge amount of inflation, and this is just one working group!

This is really scary to me…

I have 2 small concerns that are probably easily addressed:

#1 I don’t understand the need to hire externally for these roles:
Grant Services Lead (TBD)
Grants Round Account Manager (TBD)

Why can’t these roles can be sourced from inside the team, and we can cut scope on their other priorities? Surely the best people for these roles are probably already on the team.

#2 I am a bit confused on the 125k for the event… What happens if the sponsors don’t show up? What happens to the money if they do? Will the sponsorship money come back to the DAO, or does it roll over some how? The money for the event will need to be liquidated, so it should be paid out to this WG in stables I assume?

I have one serious concern that will be difficult to address

#3 How is PGF going to cut costs in the future.

I want to second @safder

@safder

this team and the general direction of this budget are excellent and have my full support. There’s a strong dissonance between how much I trust this team and my disagreement with the numbers proposed.

I think this team is doing incredible work, but honestly there seems to be some head in the sand issues with the DAO overall. Cutting costs is critical right now. Many stewards have said this, but nothing is happening.

I can’t vote for nearly 1 Mil of spending for this group for just 3 months, without at least some sort of plan in place to reduce spending in the future by at least 30% next season and ideally more the season after.

I know it sounds harsh, but Giveth has a fantastic donation platform and has a burn rate of around 120k a month… nearly a million for 3 months for just one work stream is hard to swallow.

Can you commit to cutting costs for S17?

[ceresstation]

All great questions @griff and FWIW I agree with you that we should definitely look at cutting the budget in the future, and part of this will come from essentially time delaying comp via lock ups.

Right now this is just a critical time and one of the things we’re trying to do is make sure we are as prepared as possible for the launch coming up in Q1. In that context, I wanted to push back on some of the comments above to make sure the team can focus on really delivering on what we promise.

Now, onto the specific questions!

#1 I don’t understand the need to hire externally for these roles:
Grant Services Lead (TBD)
Grants Round Account Manager (TBD)
Why can’t these roles can be sourced from inside the team, and we can cut scope on their other priorities? Surely the best people for these roles are probably already on the team.

I think we actually do ultimately want these to be sourced from somewhere in the DAO, but we still have to budget for them even if costs will be cut elsewhere. In both cases we have leads for the roles that are within and outside the DAO.

#2 I am a bit confused on the 125k for the event… What happens if the sponsors don’t show up? What happens to the money if they do? Will the sponsorship money come back to the DAO, or does it roll over some how? The money for the event will need to be liquidated, so it should be paid out to this WG in stables I assume?

@J9leger kind of mentioned this and it was discussed again with agreement in CSDO, but essentially in an ideal world (and I don’t think it’s unrealistic as a target) every cost will be accounted for and recovered.

#3 How is PGF going to cut costs in the future.

Absolutely, the total costs in this budget are an outlier and we don’t expect the next budget to hit this level. I think 30% is even pretty feasible. One thing that I’ll note is that it is harder for us to cut budgets in part because we are still really getting a handle on what we can / cannot distribute in terms of operational work to other teams. Now that cross-DAO functions are improving it’s a lot easier to start having those conversations, and moving grassroots over to MMM was a key part of that. In S17, devrel for example will be another area that we no longer own. We ultimately always want to maintain a subtraction mindset.

[shawn16400]

To note - This proposal is now live on Snapshot and will be open for your vote through Nov 20, 2022, 6:00 PM EST.

https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0x63e139b75e52843ce6af2e684101025ba2f88edf80775397927a875d9617b789

[GClayMiller]

Brand new Steward, lacking context. Apologies if questions and comments are naive while I get my footing

1. I see that you are accounting for a DevRel expense in your budget increase by $176,000 as requested by GPC—however the GPC S16 budget also requested 36k for an outsourced DevRel contractor. Is this work being shared across work streams, and how do the two budget requests differ/reconcile? @ceresstation’s breakdown of the $176,000 is a helpful start!

2. I am interested @safder’s concern about hiring a ‘Services Lead’. It would seem like a necessary hire if you plan to entirely remove c-grants from S16 as one would expect the need for a lot of ‘hand-holding’ while we transition to a new model. I do agree that anyone who fills this role should be a previous contributor to c-grants that already deeply understands the process. Would be very interested in learning more about this role & the services you plan to provide to future grantees & protocol users.

3. The debate around compensation and equal Contributor salaries across work streams is an important one. Is there any evidence that unequal contributor salaries disincentivized work across other workstreams, or that without these compensation levels PGF is unable to find quality talent? Are these salaries being matched to industry standards or similar roles held elsewhere?

Appreciate all the information and context everyone has provided—looking forward to see PGF execute on this roadmap