Setting Guardrails and Best Practices for Partnerships

đŸŒ± Gitcoin Grants
11

This all resonates and I’m excited to see how productive this conversation has been for the team. I agree with the ideal state @owocki proposes with the top vs bottom quadrants but recognize it isn’t that simple all the time. I think it’s really important to make the protocols and products permissionless and not restrict anyone from using them. However, there is nuance in this. Say a scam coin comes to Gitcoin and says they want to run a featured round and we tell them we aren’t able to accommodate them in the round. Does the conversation stop there or do we promote them to run their own round at a different time? Essentially do we incentive them to still use our product but just don’t endorse them or do we not encourage it at all? Where is the line for disengaging with scam coins? This is one of many nuanced scenarios that I think Gitcoin will see in the future to consider.

The second scenario I would consider strongly is what Gitcoin is willing to have as a tradeoff. The DAO contributors, stewards, broader community, partners and grantees should have a clear sense of Gitcoin’s priority. Is it to maximize funding for grantees or is it to work with legitimate partners and which one is prioritized? Based on this conversation legitimacy is the core priority. This is okay but as a result it may result in the tradeoff of having less funding as we continue through a bear market vs increased funding. Yes the ideal is to have both but in reality the DAO needs to make clear what the tradeoff is and communicate that decision clearly.

When it comes to bringing in people to review partnerships


Seems relatively easy to engage stewards/respectable program alumni privately for a quick vibe check to me.

Perhaps if thats not formal enough, a brand-vibe-check steward council (which is elected) could be in charge of formally approving which projects go through main Gitcoin brand vs not.

I do agree that quick checks on each partner is a good idea and can be an easy follow on step after sharing a partner more broadly with the DAO and seeing what pushback or support happens internally. I think this would be preferable than public forum posts and conversations as it becomes more tricky with grantees and the like as financial incentives do muddy the water a bit (seen by a majority of the grantees accepting the Shell funds).

Overall appreciate the effort this team has gone to thinking through solutions and guard rails. My last small piece of advice is don’t let the guard rails impact the permissionlessness and decentralized nature Gitcoin is working so hard to achieve.

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12

H frens,

Bloom Network developed a partnership engagement policy for use in accepting funds over $10k from a sponsor.

We made this for when we, crosses fingers, someday are inundated with funding from all kinds of entities. In our context, its purpose is make transparent to our community why the finance team chose to accept funds from an “extractive-spectrum” funder, and to educate funders about what it means to move toward “regenerative”. The screens could be adapted to fit whatever community’s compass.

Oh, no links in forum - you can find the policy by going to our twitter @ourbloomnetwork, following our website url, and it’s linked in the footer of our website under “connect”.

–

TL;DR:
Here is how using this policy would look like with a sponsor who’s core operations are far from aligned with our values.

The finance team would label them as tier three in our partner engagement policy: “Tier Three is a company that we view as doing some harm, but which has some innovation that can support regeneration that we want to spread to other-use cases.” If the finance team feels the activities that meet our negative screen are countered by the positive benefits of the partnership, (i.e. that it’s still justified we accept the funds), they would be required to discuss with the operations team.

If both teams agreed to move forward with the partnership, we would publish a statement blog post. It would describe [X Company]'s CSR program goals (corporate social responsibility) or whatever program this comes from, alongside our analysis of how greenwashing/whitewashing it is - and specifically what negative screen items the company flags. And we would include a blurb describing what benefits this partnership will have, speaking to our intuitions/knowledge of what we know our community will need to hear about the reasoning to make the decision and implications transparent.

Lastly, there is an education and dialogue process required for accepting funds like this from an extractive company, because we’re required to attempt to move their program “closer toward being regenerative / in integrity”. With companies far into our “Tier 3,” we likely wouldn’t be able to advertise the company itself, but would need to say specifically the initiative the money is from and some analysis of that. It would also require some community process, so some of the funds would need to pay for our people’s time to even engage in that. We might further require an action or change from them on top of money, before accepting funds.

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13

Gitcoin would probably need a much lighter weight document if you went this route. But it’s helpful for being able to move fast with a small team if there are no concerns, and have a process for a sense-check with a second team that is more in touch on the community level. And/or in Gitcoin’s case, a sybil attack or gaming level.

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14

As a gitcoin quarterly grants round donor and featured round operator I really appreciate the care that has gone into drafting this proposal, thanks @M0nkeyFl0wer @MathildaDV in particular.

The policy framework looks very high quality to me, and I appreciate the additional nuance added by @owocki highlighting the edge cases - which has made this constructively contrarian viewpoint easier for me to see.

In my experience implementing policies and processes in various growing organizations, and working with dozens of Founders & CEOs, taking a policy- or process-first approach is applying the 80/20 rule backwards: 80% of your effort on the 80% of cases that cause 20% of the problem, and 20% effort on 80% of the problem. The process will involve various additional checks and balances, and will work well for those cases that are very far away from being edge cases, eg very high legitimacy or very low vs. the size of the contribution. But I would argue that those cases are already working well; Shell was an edge case because the community feedback was very mixed.

Instead, why not put 80% of efforts towards the 20% of cases that cause 80% of the problem: the edge cases. So how do we define the edge? IMHO, for almost any funder, there is an amount of funding above which the positive direct and brand impacts of the funding itself will outweigh the negative impacts of the low levels of legitimacy. Conversely, even extremely tiny financial contributions can be worthwhile with a high enough level of legitimacy. Without trying to be mathematically rigorous, this looks something like the top right quadrant of y = 1/x. The exact definition of the “edge case” can be debated, the intention here is to get something reasonably close.

I would also contend that attempting to come up with a generalized process and framework for all imaginable cases can easily take up a huge amount of time, and special cases that don’t fit will come up anyhow. If you already felt the desire to correct my y = 1/x assertion above, then you know how this can happen.

Instead, I would propose that given this is a DAO, there is the opportunity to lean in to using some tools from sociocracy within the Partnerships team in particular, but also more broadly: namely Consent-based decision-making and the advice process.

In practice, when looking at a new partnerships opportunity, this would look something like this:

  1. The partnerships team member interested in initiating the partnership would ask the partnerships team "I think we have the potential to secure $XXX with YYY funder. Do you agree that this is ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try?’
    2a. If there are no objections, we don’t have en edge case, and we just proceed, without extra steps.
    2b. If there are objections, and the partnerships team member sees the partnership as worthwhile enough to justify the additional effort, they initiate an advice process that will either resolve the objections, or scrap the effort.

Depending on the specific case, the advice process may include community consultation, gov forum posts, consulting other gitcoin teams, etc., but that can be quickly determined according to the judgment of the partnerships team member with support as desired.

With just a small shift from control to consent, we can dramatically reduce the amount of work (and therefore cost), while still being able to ramp up when needed.

Just my 2 cents, hopefully they’re helpful :slight_smile:

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15

Hi Jon, I think this proposal to establish clear guidelines for partnerships in Gitcoin Grants is a commendable step towards transparency and community involvement.

These guardrails will help ensure partnerships align with the values and goals of the Gitcoin community.

Seeking input from the community and token holders further strengthens the democratic process. It’s a forward-looking approach that not only applies to future partnerships but also addresses existing ones, enhancing Gitcoin’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Kudos to the team for this thoughtful initiative!

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16

Thank you to Ben and everyone weighing in on this great discussion. I’d like to suggest that Gitcoin is an important org for showcasing how web3/blockchain/crypto can actually do good in the world. While we all understand the vital importance of Open Source Software, many people outside the ecosystem are more drawn to the value proposition of a healthy planet, a way to contribute to disaster relief, a more equitable place to work, etc. If we are looking to onboard the next billion to Ethereum, Gitcoin is doing its part by being a place where people can onboard from all over the world and get a taste of how crypto works and how they could be a part of a global community using web3 for good. That’s why I’d consider Ben’s idea of excluding whole industries from matching partnerships, I see this as something that Gitcoin can promote as a global citizen of the ecosystem. That said, I’d turn it around and instead of focusing on exclusion, we can focus on creating more of a sense of building partnerships with organizations that share our values and mission, and then promoting these partnerships as something valuable and special. A related idea is creating a value statement that clarifies the overarching values of Gitcoin e.g., to support OSS as a public good, to help address climate change which affects all of us more and more every day, and to promote an equitable and sustainable way to utilize blockchain tech for good. Having a set of agreed-upon core values will lend clarity to these types of partnership decisions as well as attract talent from the many people worldwide who are looking to engage in yes, cool and exciting tech, but also tech with a purpose, meaningful work and collaboration with a mission-driven organization.

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love this think, thanks for weighing in @DarylEdwards

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18

Big kudos to @M0nkeyFl0wer and @MathildaDV and everyone else who has put a lot of thought and effort into this. Definitely an important thing for the DAO to figure out, and certainly not trivial.

Exploring/developing a “recognized subDAO structure” is something I proposed on the forum back in June, and I think giving different “interest groups”/communities within Gitcoin (e.g. Climate, DeSci) ownership over partnership decisions is a good idea.

This helps delineate Gitcoin (a DAO developing and maintaining protocols/tools) from communities using those tools to run grant programs. I agree that Gitcoin should continue to operate a marquee grants program consisting of core rounds (Eth infra, OSS, community+edu), but I also think that decentralizing round operations within the quarterly GG program is crucial for scaling.

How to structure and ensure the alignment of these “subDAOs” (or whatever we want to call them) is a question for another post; the question of how to approach partnerships decisions is a subset of that problem.

Whatever framework we land on, I just want to emphasize that clarity about decision-making authority at various steps is of utmost importance. To illustrate this with an example:

Let’s say the DeSci grants program, which is an “independent featured round” managed by the grassroots DeSci community (via democratically elected stewards), is considering accepting matching pool funds from a potentially controversial partner.

The DeSci community that has sprung up around the two DeSci rounds at Gitcoin (GR15 and Beta Round) is a sort of proto-DAO
 and it holds a vote (e.g. using Jokerace), where projects in the past round get a vote, and donors to the last DeSci round get a vote. They decide to accept the money.

Now let’s assume that running the DeSci round alongside/within the quarterly Gitcoin Grants program (e.g. in GG19) is something that is very important to the DeSci community because we think that the network effects of being in the quarterly round are important for maximizing crowdfunding efforts.

The next step is for the DeSci community (or its stewards) is to get clarity from Gitcoin itself, whether that means PGF or some other cross-functional group that oversees acceptable partnerships for GG19, on what accepting that money means for DeSci being included in that round.

  • How to notify <group with decision-making authority> of this potential partnership? (or all partnerships)
  • Will we still get some co-marketing if we take their money?
  • Will we be able to promote our funding partners?
  • Will we be included in multi-round checkout?
  • Does this affect our eligibility for support around Sybil analysis, rebates for service fees, etc (if these things were to exist)

These are questions that a subDAO (or recognized affinity group, or ecosystem round, or whatever name you want to call it) would need clear and timely answers to so they could make funding decisions and be upfront with partners about how partnerships would look.

Once more, great work on establishing this framework. Just wanted to share this scenario to highlight my opinion that any community hoping to run grant rounds on GS/Allo as part of the quarterly GG program definitely cares about Gitcoin’s reputation
 so it’s crucial we’re clear on how decisions that may impact reputation are made.

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19

Yes there was a DACI framework articulated at the time as this was being discussed. Perhaps we should revisit that framework moving forward.

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20

You raise a really good point ser. We have not broken down the role of matching fund partners for featured rounds in enough details for the minimum viable round criteria for featured rounds. We should incorporate the same language we use for the core rounds into that document. Thanks for flagging this.

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Thanks for all the thoughtfulness and consideration that went into your post, Ben. I think this is a great step in the right direction and I’m glad to see this discussion continuing in the wake of the Shell craziness.

One thing I think we should work on that I didn’t see explicitly called out here (and I know @owocki has mentioned this too) is establishing very clear boundaries around the parts of Gitcoin that are credibly neutral and those that aren’t. It feels like the community tends to batch all the parts of ‘Gitcoin’ together when they air their grievances and it can lead to confusion or valid criticism being directed towards the wrong place.

I just put in an MMM request for a graphic that shows these differences with our new logos and branding, which feels like a good start. However, I’m curious if anyone wants to weigh in on how else we can define these boundaries and share them with the community in an easy-to-understand way.

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22

Thanks for this! Very interesting.

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Really interesting prompt! @Viriya would love to jam with y’all on this. Not sure LH’s handle to tag her on here too.

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24

Glad to see all the constructive conversation prompted by @M0nkeyFl0wer @MathildaDV as well as deep practical perspectives from friends like @magentaceiba @DarylEdwards :green_heart:

First off, as a steward with experience in the nonprofit space, I want to call out that I was consulted very early in the process about the potential partnership. It was also mentioned on stewards calls and budget proposals early in the year. That said, I recognize that I’m the only external steward council member who was here prior GG18. So, while I was consulted, not all active stewards may have been. I will also say that I wasn’t consulted on the execution of the partnership details, comms, etc (nor do I think stewards should be).

Some thoughts on what to do here:

  • Gitcoin doesn’t make the same mistake twice. I think Owocki tweeted this and it resonates. Even if there isn’t a tangible output or new policy that emerges from this incident, I’m confident we won’t have a partnership controversy on our hands again any time soon. Personally, now that this is a month old topic, I’m more concerned with healing / vibes than docs. (But if docs can help accomplish the former, then that’s cool too!)

  • Anyone should be able to fund public goods. I don’t like the idea of vetting funders. I don’t want to see Gitcoin becoming a gatekeeper between funders and projects. Permissionless protocol extends not just to running your own round but to joining as a matching pool funder. I agree with @J9leger but would extend it further.

  • Legitimacy should be earned, not bought. This is the crux. In my view, only select matching pool funders from within the Ethereum community have earned the legitimacy to have their name proudly featured next to Gitcoin’s (to date). Why? Because they’ve been here round after round. The write-up from GR15 feels like the right balance of acknowledging various match funders and giving a special hat-tip to longstanding funders. For example:

    Mask Network has been an active supporter of Gitcoin since GR6 and has posted over 50 bounties. You can read more about the work they are doing with their Mask Grant and Ecosystem programs that they have created to help build the Web3 Social ecosystem! Thank you Mask Network for being one of our longest-standing partner relationships–it’s partnerships like these that are the engine for the creation of #web3social public goods!

    Moreover, money is only one way of further Gitcoin’s mission. Other ways include bringing new communities of funders, new matching partners, and new projects. It’s hard to predict this but it’s very easy to see in retrospect. Coinbase, ENS, 1inch, ReFi DAO, and others have done this.

  • How to put this into practice? Only promote partners that earn legitimacy by showing up for multiple rounds and build a reservoir of trust. And, similarly, focus partnership efforts on long-term players.

  • I dislike the idea that certain companies can never move into the top right quadrant. There’s a question of how likely it is and whether it’s worth the effort. But if Wells Fargo starts showing up and funding defi and crypto advocacy rounds, and they convince other banks to join too, at what point do you give them some special recognition?

Finally, this incident reminds me of a story from early in my career when I was working on a development project overseas with a very large budget. A government official was suspicious of whether the money was actually having any impact. His office threatened to revoke our operating permit. So we arranged a private tour just for him around the region of the country we were working in.

After driving around for a couple hours, he said “Alright, we don’t need to go any farther. It’s clear your project hasn’t had any impact. I haven’t seen your logo anywhere in any of the towns we’ve passed.”

The project manager said, “Stop the car. Get out. Talk to those people. Just ask them if they’ve heard of us.”

The government official was surprised but did what she asked of him. And sure enough a small group of people formed around the car and started answering his questions. They all knew about the project and had personal stories of how it had benefited them.

The two of them carried on in this way for the rest of the day, stopping randomly to talk to people on the side of the road. Never once did he see a sign with the project logo on it (because there weren’t any). But everywhere he stopped he heard unprompted stories about the project’s impact.

At the end of the trip he said, “Not only am I going to let you keep operating, but I’m going to tell everyone I know about your project.” And he kept his word.

What’s the point of this vignette?

The impact is the story. Donors should only be featured in the credits when they’ve done the hard work of showing up repeatedly and the impact is evident to all.

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25

i appreciate this point. i think that in the past i’ve seen policies or processes get too complicated/long that no one uses them. everyone forgets them + the baseline behaviour becomes anarchy/lasseiz-faire again. then the process repeats + another long policy is drafted.

there is a virtue in simplicity of a policy/process. something short and memable like “pursue the most legitimate + highly capitalised matching funders” anyone can remember and use day to do.

IMO the most important downstream effect of this policy is not defining rules or rigid governance “what partnerships does gitcoin book?” (with credibly neutral protocols, we cant stop people from using gitcoin’s protocols). the most important downstream effect of this policy is how DAO contributors prioritize their sales funnels and GTM for the products.

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A lot of great input has been said here, so I’ll try to say something that hasn’t been said:

I think directionally this is all awesome, but I don’t think the blanket approach of “exclude specific industries or sectors” is likely to work. There will always be some subjectivity around whether a company or project truly falls into a specific industry or sector, and also some companies/projects that Gitcoin may not want to work with in spite of them being in a totally legit industry/sector (e.g., ETH Killer blockchains, as you suggest as an example).

In short, nuance will continue & judgment will be required that isn’t hard-and-fast rule-based. So my bias would be to just pick a process Gitcoin is going to follow to perform that human judgment, and ratify it.

That process could be anything from:

  • Every single partner will go to a full-on governance vote (prob way too much bureaucracy)
  • Ben has sole autonomy to decide on every single partner (prob way too centralized)
  • All partners will be run by Steward Council who has veto power based on a X of Y vote, or something to that effect
 just spitballing
 something more Goldilocks-y, in between those two, is where I’d imagine you’d want to land

Outlining a human-driven process and making that process clear to everyone will allow for the nuanced discussion & decision-making that is required in territory like this.

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:100: This is about fixing the top of the sales funnel, not the bottom

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Thanks to @M0nkeyFl0wer and the rest of the team raising the discussion around this!

One thing I’m not seeing being discussed is how Gitcoin found itself in this situation in the first place.

From my time as fundraising lead - I can say that Gitcoin historically hasn’t been able to hold up its side of the deal with partners.

Over time the high legitimacy + high $$$ partners have been burned due to lack of ROI and moved on to greener pastures.

The $$$ from partners by and large comes from their marketing budgets. Unfortunately - the ROI for partners on the marketing value side has been low:

  • haphazard marketing efforts on behalf of partners on the Gitcoin side
  • no clear distinction / incentive for partners to donate more
  • little impact tracking on how partner funds were used (if any)
  • virtually no other partner incentives that come included with their $$$
  • little internal understanding of our target demographic and their needs = Grants program was hailed during cross-stream discussions as having found PMF when, in-reality, PMF on the partner side was simply not there
  • partnerships team was overloaded having to close partners + fulfill marketing – without external marketing support (during my tenture)
  • lots of scrutiny for partnerships contributors closing the deals and working overtime – defending the work became a major part of the role

We failed to acknowledge that the Grants Program that was a “sales-driven” product and without investing in that aspect of Gitcoin - we’ve found ourselves in the current situation:

  • Partner churn % is very high
  • In the increasingly rare cases where high-signal partners DO choose to work with with Gitcoin - personal relationship capital needs to burned in order to close partners deals - vs. the strength of Gitcoin’s offerings carrying themselves
  • Partners literally saying “there’s no ROI” on a Gitcoin partnership

Because of this situation - Gitcoin has found itself pandering + reputation laundering to the Shells and the $$$Coins of the world - simply to keep the lights on.

My message to the current team is to rethink the partnerships offerings from the ground up and ask - “are we really adding value to our partners commensurate to the value they’re providing to us?”

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things that are relatively low lift i think could show ROI to partners

  1. report card that tells them how their $$$ was used. including quotes/testimonials from grantees thanking their brand.
  2. marketing campaign that helps them benefit their brand from association with gitcoin.
  3. not only fund ing eth ecosystem public goods with grants stack but also running rounds for their own ecosystem
 thus bootstrapping a flywheel of gitcoin grants => ecosystem growth => more treasury value => repeat
  4. what else?
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This is understandable and I can see where it may be derived from. I believe that it will be beneficial to “pinch and zoom” on projects that have some sort of income generating model no matter how small. This along with a planned allocation of funding. With this focus, I believe that it will eventually mitigate the need for donations and induce partners to donate more, knowing that its not needed but appreciated.
Point (2) would be a huge catalyst for brands to partner.