Setting Guardrails and Best Practices for Partnerships

[M0nkeyFl0wer]

@magentaceiba

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”.

Thanks for this! Very interesting.

[M0nkeyFl0wer]

@koday

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.

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

[ccerv1]

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

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.

@owocki

Personally this is the way that, in a perfect world, I would see the prioritization of partnerships.

But reality is more messy. And since Gitcoin is a DAO, different people will have different incentive

• 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.

[owocki]

@DarylEdwards

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:

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.

[annika]

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.

[b3n]

@owocki

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.

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

[vgk]

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?”

[owocki]

@vgk

• Partners literally saying “there’s no ROI” on a Gitcoin partnership

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?

[Decentralizedceo]

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.