Firstly, it was an honour to be chosen to be a signal booster for Citizens Retro #3. I see it as a responsibility to intentionally allocate these funds, and itās a beautiful gift to be able to signal the impact that I have personally seen through the work of our amazing Citizens.
My role at Gitcoin has encompassed a few key areas (Iāve worked across most teams) over the past 1.5 years, and most recently I became solely focused on Gitcoin Grants. This role has allowed me to become even more front and center in and amongst many of the community members for some time. So before I began my reviews, I decided that I would focus on the work most visible to me regarding the work each applicant was applying for in this round. Fwiw I did go through each applicant in the round and where applications stood out to me I made sure to dig in a bit more into what they were doing.
Things I also kept in mind: whether the work was already funded (and how) and/or how clear the application was RE: impact and work done. Metrics really helped!
I also decided that I would allocate the funds equally across the selected individuals, as I felt this was most fair. Further and more comprehensive rubrics, and additional information from the applicant, would need to be set in place if I was to add an extra layer, AND that being said I wouldnāt have the equal amount of insight into each personās work either. So an equal distribution it was!
I began with making a list of individuals that met the above criteria: I either had a clear visibility into their work or their application on its own really stood out to me. I ended up with a list of 25 individuals.
I then did a further evaluation with the following criteria: 1) Impact of their work on the broader Gitcoin ecosystem 2) How the work served the Gitcoin community 3) Intentionality behind their work and its alignment to what Gitcoin is building.
These are the individuals that, in the end, received my vote and were the top 10. Iām happy with the results and Iām personally really excited to see more of the work of these applicants in the ecosystem! I also tried to create a diverse allocation across a few areas of work.
- KarlaGod: A citizen thatās been around for a while now, and I have been blown away by how sheās injected herself into our support channel on Discord the past while. Being able to actively support our community is an important piece, especially during a busy time like Gitcoin Grants and Iāve seen how much time sheās put into this!
- Rodrigo: He translated the Gitcoin 2.0 Whitepaper (and all the infographics!) into Spanish. I find itās such a wonderful initiative to educate the Spanish community about Gitcoin and I admire his passion and dedication to this. He was also a very active volunteer at ETH Denver.
- Carl Cervone: The mastermind of data and a longtime Gitcoin maxi, Carlās work within the Gitcoin community extends out further than purely being a great steward! He is always innovating new ways to interpret and evaluate information within our ecosystem, namely his work with OSO has been incredibly valuable and has helped shape our own OSS Program.
- Kris: Iāve had first hand experience of how deeply Kris works on the Citizens Round. He goes over and beyond what is required of him and I think heās done a wonderful job at shepherding the Citizens round into what it is today. He has always been and remained an integral part of our community ā watching our backs and pushing us all to improve.
- Luciano: Everything heās built at FundPG, as well as just each and every idea he has to continuously level up how Gitcoin shows up and where we could make a more meaningful impact speaks volumes to the impact. His understanding of Gitcoin and its place within the public goods ecosystem makes him an incredibly valuable citizen!
- Rohit: Love whatās being built through GrantScope and how it serves the community to make more informed decisions about funding during rounds!
- Izzy: He consistently shows up ā whether itās to provide support during GP rounds, manage rounds, volunteer or just lend a hand in dogfooding Gitcoinās products, Izzyās there! Love to see the experiments that heās involved in.
- Graven & Stefano: What strong applications! Because of the work they both did on the Streaming Quadratic Funding (SQF) pilot I evaluated them in tandem. This was a really strong use case of driving Allo GMV - love to see it!
- Jon Ruth: Impact tooling WIZARD! The amount of work Jon has put in to fulfill his passion around impact tracking is astounding! And the work heās doing at CCN has been inspiring to watch.
Thank you again for choosing me to be a signal booster, as well as thank you to each and every citizen that contributes to Gitcoin. If youāre not on my list, it doesnāt mean that I donāt find your work meaningful! I did my best to put my biases aside and evaluate the work in the most subjective way.
At the time of donating, the signal boosting funds were at a value of around $1,440. Here is my donation history.
A reflection for future applicants: for those who have already received funding, it would be helpful to understand the updates/extra work thatās been done since the last round of funding received. I find it would be easier to evaluate that against others who havenāt received any funding at all. Just food for thought!
