Agree that the KPIs mentioned by @Toby are important. Is there a way to rework the KPIs suggested so they fall under broader headings that are more focused on grant round performance and ecosystem impact?
To measure ecosystem impact, the core KPIs should focus on measuring the impact that grant rounds have on participants. From a participant’s point of view, a grant round does three things:
- Boosts project discoverability;
- Provides an opportunity for the community to donate to a project; and
- Provides matching through quadratic funding;
What actually matters is the impact of the round itself in terms of boosting the discoverability of projects and giving the community the opportunity to donate (vote) for projects. This, in turn, allows the quadratic funding mechanism to function as well as possible.
In my mind, if the focus is on the impact of grant rounds, there are three main areas of importance:
- Impact of Discoverability;
- Impact of Community Donations; and
- Impact of Matching.
Impact of Discoverability might include things like:
- Average contribution per project
- Website analytics: bounce rate, views per page, add to cart, projects per transaction
- Social media growth of projects e.g. Twitter growth before and after round
- Impact of connection/exposure to new team/community/funders
Impact of Community Donations might include things like:
- Number of individual contributors
- Average contribution amount
- Number of grants contributed to
- Grant fraud tax rate
- Interviews with participants
- Participant surveys
Impact of Matching might include things like:
- $ matching funds raised
- $ matching distributed based on size of teams
- Number of Funders League contributors
- Funder surveys
Having broader focus areas would make it easier to capture both quantitative data and qualitative narratives. Ecosystem impact can’t be measured by the number of donations in a round or the corresponding matching distribution. Success is about understanding the impact of the money and the impact of Gitcoin grants rounds on participants and the wider ecosystem.
The easiest way of doing this might be to view the many data points available from a Grants Round within these three areas. This approach then allows the Public Goods workstream to optimize efforts and allocate funding in a way that will have the most enduring impact within the ecosystem.