[Workstream Proposal] Gitcoin Grantee Content Creation + Storytelling

🧙 🧙‍♀️ Ideas and Open Discussion
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Hey @TheAlexYao here with a proposal for a program focused on re-engaging grantees who have graduated from Gitcoin Grants and creating a formal process for them to tell their stories.

Problem: Gitcoin grantees graduate from the ecosystem and go on to build game-changing protocols. Their story during and after Gitcoin is left untold.

Goals and Why This Proposal Helps Gitcoin

  • Creating Gitcoin content that can be shared in the form of “success stories” that could increase the amount of new Gitcoin Funding Partners and new Gitcoin Projects that receive grants/join the ecosystem. The best case scenario is that a funding partner says they watched the content that was created and decided to fund.
  • We want to re-engage former Grantees with the Gitcoin ecosystem to create a stronger community. We want grantees who have gone through the Gitcoin process to be a part of guiding the next cohorts. Creating content with them is one way to engage with them and content creation (article, podcast, short videos) is a scalable system to be able to reach people in the future. It is the easiest way for people who have received grants to give back to Gitcoin and support others in the community.
  • Establishes a process for Gitcoin to engage with grantees and content creators to produce content in a workstream that will continue after the three month trial period.

KPIs for Success

  1. Number of New Gitcoin Funding Partners: If even one funding partner mentions this proposal as a thing that pushed them to fund Gitcoin, this proposal is a success.
  2. Number of New Gitcoin Projects: For projects joining Gitcoin, the metric for success would be a bit harder to count. Some non-zero number of projects mentioning the content created by this proposal would be good.
  3. How to track these KPIs: For both new funding partners and new projects that join the Gitcoin ecosystem, send them an onboarding form / questionnaire that also asks whether they have seen the content created by this proposal and count the number of mentions.

The core team consists of Kernel Fellows and Mentors:

  • Alex Yao: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Crypto Content Creator, Online Community Builder and Entrepreneur. Previously Community Manager at Hashflow and Community Development at The Graph Foundation.
  • Diana Chen: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, runs the Unstoppable Domains podcast, writer, content creator.
  • Liz Strong: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Crypto TikToker (50K+ followers), Edyfi alum.
  • Jules Espero: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Crypto designer, NFT artist.
  • Vajresh Balaji: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Community Ambassador at Rally.
  • Sydney Lai: Founding Member, Web 3 Developer Advocate
  • Mark Sandusky: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Blockchain Digital Marketer at Peer Through Media,
    • Prev: Marketing at Consensys.
  • Henri Mahal: Founding Member, Kernel Mentor, Marketing Lead at District0x.
  • Rahul Nandakumar: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Founder, NFT4World, Author, Common Web (Q4 2021).
  • Robin Roy Thomas: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, Content Writer @ EPNS, CoFounder @ BlocDrop, and PawnSpace.
  • Estefania Ochoa: Founding Member, Kernel Fellow, NFT Artist, Art Dealer, and Zine Collector/Creator.

Given our history in the ecosystem and connection with Gitcoin, we want to help builders grow and become well known to audiences outside of the immediate crypto ecosystem. We want to share the stories of the people behind the protocols and the technology and to inspire others to enter this industry.

Many of us work in the industry, the content creators are experienced and create consistent high quality content. We have experience working at well known organizations in the ecosystem including Consensys, The Graph, Unstoppable Domains, Rally, District0x, and EPNS.

Our initial plan is to create content that tells the stories of a select group of grantees.

Here are the things we are planning on doing over the next 3 months:

The grantees that most critically need to have their stories told are “sunset” grantees who have moved on from Gitcoin. Beyond that, the top grantees from recent and upcoming rounds like GR10 and GR11 showcase how far crypto has come. We want to re-engage these titans and create three types of content around them, and why their work matters in the context of public goods more broadly:

  • Written Content (summary of interview with Gitcoin grantee)
  • Conversational Podcast Interview (audio/video/transcribed)
  • Short Form Videos

We are proposing an initial scope of 3 months where we work with grantees that are “sunset” such as:

  • Austin (BuidlGuidl)
  • Pedro (WalletConnect)
  • Cami (The Defiant)
  • Andre Cronje (Yearn)
  • samczsun (White Hat Hacking)
  • Tim Beiko (EIP-1559 Community Fund)
  • Seb Audet (Zapper)

In addition, as mentioned, we want to work with top grantees from GR10 and the upcoming GR11. Grantees like Prysmatic, Lighthouse, DAppNode, Coincenter, and more also deserve to have their stories told.

Below is our estimate of what a program like this might cost.

Budget
We are setting an initial budget of 11600 GTC for three months.

The breakdown of the budget:

7000 GTC - Hire Content Creation Talent (440 - 460 hours over three months)

  • We want to hire at least 30 crypto content creators with this budget.
  • The payout for each content project will be around 300 GTC. There will be 22-23 grant projects selected to be interviewed.
  • The estimated time to complete each project is 20 hours.
  • Each week, we will be working on two content projects, which requires us to bring on 1-3 content creators depending on the individual time commitment and skills of each of the content creators.
    • Written content / research (5 hours)
    • Conversational interview / podcast (5 hours)
    • Short form video content (5-10 hours)

3500 GTC (up to 40 hours per week) - Project management and operations

  • Project management - managing 22-23 project teams over the course of twelve weeks.
  • Project operations - creating systems for coordinating with 30+ content creators and 23 projects and the Gitcoin ecosystem.
  • Gitcoin liaison - the point person that will be responsible for updating Gitcoin forum and stewards about the workstream and attend any meetings with the Gitcoin team.

1100 GTC to the RenaissanceDAO Operations / Treasury (~10% of proposal funding)

  • RenaissanceDAO will be onboarding individual creators and providing support through mentorship, group coaching, and editorial support. We also have to pay our team members who may be involved in this process of bringing on all of these content creators to Gitcoin.
  • GTC allocated for RenaissanceDAO participation in the Gitcoin governance and voting process.

Timeline (12 weeks)

  • Work with Gitcoin team to identify the sunset grantees, GR10 + GR11 winners.

    • Pick 1 of top five of every category of winners
    • 10 from past rounds, 10 from sunset grantees, 2-3 random (22-23 projects total)
    • Create a schedule to interview all of the grantees

  • Each week we work with two projects. 1-3 content creators assigned per project.

  • RenaissanceDAO vets crypto content creators and brings them on to work with the grantees. Content creators will be assigned to available projects.

  • Interviews need to be scheduled ahead of time with grantees that are participating. Content schedule needs to be created after projects are selected to participate in this.

  • Written, audio, and video content delivery is given a week deadline after the interview is completed.

  • Month 1

    • Two project interviews per week
    • 8 Total Projects Available

  • Month 2

    • Two project interviews per week
    • 8 Total Projects Available

  • Month 3

    • ~Two project interviews per week
    • 6-7 Total Projects Available

Process
Deliverables: 22-23 content projects (article, podcast, short form video content).

Vetted RenaissanceDAO content creators will engage with each grantee to create content (samples linked and time estimates included):

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What is the process for vetting content creators? Is there a theme or commonality that guides the projects selected to be interviewed?

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Hi Tagan! :smiley:

  • Vetting content creators will be determined by their existing content library, their ability to produce high quality and consistent content, and a focus on creating educational/accessible content. Each project will probably have a writer, podcast interviewer, and short form video creator. We will provide membership/onboarding form for content creators to join RenaissanceDAO and participate in the projects.
  • We will want to choose the projects that best demonstrate the success of Gitcoin’s process, and we will be working with the Gitcoin team to identify the projects that have great stories to tell. We’re focusing on people and stories rather than just about the technology/technical implementations.

Thanks for the questions!

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Nice. The Crypto Native podcast does this really well. Would this project amplify media channels that are already active?

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Definitely want to use this opportunity to highlight and amplify each individual creator who has contributed! I view this like “guest writers, podcast hosts, and video producers” teaming up to tell the stories of Gitcoin grantees. Gitcoin is able to share the work across all their social channels and also give credit to the content creators + give the GTC for their contributions.

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Hey @thealexyao I’m adding this as item for August Stewards call happening today - August 2nd at 4pm UTC ?

Agenda doc

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I will be attending the Stewards call today, thanks for adding it to the agenda Anett!

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rly interested in this!
maybe we can talk about how MMM Workstream can help!

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Hello as requested I am giving some feedback on the proposal.

KPIs for success

When thinking on the proposal I was trying to understand what the goal is. Why would we need such a project to be done? I only noticed the “How this helps Gitcoin” at the end.

Imo this is an extremely important part of any proposal. It’s essentially the “Goal” of the proposal and should be in the beginning.

  • Re-engages former Grantees with the Gitcoin ecosystem.

Why is this important?

  • Creates content that can be shared in the form of “success stories” that could potentially increase new grantee activity.

Yes that is good. By new grantee you mean new projects thinking they should join the ecosystem and create grants for their projects?

  • Establishing a process for telling the story of every grantee and providing public visibility for projects.

This is nice … but does not directly help gitcoin imo :smiley:

  • When talking with protocols for funding and partnership, Gitcoin can offer success stories that shows it can deliver on promises to help grow a protocol’s ecosystem.

This is really important. Perhaps the best outcome if this proposal were to be implemented would be to have a funding partner say they watched the material you created and as such decided to fund.

With the above said, I suppose you should set some KPIs for success.

  • Create a questionaire for new projects that join gitcoin with a grant and for new funding partners. In there gather info on what lead them to do so.
  • Count how many mention the content created by this proposal

For me if even one funding partner mentions this proposal as a thing that pushed them to fund gitcoin, this proposal is a success.

For projects joining gitcoin, the metric for success would be a bit harder to count. Some non-zero number of projects mentioning the content created by this proposal would be good.

Budget

My understanding after reading the proposal is that you request 4500 + 7000 GTC for 3 months work.

It’s really hard to understand if this is too much or too little. Can you please add how many man-hours will be allocated to this project? In other words apart from you how many people will be working on this and for how many months each?

It’s hard to understand how that 7k GTC will be allocated and to whom over the 3 months period.

As for the management salary of 4500 GTC something seems off there. The entire project will cost 7k GTC according to your estimate and you are asking for ~64% of that in order to manage it? That sounds completely unbalanced.

I understand that GTC is volatile and its price can change but with the current prices the salary is also quite a bit on the generous side. It amounts to $159k yearly (again with current prices of GTC).

But in combination with the GTC exposure risk and the fact that I don’t know how much the working groups tend to be paid I am not going to say this is a no no. But just want to also open the conversation to figure out some rules on how to determine salaries for various positions the DAO is going to be paying for.

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Thank you so much for the feedback, you made a lot of great points that I agree with! I edited the original post and incorporated all of the feedback suggestions but I’ll cover some of the edits here:

  • Moved up the goals section to the top to be more visible.
  • Included your KPIs for success.
  • Edited budget to more accurately reflect the amount of hours total for the work delivered and adjusted the amount of compensation given. (I had created this budget a month ago)
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