Communitas Working Group Proposal

:purple_heart: Mission

​Communitas (n., Latin) - commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community.

Using the language of Elinor Ostrom, community is one of the “common-pool resources” at the heart of the Giveth. This cultural fabric is the foundation for all of the value that flows through this community. Without it, we would be nothing. Stewarding the community is thus the number one responsibility of the Communitas Working Group. Community has always been the foundation of Giveth, the sum of all parts.

The second priority of Communitas, though it works in parallel with the first, is drawing on this fabric of community to catalyze acts of service that fulfill Giveth’s mission. Communitas shares this second responsibility with other working groups in Giveth though we play a special role in building their capacity on this front.

:muscle: Team and Resources

Ashley - Steward, Giveth Essentials product lead, Ambassador Program product lead, project on-boarding, non-user support, contributor support/orientation, host AMA calls, Community Call collaboration, event coordination and support

Nikola - Meet the Makers product lead, member engagement, project on-boarding, non-user support, event coordination

Almond - Ambassador program advisor, event coordination and support,

Cotabe - Aprendamos Podcast product lead, project on-boarding

Giantkin - Discord server moderation

Franco - member engagement, event support

*Approx 200 contributor hours per month

:goal_net: Goals

The purpose of Communitas is fivefold:

  1. Newcomer Onboarding through welcoming newcomers, explaining Giveth to them, and helping them to get oriented in the community and platform. This includes project owners, donors, contributors, potential partnerships/collaborators, etc.

  2. Member Engagement through facilitating community engagement and assessing members’ interests or needs and matching them with appropriate opportunities for growth or catalyzation within the community.

  3. Community Development through specifying/building tools and processes for community-wide member development. This includes solicitation, collection and prioritization of feedback received from members.

  4. Member success through creating support systems and processes that ensure that members accomplish successfully what they wanted to do in Giveth.

  5. Community growth through building relationships and systems to grow the community. This includes organization and facilitation of community events to bring new members, and nourish existing relationships as well as ensure that current members remain engaged.

:triangular_ruler: Measurable deliverables/GPSs/KPIs

  • New projects
  • New donors
  • New onboarded contributors
  • Amount of feedback received
  • Discord server engagement
  • Forum engagement
  • Community Calls engagement
  • Event engagement

What would be considered a success vs. failure?

Success:

  • There are a measurable amount of new members entering the community
  • New members feel cared for and guided when they enter and are supported in the directions they want to take.
  • New members are given clear information on the design and function of Giveth.
  • Community events and program engagement are driving new users and traffic to the platform

Failure:

  • New members are lost and misinformed.
  • Giveth struggles to integrate new members.
  • Members at all levels do not feel a unity in Giveth and are unclear how to contribute or navigate their participation.
  • We receive feedback that Giveth is inaccessible and isn’t inclusive.
  • Unanswered questions and misinformation in the discord server

:gift: How will this benefit Giveth?

  • Grow and cultivate the Giveth community which will bring more engaged members, contributors, and users. This means more projects on the platform as well as more donors
  • Provide an ecosystem of collective support for members of the Giveth community
  • Be an avenue for member/user feedback loops for all WGs

:watch: Duration

Family is forever :purple_heart:

:truck: Deliverables and Budgeting

The DAO will have the opportunity to vote on which budget and corresponding products/deliverables that the WG will focus on for the next 3 months. There are three options:

Current Products

  • Ambassador Program
  • Meet the Makers
  • Aprendamos ReFi Podcast
  • Giveth Essentials
    *We have already removed GM podcast and GIVtalks from the scope of Communitas

:arrow_double_up: Grow

  • Plan/execute fun team building/bonding events
  • Revive Giveth Telegram group/revamp Discord server
  • Consider expanding the team and bringing on additional contributors/resources
  • Expand the Ambassador Program in Season 2
  • Expand Meet the Makers to become a viral campaign featuring projects
  • Plan and execute Giveth Essentials sessions
  • Research and implement growth strategies of aligned communities
  • Provide user feedback loops for WGs
  • Host AMA and Orientation Call
  • Discord community engagement/moderation
  • Non-User Support
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown
Monthly Contributor Costs $6,000
Season 2 Ambassador rewards (max $360 p/Ambassador) $5,000
10% Budget Buffer $2,300
Total for next 3 months $25,300

:arrow_forward: Sustain

  • Expand the Ambassador Program in Season 2
  • Expand Meet the Makers to become a viral campaign featuring projects
  • Plan and execute Giveth Essentials sessions
  • Host AMA and Orientation Call
  • Discord community engagement/moderation
  • Non-User Support

What we won’t do:

  • Revive Giveth Telegram group/revamp Discord server
  • Plan/execute fun team building/bonding events
  • Provide user feedback loops for WGs
  • Research and implement growth strategies of aligned communities
  • Consider expanding the team and bringing on additional contributors/resources
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown
Monthly Contributor Costs $4,500
Season 2 Ambassador rewards (max $360 p/Ambassador) $5,000
10% Budget Buffer $1,850
Total for next 3 months $20,350

:arrow_double_down: Shrink

  • Sustain the Ambassador Program in Season 2
  • Sustain quarterly Meet the Makers events
  • Host AMA and Orientation Call
  • Discord community engagement/moderation
  • Non-User Support

What we won’t do:

  • Revive Giveth Telegram group/revamp Discord server
  • Plan/execute fun team building/bonding events
  • Expand Community efforts like Ambassador program or Meet the Makers
  • Plan and execute Giveth Essentials sessions
  • Research and implement growth strategies of aligned communities
  • Consider expanding the team and bringing on additional contributors/resources
  • Provide user feedback loops for WGs
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown
Monthly Contributor Costs $3,500
Season 2 Ambassador rewards (max $180 p/Ambassador) $2,700
10% Budget Buffer $1,320
Total for next 3 months $14,520

*Budget Buffers are included for any unexpected costs from operations, only if a portion or all of it is spent will another, proportionate, budget buffer be requested in the subsequent budget.

Approval Process

This WGP will remain available and open for Advice Process for 7 days, after which it will move to a Snapshot vote to decide the approved budget and scope.

13 Likes

I found so much value on this proposal, and I think we know all the extra support communitas needs. :arrow_double_up: Grow option makes more sense to me.

On the other hand I notice there’s are disproportionate expectations on communitas bringing more users and donors, when (I think) is a shared responsibility w/ product team & really all the wgs.

I will highlight the importance of product teams getting involved in “Provide user feedback loops for WGs”, not only making this a Communitas responsability or innitiative.

I wonder how we could encourage product more on this. Establish a process to request feedback from specific products? Idk , I Can think more about this

3 Likes

I would agree with some of @OyeAlmond 's points - it should be the responsibility of the WGs to create their own feedback loops for them to improve. This is a standard practice for product management from my understanding. That being said, we haven’t been very good at it thus far so I’m glad we’re finally talking about it!

I also think getting new projects and donors also falls under the responsibility of the dApp WG, which is yet to emerge with a WGP, complete with KPIs (* wink * @MoeNick :wink: ). However, I don’t see any thing explicitly wrong with sharing some of the same goals, you’ll just have the opportunity to coordinate to create success!

Overall this is a great, well-written proposal and bravo for being this first critical WG to get their proposal up! Can’t wait to vote on this. :clap:

3 Likes

:boom: Proposal is now up on Snapshot and you can vote for the budget/scope of this working group!

https://snapshot.org/#/giv.eth/proposal/0x8c8a29be4852de85039664c113f673a17573a31852217e9c3cd6c821b713ae2f

1 Like

I would love to see an advancement here. Its part personal interest (I did the first migration to a different chat system) and part values (I would hugely favor an open source client) and I really have to highlight at this point the crazy advancements that element.chat had.

Maybe we don’t have to port/bridge the whole community to a different platform, but could rather focus on which parts are relevant or make a pure onboarding channel that is not tied to a major channel on discord. Spammers are mostly a problem when they interfere with the rest (and they will, telegram is terrible), but we can look at state of the art anti-spam.

One Quite interesting feature that was added recently to telegram is “Topics in Groups” - the only group I have that is using it is MetaFest, but I like how it separated the content of a community in the way rooms usually do.

2 Likes

I think we should be more strategic on things we do to grow the community… so I’m voting for “grow”… based almost solely in the fact that it includes these 2 points:

  • Research and implement growth strategies of aligned communities
  • Provide user feedback loops for WGs

whereas sustain cuts those out. I think it would really serve is to take a step back, take a breather… ask for & incorporate user feedback… look at what works & doesn’t work for others… and try something new.

3 Likes

LOOOOVE THIS

I agree with @karmaticacid on the importance of growing the community & do intentional efforts to see what has worked, what hasn’t, think about new things & try them.

I think many (Ahmad, Cori, Almond, Ashley, myself and probably many more) have thought about different ways to grow the community. Some of these ideas have been implemented & others have been halted. I think we can work together to recover & implement some good ideas.

1 Like

For TG , doing it as an announcement channel mainly is good. no spam.
I ban so many spambots, daily from TG servers. captcha bots dont seem to stop them.
-i have been interested in the new group setup, havent tested it yet. Making the Main acct an ANNC. setup, with break out groups would be interesting. but if it has the same security, not so much.

I am also testing that which you can set several rules, giving users with say an nft access.

-after that another setup, that uses the above, to do total control of every aspect. (TG admin/twitter/discord roles etc as desired)

2 Likes

Discord. I just helped setup a Support server for an entity. its simple. concise and i love how they are doing it.
I just did the basic security stuff, and a few items. they have a rush of support tickets coming in. 50-60 in the first few days. but they organized the tickets in interesting ways.

no public discussion area. No public spam. some dm spam is always possible ofc. but limited!

different support teams (based on knowledge, like website problem, Tech support. Twitter reward issue? Support for validating . and so on.
after issue, they report why something failed to pickup etc. was cool

2 Likes

I finished totally that support server. (unless they need something more) i am working on my own setup that i can test out, and template. Not sure if it would be used here, but if its interesting or desired. lmk.

The proposal was voted to grow!

Here are the results:
image

2 Likes

Willing to talk more about this in our communitas calls!

Maybe we can find a better option than Telegram but we are looking for options that the general public are usually active on and that way we can remove the barrier of Discord difficulties. The experience of trying to onboard people has proven to us that people refuse to get on Discord… they don’t want to start a new account or learn a new platform. :confused:

I realize that Telegram is a lot to monitor and full of spam but if it means that we can have more engaged community members and user retention, then it is worth it to consider. Most web3 projects have Telegram groups and they seem to do okay monitoring and removing spam so there must be some solutions that we can use to mitigate these things.

2 Likes

hm. well 1 im not on the Giveth TG. you get alot of spam there? there are bots ofc, but they dont do as much stopping. Support is not nearly as good. there are options for website support out there tho. if thats whats to be looked at. working out bugs, i guess, but i have one for that. and giveth i think would bef free to use (up to x staff etc) Next communtas call is… (is that the tomorrow at noon one? or the comminty builders weekly one next tuesday?) maybe just DM me that its coming up and ill try to get on ;o

I like GK’s idea of having an announcement’s channel or something that is a bit easier to police.

We already have an announcement Telegram group here: Telegram: Contact @Givethio

No one ever posts announcements there. It was decommissioned around the time of the token launch. We are looking to revive it in a way that allows for community members to engage with the community without needing to join Discord.

The thing is… no one wants to join Discord. We need a platform where people can engage that doesn’t require them to make an account and learn a new UI. As the ambassadors were attempting to onboard projects and users, this was the biggest hurdle that they faced. The users refused to join Discord.

If we choose not to use Telegram, we should use a platform that most people already have an account on and can easily access. Right now, the idea is to revamp that Telegram group, have more moderators and people to engage there and to reduce the Discord server to be more for team coordination and less for external community engagement. I am open to using something other than TG as long as it is not creating more barriers for people to join.

I think that most Web3 communities have Telegram groups and they manage to moderate them fine. Its just a matter of implementing the right mix of bots and moderator support imo.

Join next week’s Community building sync on Tuesday to discuss the possibilities!

4 Likes

As we are preparing to launch the 2nd Season of the Ambassador Program, I have created a transaction in the nrGIV DAO to transfer the funds for the Ambassador Program Rewards to a multi-sig owned by @MAYELI, @NikolaCreatrix, @OyeAlmond, and myself.

Multi-sig address on Gnosis: 0x294DC2D3B36eE1E9fF7904DB548907f12f8675C5

The budget has already been approved, we just need to send the funds over.

The rewards will be distributed to eligible Ambassadors every Friday for the milestones that they have reached.

nrGIV vote: Aragon

1 Like

Sending Season 1 Ambassador Rewards:

@MAYELI @OyeAlmond @NikolaCreatrix

1 Like