This is our very first WG proposal and I’m sure all of you can easily comprehend what we do, but if not, The Fundraising Working Group is driven to truly “Fund the Commons” of Giveth. Our mission is to mobilize support and resources, with the hopes of empowering, and inspiring generosity for our DAO and the communities we serve!
Goals
Money Stream: Ensuring the DAO has the necessary funds to operate effectively and fulfill its mission over the short & long term.
DApp Growth: Facilitating growth and expansion opportunities, such as expanding our L2 chains, reaching new donors and grants, and increasing organizational capacity.
Innovation and Evolution: Staying responsive to changing circumstances and trends with grant applications by adopting innovative fundraising strategies and adapting to new challenges and opportunities.
Team and Resources
Jake - Steward of Fun, Chief of Chatter, BD to the Bone, Mr. CRM
Griff - Big Santa, The Brain, Chief Inspiration Officer
Lauren - Queen of QF, Brand Warrior, Operations Ninja
Mitch - The DApp Man, Golden Child, Digital Prophet
Marcelo - The Problem Solver, Grant Whisperer, Word Wizard
Almond - The Ambassador, Conversation Architect, Social Sensei
Krati - Guru, Wiz Kid, Tech Master
Historical Fundraising Spending in DAO Ops
January 2024 - $2990
February 2024 - $4550
March 2024 - $4000*
Total - $11,540*
*estimates until time reporting is in for March
Season 3 Deliverables & Budgeting
There are 3 possible scopes that Fundraising can take in the coming Season, each with different deliverables and budget. The Season Snapshot vote will dictate the scope of this working group, depending on it’s signaled priority amongst other working groups, as decided by the Giveth DAO.
GROW
Deliverables
What we will do
Apply to around 22 L2s grants per season
Apply to around 12 other type of fundraising / grant opportunities (not L2s)
Hire and add 1 new Grant Whisper / Word Wizard in order to help achieve that magnitude of applications
Secure 8 new QF sponsors for the season
Have a physical presence at BlockSplit (May 27-30) & ETH Dubai (April 20-21)
Work with Lauren to finish handing off of her current fundraising activities (ie Octant, Gitcoin, Optimism, etc.)
Finish the rest of the forum follow ups posts for all our previous grant wins
Keep Griff’s current fundraising hours (around 40 hr per season)
Breakdown
Estimated S3 Cost
Contributor costs
$35,000
Events
$5,000
Total
$40,000
SUSTAIN
What we will do
Apply to around 15 L2 grants per season, as that is all Marcelo’s current part-time workload can handle
Limit our time applying to other types of fundraising / grant opportunities (not L2s), so maybe around 6 per season
Secure 4 new QF sponsors for the season
Have a physical presence at BlockSplit (May 27-30)
Work with Lauren to continue performing hand offs of her current fundraising activities (ie Octant, Gitcoin, Optimism, etc.)
Finish the rest of the forum follow ups posts for all our previous grant wins
Maintain the current amount of dedicated monthly hours by Jake (45’ish hours/month) & Marcelo (30’ish hours/month)
Keep Griff’s current fundraising hours (around 40 hr per season)
What we won’t do
Hire another Grant Whisper / Word Wizard
Attend ETH Dubai
Breakdown
Estimated S3 Cost
Contributor costs
$11,800
Events
$2,500
Total
$14,300
SHRINK
What we will do
Apply to 6 L2 grants
Limit our time applying to other types of fundraising / grant opportunities (not L2s), so maybe around 3 per season
Secure 1 new QF sponsor for the season
Have Lauren continue performing fundraising activities for Octant, Gitcoin, Optimism, etc.
Finish all of the forum follow ups posts for all our previous grant wins
Decrease the current amount of dedicated monthly hours by Jake & Marcelo, cut our hours in half
Cap Griff’s fundraising hours to only 20 hrs per season (cutting down his review of grants and outreach)
What we won’t do
Hire anyone
Attend any in-person events
Breakdown
Estimated S3 Cost
Contributor costs
$5,850
Events
$0
Total
$5,850
Next Steps
This proposal will remain for advice process until all other eligible Working Groups have posted their Working Group Proposals and minimum advice process (5 days) has been met for them.
A single Snapshot vote will be created to decide the final priorities and budgets for all Working Groups for Season 3. Keep an eye out for it!
@JakeS congratulations on your first WG Proposal season man! I had a big laugh enjoying reading the Team and Resources, you truly are the Steward of Fun!
And this proposal is beautiful, I am only wondering about the major budget difference between Grow and Sustain. Is that because of ETH Dubai and one new hire? I don’t see Griff’s hours changing in any of those two. Anyway, that’d be my only question and maybe a suggestion to even out the budget differences between the proposed versions.
Great question @NikolaCreatrix and one I’m sure all will be surprised by, so glad I get to expose it…
So no actually the hiring cost would fall under the DApp and if attending ETH Dubai it would only be like a $5-8K add, and you are right about Griff’s salary not eating up anymore really…BUT…the real cost is the amount of man hours it will take to submit 22 L2 grants, and 12 other type of grants, as well as, finding more QF sponsors by the team.
I got to jump on a call with @mitch and do costing for this and it was an eye opener to see how much each grant cost in man hours to submit, etc.
It was great @JakeS you’re the man of making work fun!
My questions is how we can measure the success or failure of this proposal for next quarter. And what are the breakdowns? is it only salary? Why don’t we want to invest more in this WG as we get paid and we gonna have more impact?
1 - success would be measured by 1) amount of L2 grant submitted, amount of non-L2 grants submitted, amount of QF sponsors secured and then of course amount of money raised vs amount spent
2 - breakdowns / budgeting was done internally, as Im not sure we want to share salaries of contributors on the forum
3 - agree, the more we invest into fundraising, the more we in theory should get in return, but since this is our first WG proposal, lets start with this and see what comes back. Personally I really do think we need to hire another grant writer to achieve great and bigger, so that would be the first step in really “growing”
I think next time it would be great to have a little bullet under “what we won’t do” basically showing the numbers decrease for the amount of grants written/submitted. e.g. on sustain, this would say “7 less L2 grants applied to”… or something like that.
Otherwise, my only other concern is around QF sponsors. I hope we can secure more than 4 in a sustain proposal for the next 3 months - considering @griff wants us to run 1 QF round a month but I think we can share that workload also with the QF WG, and even get some support from our new hire @koday!
Great suggestion and hope to keep getting stronger and stronger in these proposals as I become a savvy vet!
For QF, Im hoping we get the grow option and add another contributor so we can add even more QF sponsors but with the addition of Kieran, I highly doubt it will only be 4 brand new sponsors per season; between Griff, Marcelo, myself and Kieran (and when you dabble in) would be mind blowing if we only achieved that…but have to start with some number when we didn’t really have a whole bunch to go from.
Would love to help out with QF sponsor/fundraising efforts as I get ramped up here! I’m not sure what you’ve been seeing thus far but I envision it will be more difficult to sustain a general QF matching pool funding pipeline than to secure individual $25-50k+ round commitments that we can schedule months out in advance.
My question in that case is how we’ll prioritize rounds/sponsors if we’re dealing with multiple interested parties at once. I.e. can we shift the schedule if a community comes in and wants to run an objectively large round? Or is that bad optics? Also what’s the sweet spot for number of rounds to have scheduled in advance? Just some stuff on the top of my mind, curious to hear your and @karmaticacid’s thoughts
Since this is the fundraising WG proposal (essentially requesting funding to do work for hte DAO) some of this discussion is in the details might be a bit out of scope for right here, but I’ll put in my thoughts, and perhaps we can put some time in the next QF call - or schedule a specific QF fundraising call to hone our strategy.
Re: how easy it is to secure sponsors for their own rounds vs. for general rounds - tbh, I feel like it’s kind of mixed. A lot of sponsors seems to want to get “in” cosponsoring a round next to other reputable orgs, and sometimes don’t want to be so involved in the grunt work of project curation etc.
Re: dealing w/ multiple interested parties - because of our relatively low fundraising bandwidth, we haven’t had a huge issue w/ multiple projects competing for the time slot. We’re usually just set up for the next 1 or 2 rounds. Coordination w/ partners takes a loong time in general.
Re: sweet spot for number of rounds. I think having the next 3 months planned out is a good target, especially if we are considering running 1 round per month.
Re: optics of moving people around - well, I think this is all possible as long as we communicate well with the partners. People in the donation/qf space are usually pretty reasonable and understand also where we’re coming from as a relatively small org. And also, so far, people aren’t usually too attached to dates being set in stone month in advance.
It would be awesome to take all these ideas together and set up a fundraising for QF sync/planning call including at least @JakeS@Griff & us two.
Breakdown
will be created to decide the final priorities and budgets for all Working Groups for Season 3. Keep an eye out for it!
Anyway, that’d be my only question and maybe a suggestion to even out the budget differences between the proposed versions.
but I think we can share that workload also with the QF WG, and even get some support from our new hire 