Giveth DAO Health - What's next?

[NikolaCreatrix]

Hi Friends, your DAO Health ambassador is back!

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

So what? Now when we have this huge overview of our lovely diverse community and organizational health. So what? What’s next you may be wondering. Me too.

First of all, BIG thanks to everyone who regularly takes the time to fill out our Giveth self-review form which was crucial in this process of learning about the health of our organization and thanks to which we have the opportunity to reflect on how we rock 'n roll as a whole. Another thanks to those who gave feedback on how can this report be even better in the future!

This forum post intends to open space for brainstorming and community signaling to collectively assess what areas we need to work on next. Maybe some of it is already being addressed, it’s been 4 months since we started the new yearly feedback cycle. So let’s do a reality & temperature check.

Based on the learnings from the Giveth DAO Health Report these are the identified areas for improvement:

1. Internal Communication
2. Professional Development and Training
3. Financial Transparency and Sustainability
4. Governance and Decision-Making Clarity
5. Work-Life Balance and Benefits

The question for you is: Do you think it’s still relevant?

To start us off, I am throwing in some ideas in each of the areas in the hope it will spark inspiration in your brilliant minds and even better ideas arise. Please vote in the polls to signal your perception and comment to share your perspective. Your voices matter!

1) Enhance Communication Tools

Feedback from the survey indicated ongoing challenges in communication. This might imply that while the tools exist, there may be issues with how they are being utilized or managed.

Ideas/Examples:

• Optimize Current Communication Platforms:
  Audit current usage of platforms like Discord, Github, and Notion to identify gaps in communication and information dissemination.
  Reorganize channels for clarity, create guidelines for channel usage, and introduce regular clean-up routines to maintain focus.
  Implement a system for summarizing and highlighting key updates and decisions, ensuring they are easily accessible to all contributors.
• Improve Meeting Efficiency:
  Review the current meeting structure, seeking feedback on how to make it more productive and engaging.
  Introduce clear protocols for meeting agendas, timekeeping, and follow-ups to ensure meetings are concise and outcome-oriented.
  Experiment with different formats for community calls to enhance engagement and participation.

Do you think this is still relevant? If yes, please let us know your thoughts in comments.

• Yes - I will add my comment.
• No - It’s good as is or progressed.

2) Structured Training Programs:

Contributors across various quarters expressed a desire for further skill development, particularly in areas related to blockchain, Web3 technologies, and project management.

Ideas/Examples:

• Collaborations with Online Learning Platforms:
  Partner with existing online education platforms that offer courses in blockchain, Web3, and related fields. Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Bankless, or other specialized blockchain education platforms can be explored for partnership opportunities. Negotiate for group discounts or access to tailored learning paths for Giveth contributors.
• Leveraging Open-Source Learning Resources:
  Curate a repository of open-source educational materials. This can include webinars, tutorials, and guides from credible sources within the blockchain and open-source communities. Encourage contributors to contribute to this repository with any useful resources they come across.

Do you think this is still relevant? If yes, please let us know your thoughts in comments.

• Yes - I will add my comment.
• No - It’s good as is or progressed.

3) Financial Strategy Development:

Throughout the survey, contributors consistently raised concerns about Giveth’s financial sustainability and transparency. This reflects an awareness of the importance of solid financial planning for long-term viability. The feedback underscores a desire for clarity and strategic thinking.

Ideas/Examples:

• Decentralized Autonomous Grant Systems:
  Implement DAO-to-DAO funding mechanisms, where other DAOs can contribute to Giveth in exchange for governance participation or other incentives.
• Blockchain-Based Subscription Models:
  Introduce a voluntary subscription model for users and supporters (the Giveth believers), where they can contribute a regular amount in crypto. In return, subscribers could receive exclusive updates, digital badges, or other blockchain-based rewards.

Do you think this is still relevant? If yes, please let us know your thoughts in comments.

• Yes - I will add my comment.
• No - It’s good as is or progressed.

4) Refine Governance Model:

Throughout the year, contributors have expressed the need for clearer decision-making processes and broader participation in Giveth’s governance, especially among newer or less active members.

Ideas/Examples:

• Decentralized Autonomous Committees (DACs):
  Establish DACs focusing on specific governance aspects like finance, HR, and technology. These committees can make use of reputation tokens to vote on specialized matters, enhancing expertise-driven decision-making.
• Feedback and Iteration Mechanism:
  Implement a structured process for collecting feedback on governance decisions and processes, allowing for continuous improvements and adaptability.

Do you think this is still relevant? If yes, please let us know your thoughts in comments.

• Yes - I will add my comment.
• No - It’s good as is or progressed.

5) Improve work-life balance:

Throughout the year, contributors have repeatedly expressed the need for improved work-life balance. This includes managing workloads, accommodating personal commitments, and ensuring mental well-being.

Ideas/Examples:

• Encourage Regular Breaks and Time Off:
  Cultivate a culture where taking regular breaks and time off is encouraged and respected. Ensure that contributors feel comfortable availing their vacation days without worrying about work piling up.
• Mindfulness and Stress Management Training:
  Provide access to training or resources on mindfulness and stress management, which is extremely beneficial in our remote working environment.

Do you think this is still relevant? If yes, please let us know your thoughts in comments.

• Yes - I will add my comment.
• No - It’s good as is or progressed.

---

Please take the time to think of these areas and show up in the discussion if you genuinely care about any of this! The polls and discussion will be open for another 2 weeks.

Note: Results of this temperature check may help shape our future plans but note that this post is separate from our current proposal season #3.

[WhyldWanderer]

Thanks Nikola for putting this together! Here are my thoughts

1. I think that the issue with too many calls and changing up the format of calls has already been addressed. However, I do agree that there are some internal communications things that could/should be addressed still. I have found it difficult to stay up to date with things going on within Giveth, especially catching up after vacation. We no longer record calls, there is no weekly community calls or updates, etc. I can imagine that some of our teammates in extreme time zones would also like a way to stay caught up in a decentralized way.

2. Having some avenue to address this would be really cool! I had even thought about how we do a home office upgrade reimbursement allowance… It would be cool to have something similar for trainings or courses that we participate in that help to broaden our skillsets. We could submit a record of completion/cost and get reimbursed up to a certain amount… or maybe the home office allowance could just simply be expanded to include these types of things as well. I never really use mine and I might be more inclined if I could use it for things like this.

3. I think this has been addressed and implemented throughout Giveth. We have become much more aware of our budget and spending and now have proposals for each WG.

4. I think this is OKAY as is… would be nice if the management of all the multi-sigs and snapshots was more streamlined for DAO Ops. We are also working on updating the governance process documentation to hopefully bring some clarity to our processes that way. It almost seems that each working group also has their own decision making mechanisms or tools that they use.

These are just my initial thoughts. …
I like that this will give us a way to see which areas of the health report we think need to be prioritized and start making some moves to address concerns.

[JakeS]

@NikolaCreatrix you are so sweet and caring to take on this DAO Health project. There are so many contributors that care about Giveth, but it also great to see the people who care about the people. Feeling the warm and fuzzy’s from you and again thanks for putting all this out there for us to see what we as a collective are thinking / saying / typing.

1 - Comms - I think we are progressing well after your initial report with streamlining our comms as well as boosting the comms strength. No big WOW changes needed I think

2 - Training - I saw that there is now a budget for some training and encouragement so I believe we are making some progress but until some start taking the trainings and then encouraging others to take some etc, think we still need to work as a whole to finish some together

3 - Financial Strategy - @mitch has really taken over as DApp leader and if you ever join a call or have a chat with him, you know that he is well aware of the finances for the DApp as well as before encouraging any spending, has all team members stop and think about the spending. Therefore creating a stragety. I think we have progressed on this and I encourage anyone that doesn’t believe so to just speak with Mitch for a little bit.

4 - Governance - I think we have progressed here with some of the DApp edits that are coming out with voting and use of tokens but I do like creating a “buddy review” of just Gov matters that went through and how we felt they did after the fact

5 - Work / Life Balance - I think we need more progress on this, as though we may encourage taking holidays, we don’t give out enough. We are suppose to be building on top of what web2 has created and being better / stronger than web2 but if you do the simple math, we are BEHIND web2 in vacation / holidays per year. For example, I will use Spain since that is our unofficial HQ…the average Spaniard gets 22 personal vacay / holidays per year and then the country has on average 14 national holidays, which if my simple math serves me right is 36 vacay / holiday days per year…and Giveth contributors get something like only 20 days to use for both personal and national holidays that they observe…not progress in my mind at all for Giveth

Ok my fingers hurt…back to looking for fundraising activities. Hugs all!

[freshelle]

Great work on this @NikolaCreatrix!! Here’s what I think

1. Comms tools - I believe this has already progressed. We cut the the weekly community calls to a monthly townhall, the QF and GIVeconomy weekly calls was merged, stewards and governance calls are now bi-weekly, etc. I think calls are reduced already. But if some contributors feel there’s still so many calls right now, then I think it’s worth looking into and make the necessary adjustments.
   About optimizing communication platforms, it would be great if WG and chapter leads could give updates consistently in the wg-updates discord channel. Also, I agree with @WhyldWanderer about calls not being recorded anymore. I’m not able to join most of the calls, so it would definitely be helpful to catch up by watching the recorded call. The meeting notes or slides alone often lack the context on the discussion.

2. Trainings/Professional Development - Aside from learning about blockchain technology, I would say we should also prioritize professional development initiative that’s relevant to our skills, contribution to the community, or even for learning something new. Steps are currently being taken to make this happen in some areas in the Galaxy. I would like to echo @griff’s advocacy on giving everyone at least 1-2 weeks in doing some sort of professional development class (hours are paid for hourly; for full-time, allocate some hours in the month). Classes may be paid or not.
   To be nitty gritty on the details - it is proposed in GM (may apply in Giveth as well) that before enrolling in a class, the plan shall be discussed with their buddy/chapter lead who will then review/approve it.
   For example, for the Development and Design teams, Krati and Marko has already talked with their team and has planned out with each of them the courses they will take this year. As for other contributors, I believe the leaders or buddy would coordinate with them.
   Also, I agree with Ashley about having some sort of budget for classes yearly. Btw, I think you @WhyldWanderer could use your home office allowance for this sorts of things if you won’t spend it on actual home office stuff - that’s just me, but I think the DAO will be ok with it.

3. Financial Strategy - I don’t have any strong opinion on this, but I believe it has progressed with QF/DApp/fundraising efforts underway.

4. Governance - I think this has already progressed. The sub-DAOfication is currently being implemented - WG and chapters can decide within their group on how manage things on their end. I don’t think we need a new structure or commitees.
   Also, I don’t join stewards call, but I think this is the best place to get alignment with all the WGs and chapters, and gather feedback.

5. Work-life balance - Yes to mindfulness and stress management sessions! Also yes, contributors need to use their time offs more frequently! That’s why our PTOs have expiration dates (1 year) so people could have a break from time to time (force leave ).
   I agree with @JakeS that Giveth can do better in the PTO benefits since right now, all types of leaves/absences fall under the same bucket - vacation, sick, emergency, and local holidays. This is our current PTO benefit policy:

   • 20 days/year less than 1 year tenure
   • 22.5 days/year 1 to 2 years tenure
   • 25 days/year more than 2 years tenure

[hanners717]

Thanks for all the DAO health diagnostics! Many of my opinions echo what other contributors have responded with him the forum, so I’ll briefly summarize my thoughts.

1. Comms - I think the frequency of meetings have been addressed during GivConnect. I would like the changes to be better promoted. Myself, I haven’t attended many of the changes because of the lack of reminder. This is also my bad as well. Honestly, I’d like to see a lot of our Comms calls migrate to Twitter, like the Townhall and AMA, for broader reach, and then wouldn’t have to worry about recording and posting on YouTube.

2. Training - I think we’ve had a recent announcement, at least in GM, about 40 hours annually of paid education. I’m totally supportive of this initiative because I think supporting professional development helps with retention.

3. Financial - I don’t have many informed opinions on this, since I do a lot of the spending when we hire new contributors, implement raises, HOA, PTO, etc…

4. Governance - From my DAO Ops call today, I think there are some updates coming our way that @mitch is spearheading.

5. Work Life / Balance - I’d like to echo @JakeS @freshelle outlining our existing PTO policy. I do think we need to be more clear about sick days vs. national holidays vs. vacation. Sucks when you get really sick and that comes out of your vacation PTO. I think as a culture we need to be more supportive of team members taking vacation. Personally, I received a peer review saying that I take too much vacation, and I was like “Bro, I’m taking the 5 weeks I’m given. Maybe you should do the same.” Definitely did not appreciate the guilt and shame tripping attitude.

[MoeNick]

Thank you @NikolaCreatrix

I think my main problem is now the confusion for Marge, we had lots of discussions in Istanbul and I think we did a bunch of restructuring. So sometimes I got asked to respect the hierarchy and besides we have WGs and Chapter managers, these roles need to be defined and clear specifically due to the working flows and the conflicts that might happen.

[MoeNick]

My Comments:

• Communication: I have a problem with dailies and product-scrum team meetings usually in GM. In Giveth I think it’s clear enough. But regarding my last comments when I got asked to manage a part of product I should have direct communication with team members (Designers / Dev / Testers) and should not be avoided.

• Training Program: The Best learning is by doing, and there is a lot of tacit knowledge that can’t be organized. If we do the buddy system efficiently, this training works better. We should have more time for onboarding and we pay people to do that.

• Financial Strategy: It gets better but Im still not sure if another bear market happen do we have a plan for it or not? Making Giveth Galaxy investable was a solution due to the gatherings in IST. I can’t see any progress there.

• Governance Model: As I said I’m still confused with the org chart, working flows, and decision-making processes.
  And look at the number of people engaging in the in advice process. it’s like we are using forum to make decisions and if nobody engages, it’s fine we made our decision it’s their fault not they got engaged. So i think it’s a sign of anti-democratic governance that people try to hide their voices sometimes to secure their jobs.

• Work-life Balance: I recently went to a vacations but I was constantly thinking about the work environment. the projects and the stress did not let me not to check some DMs. So I think it’s important we have fun and a supportive work environment rather than increasing the number of days for vacation.
  Aside from that, it’s good we have a better understanding for different cultures and their local holidays. I spent lots of holidays working while my family was waiting for me and they are all off, but I simply can see we cancel calls for Easter in GM. I mean If people know what is happening in local events, like Indian Diwali , they might be able to make better decisions and better understanding from the folks they are working with.
  I said in group chat Im taking some days off for Nowruz and people put some emojis, and I was like “Bro, it’s not related to Ramadhan at all.”

[mitch]

This is a great follow up article @NikolaCreatrix thank you so much for putting your time into this.

1) Enhance Communication Tools

I think there’s still some work we can do across various areas in Giveth to improve our communication:

a. We still do a lot of our communication through Discord DMs which by nature are private and hard for others to participate or stay up to date with. Discord DMs are limited to 10 people and when we have an org of 30+ contributors we should try harder to make information accessible.

b. Recently @whyldwanderer brought up the fact that we have stopped recording our calls, this was hard to manage for call leaders who already have their hands full to find someone to record calls. This makes it really hard for people who might not be available at specific times or miss certain calls to keep up with the conversation, often we make decisions inside of these calls so it’s important to make that info accessible!

2) Structured Training Programs

We made good progress on this one with the implementation of 40+ hours annually to dedicate to professional development. That policy has been implemented(?) and I feel pretty good about this topic.

I would acknowledge @Kratijain who has done a great job on implementing professional development in the Development Chapter, independent of the aforementioned policy changes.

3) Financial Strategy Development

There’s still a lot of work to do here. We have improved our financial transparency in some ways, a lot of it has been integrating payroll accounting & treasury mgmt into DAO Ops more. @freshelle @Griff and myself work more closely to keep track of the numbers. The Working Group Proposals also help a TON.

I sound the alarm and try to broadcast our budget limitations as much as reasonably possible to keep others aware of how their spending affects the DAO’s financial health. The responsibility is on others to take those warnings into account and make prudent decisions. I still feel there is no clear way for Giveth to achieve financial sustainability even with our current roadmap and user base.

4) Refine Governance Model

There’s always more work to be done here! As the DAO Ops lead I’ll admit its all an experiment. Our current processes around Working Groups and Seasons have come a long way. However, we need to work on making information easier to digest and to encourage participation within our DAO from contributors and GIV holders.

I wish we had more ways for our community to engage in Governance that feels impactful, we have a 3 month season which will soon transition to 6 month seasons. It would be nice to have more ways for our super fans to engage. The Tokenlog for example was a great experiment, but while it seemed impactful it didn’t get very much engagement.

5) Improve work-life balance

I feel very good at managing my work-life balance, however @JakeS brought up a great point about holidays - Everyone on the team misses out on lots of national holidays time and we should have taken that into consideration with our recent PTO updates. This should be addressed right away and improved.

I’d acknowledge though that I live in the “favoured” time zone (Americas) and that our colleagues on the other side of the world have to stay up until absurd hours of the night to coordinate with us. Hopefully the points I made in Improving Communication can help with that.

[OyeAlmond]

Yes! Would be great to have our national holidays. I feel so dumb when everyone in the city isn’t working and Im connected having meeting.
Would love to address the Giveth onboarding process - That goes hand x hand in Enchance Communication Tools. I feel we don’t have a structured process to onboard contributors, and could become very challenging, it could even become demotivating for new peeps. Would be great to create a smoother process, or some guides/materials.

[0xLaszlo]

how about a full screen onboarding chat, like talking to a real person using ai and a good timing and so on…like they do it to sell products for astral stuff and so on…I believe this could be a dope concept like they use it also to mine btc where they try to rip you off I believe, do not want to find it out…

[0xLaszlo]

i will do some screenshots next fake mining bitcoin…lol

[maenswirony]

Hey all, first time jumping into the convo here but have been following Giveth for a few years on and off. Really love the vibe of the community, the token and app design, ethos and culture, all of it. Very humanity first which I think can’t be amplified enough. All of the tech and everything we’re building in crypto is cool, but sometimes I think the building becomes an end itself rather than a means to improving quality of life, so always glad to see it baked into the foundation of a project.

I’ve read through the Health Report and this What’s Next post and want to start some ideation that could potentially become a proposal. Any feedback is good but mainly dropping it here for those more experienced with the cogs and levers of the project to help steer this in the right direction (even if that’s halting here, better to know now than invest wasted energy).

Re: Communication tooling

I’ve been working on a project designed to build social and contextual connective tissue within and between online groups. Design intentions are for it to be safe, intuitive, and nourishing. Here’s a demo of the first tool I’ve built, a discord bot, which is what I’m considering proposing Giveth could try out. Potential benefits:

• Swirl conversations (think talking circles or sociocracy/holocracy rounds) create a simple ritual for emerging shared context in small groups. In alpha tests the first conversation people have tends to be a bit confusing but one go through is all it takes to catch on. It is low effort to participate, builds connection within the group, and creates high signal outputs.
• The output blocks do a few things but I’ll mention two for now.
  • They provide a chunk of information - an external memory - for the group that had the conversation about the deeper connections and context that emerged during.
  • They provide low noise, high signal context for the larger community to connect to which allows second order connections - if someone outside the swirl wants to go deeper into that conversation, they know who to talk to.

The bot can be customized in a number of ways to address different problems or subDAOs wants/needs.

• Change the number of participants, rounds, character limits, time limits.
• Can play with feedback mechanisms, where to send blocks to, and how to color each block to make it identifiable as coming from x group or for y theme.
• It could even be adapted for more structured decision-making processes, or at the very least general feedback on governance.

Curious to hear any thoughts.