@mitch it’s a great conclusion. I have one feedback that may be useful for next quarter and generally for governance: (I know it’s too late and according to Griff may not be worth the time for this quarter)
1- Financial Planning
All the “Season plannings” we had so far, are around budgeting and they were expenditure-driven. In planning in general most orgs separate OpEx and CapEx. I mean some expenditures are investments for better good, and some expenditures are mostly for operations and keeping the business as is.
There are some financial ratios based on the field and the industry of a business that can be used as the north star for the health financial of any org. Im pretty sure there are some examples even in our industry that we can follow. for-example I love to know how much Investment we had last year in comparison with other web3 companies. The ratio of expenditure we had on HR (salaries) is too high or low? or the ratio of the marketing expenditure on total expenditure, how is it in comparison with the others?
The total budget also comes from a decision that as a DAO member I’d love to know why this amount has been chosen.
In general, it’s good we have some financial statements so we can do the analysis of statements and do some financial planning, and budgeting will have meaning under the financial management.
2- Cross WGs Impacts
tbh, I think as DAO member I can’t understand which of these working groups has more impact on realizing the goal of this season. For example, QF had a strong impact on realizing the DApp KPIs like the number of donations and verified projects. I guess I voted to sustain for QF last season, If I knew how impactful it is, I would vote on grow.
Another example is that I think Fundraising WG is acting as an income generator for the whole Giveth and helping us pay salaries. The DApp expenses itself is so dependent on the strategy of other WGs.
I think we should help voters to understand the impacts to make better decisions.
3- WG Proposal Format
- Give me money to do the recurring donation.
- OK, what is the value of this feature?
- We will have a grant that covers some expenses and will make X amount of donations.
- Can’t we do that amount of donation with a paid marketing campaign?
- Maybe we can but we already won the grant.
- OK it’s fair.
Next Quarter:
- Give me money to do verification.
- OK did you make that amount of donation happen for recurring donations?
- No we covered it without recurring donation. Now the verification is more important.
- Ok what is the value of the verification feature?
- We won a grant and we will save some money in operations.
- OK it’s fair
And the next quarter we forget about the promised value of recurring donations and verification, and the KPIs may be covered by for example QF boost.
I mean I can not find any data to rely on to judge a WG Proposal or to judge my previous decisions.