by 0x76fb13f00cdbdd5eac8e2664cf14be791af87cb0 (Matimio)
Should the following $98,500 grant in the Core Unit category be approved?
Abstract
This proposal seeks to extend the operations of the Decentraland DAO Facilitation Squad for an additional six months. The team has been successful in establishing a routine of operations and reporting, identifying key areas of engagement, and promoting collaboration among the Decentraland community, DAO Core Units, DAO Committee, and Decentraland Foundation. Our primary objective for the next term is to focus on collective decision-making, consensus-building, and robustness of Decentraland DAO’s governance operations.
In the coming term we will continue to operationalize key engagement pathways established during the first two terms of our operation.
Responsibilities and activities span across four primary areas:
Community Engagement
DAO Onboarding: Education, support, community engagement, orientation pathways, to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for onboarding and entry into the DAO.
Discord Moderation: Maintain a safe and inclusive environment by enforcing community guidelines and preventing disruptive behavior or harmful content.
Community Pulse: Shift from monthly in-depth reporting on governance issues, to active monitoring and reporting of community sentiments, based on “Sentiment Analysis” polls conducted on a bi-monthly basis (once every two months). These polls will be designed to gauge community sentiment on a variety of issues, including but not limited to, strategic direction of the project, Core Unit performance, governance processes, transparency, and other areas of interest and/or concern. The results and main insights of the polls will be publicly shared.
“Brick-by-Brick Builders Club”: Spotlight and facilitation of content creator community, hosted by Fractillians. Builders Club will provide Decentraland’s creator community with a forum and network for sharing of information, resources, and WIPs.
Governance Operations
Working Groups: Provide community members with structured tools and processes to engage multiple stakeholders in a group decision-making and solutioning process. This includes identifying key stakeholders, defining decision criteria, facilitating discussions and consensus-building among group members.
Request for Information (RFI): Serve as the Entries & Support Desk (ESD) to organize, prioritize, forward the questionnaires, and liaise with the Foundation technical areas, managing the pipeline for all RFIs and helping with their writing and feasibility.
Legislative Tracker: Maintain the legislative tracker with up to date information to improve accessibility, engagement, transparency, communication, and compliance with the binding decisions made by the DAO.
Facilitation Corner: Landing page/workspace that will serve as a comprehensive hub for team collaboration, access to documentation, and project management. The page will be divided into sections, each dedicated to a specific aspect of the DAO’s operations.
Strategic Communications
Social Media: Operation and posting of regular content on the DCL DAO Twitter + planning and hosting Twitter Spaces, Instagram and Youtube accounts.
Foundation AMA: Monthly AMA sessions with Decentraland Foundation Teams and DAO Community Members.
Town Halls: Planning & Hosting Biweekly DAO Town Halls
In World Meet Ups: Planning and Hosting these twice a month
Coordinate communications and generative interactions between various stakeholders in the Decentraland Ecosystem, including DAO Community Members, Core Units, DAO Committee, and the Decentraland Foundation.
Roadmap and milestones
Key achievements over the past term, include:
Hosting DAO Town Halls, In-World Meet Ups, and DAO Twitter Spaces
Strategic Communications and Reporting on DAO Operations and Governance issues
Development of a Formal Working Group Process and Facilitation of Issue-Specific Working Groups
Assist in the establishment of the Revocations Committee and facilitation of the DAO Committee elections by providing support throughout the entire process, and organizing both synchronous and asynchronous debates for all the candidates involved.
Development of Request for Information Pathway for enhancing collaboration and reducing information asymmetry between the Decentraland DAO and Decentraland Foundation.
Coordination of engagements and collaborations between the DAO Community, Core Units, DAO Committee, and the Decentraland Foundation.
The impact metrics are not well defined and given the ability for Core Unit Grant requests to define their own metrics, and this squad being the one responsible for writing the other requirements, it would make sense that you hold yourself to a higher, and better defined, standard.
IMPACT METRICS
Monitor the number of new community members that successfully onboard the DAO system. - Assess the quality of community sentiment through the bi-monthly sentiment analysis polls. - Track the number of successfully resolved RFIs through the Entries & Support Desk, - Evaluate the quality of consensus-building and decision-making in the Working Groups. Feedback from group members can provide insights into the effectiveness of the structured tools and processes provided. - Measure the engagement level of social media posts (likes, shares, comments) and the attendance of the biweekly DAO Town Halls and AMA sessions. - Gather feedback from community members regarding the effectiveness and clarity of communications.
The facilitation squad does a great job and very much needed. I still wonder if spending 200K/year for each squad/committee is sustainable in the long run. The community is small yet, and the work to be done will surely increase. Are these costs reasonable? I’m not saying the squads aren’t worth their weight in gold, but can we afford this?
The facilitation squad has done a remarkable job to date. This is a pretty tough job, and I think it’s important to retain the talent we currently possess within these specialized squads and working groups. Job well done guys!
I agree with @CheddarQueso. Are these salaries reasonable? If I did my math correctly, that is $45-$60/hr. Checking salaries at Indeed.com these are some average per hour pay rates. I rounded up.
Marketing Specialist. $24/hr
Community Manager $19/hr
Communications Specialist $29/hr
Legislative Assistant $23/hr
Marketing Director $39/hr
CEO $58/hr
Teacher $18/hr (rather pathetic pay IMO) should be more
Chairperson $9/hr (but somehow the yearly is $79,000)
Facilitator $19/hr
Governance Manager $46/hr
Team Manager $17/hr
The average pay of all of those is $27/hr. I would have to believe that the combination of all those professions covers most if not all of the tasks required by the Facilitation Squad. With the highest of all of those salaries being less than $60, I think there needs to be an evaluation of the salaries being paid as well as reviews of the individuals in the committee just as would be done for any employed person anywhere. I understand that experience is a definite plus but given these statistics I think we are overpaying by quite a bit. There should be a maximum and minimum wage placed on each of this positions and that goes for any committee and board going forward.
I’m voting yes so as to not disrupt anything but do believe there needs to be some review of the salaries.
Just want to say that the work members of this team put in is immense, and going off of indeed for salary ranges is like saying minimum wage in the United States is a livable wage.
We have taken great care in this, and each of our grants to maintain fair rates and minimize the budget. You will also notice that each step of the way I have lowered my own salary, in order to offset increasing salaries for team members putting in more time, so we can continue to provide more at as little increase as possible to the overall cost of the grant.
These are also 6 month positions, have 0 benefits, and significant uncertainty - effectively consulting positions. Rule of thumb with consulting is to take a full time salary and multiple it by at least 2, due to all the individual overhead costs people incur… At the end of the day, when covering taxes, health care, and other costs, the rate being paid out is difficult to live on, let alone provide for a family on in most of the U.S.
That all said, I do think that setting standard rate ranges for units and committees, regardless of location, that takes into account need to increase international parity in pay is something worth considering. I do, however, think it is important to make sure the DAO can attract competitive contract labor.
Impact and Evaluation is a significant endeavor, and requires specific time commitments and expertise. These, in my opinion, are fairly robust impact assessment metrics, particularly for an already active unit, and will allow us to create an impact monitoring and evaluation system, that is scalable and sustainable over time. They are both quantitative and qualitative, and cover all our primary areas of operation that we list in our responsibilities above.
This in particular, is actually no small endeavor, and will require notable mixed methods design, implementation and analysis (meaning both qualitative and quantitative work). The others are predominantly quantitative impact metrics, but they do capture the quantity of events and engagements that are designed to have qualitative outcomes.
The most complex impact metrics, will not produce the most actionable information, and professional measurement, analysis and presentation of these impact measures listed will still require the highest standard of work.
And to your comment, the standard is also very well defined:
“# of community members using onboarding materials” [and thus being equipped to become informed and contributing members of the DAO]
“Sentiment Analysis” [ability of our unit to be informed about and help express the various interests represented in our DAO community, such that all others can be informed about it and we can work with each other to the best extent possible]
“# of successful RFIs” [ This is going to be no small feet! pulling off an RFI and being able to say it was successful, is going to take a lot of coordination, and balancing of time and interests. Its potentially a new process, we will need to monitor it and assess its impact]
I can come back to the remaining ones if we need to… But overall, it is not easy to depict the depth of the impact metrics in a proposal prompt that has a 750 character limit. And these metrics provide us with a detailed and robust enough framework to clearly demonstrate the impact of our work.
“# of x” is just you will count how many times you do something, you have not defined what would be an acceptable number of times and what would be a failure worthy of revoking the grant.
I don’t think any one item in your paragraph on “metrics” actually indicates what your goals are. They can’t be used as effective performance metrics if you are not committing to a certain level of performance.
Thank you @Matimio for responding. My concern has more to do with the DAO being able to afford 400K/year for 2 squads, and if we are paying 50K for 10 hours a week now, how much will we end up paying when the community grows and we need a squad that works full time… a million/year for two squads… more? I see that the community has already decided and my voice counts little but I am surprised to see little discussion about the long-term sustainability of spending that much money. If the community feels that we can afford it then I support the squads. I agree that you guys do a great job.
In my opinion, the budget is quite correct, as @Matimio well argues, this is not a permanent job with its implicit benefits, on the other hand, if we want committed and talented people, I think we have to provide them with the resources they deserve.
I do not think it is favorable to reduce the infrastructure of the DAO, I think that we should encourage actions that attract new users to the platform while preserving the current ones.
