Bankless Africa Season 9 funding proposal

Grants/Funding Season 9 Proposals
1

Bankless Africa

Project Champion: @thinkDecade

Squad: @kutubu @Abidemi @Crossvic @Bintu @Salvi @Paulito @LordRanchoatos1813 & morešŸ˜…

Purpose: Public good

Authors; Editors: thinkDecade

Date created: 21-07-2023

Date posted: 22-07-2023

Funds requested: 1,604,000

Project wallet(s): 0xCA27C5813c314586434512ab139Cad96F6b71750

Discord server: Discord

PROJECT TEASER

An Impact community that enables Africans to discover decentralized money and blockchain technology while driving capacity building and economic empowerment.

SUMMARY

Bankless Africa continues to grow as the go-to education and information source for many everyday Africans on all things crypto and web3, truly embodying the bankless mission and vision.

RETROSPECTIVE

Itā€™s a match through the bear trenches. And we remain resolute and shipping-focus!

Bankless Africa Podcast

The Bankless Africa podcast continues its growth in download numbers.

We crossed listens in over 100 countries and grew our download numbers significantly.

837Ɨ160 6.98 KB

We also updated our Sponsorship packages and reached out more. Unfortunately most potential sponsors claim the bear market is not favorable. We are not giving up though.

Pidgin Parlour Crypto Podcast

.The Pidgin Parlour podcast also experienced great growth crossing 5000 downloads.

984Ɨ246 15.1 KB

Communlatively the podcasts from the Bankless Africa community has crossed 35000 downloads

Newsletter & Publication

Due to funding constraints, we had to adjust the newsletter publication rate from weekly to monthly. Despite a lack of funding for the last 2 seasons, we have continued to keep the newsletter alive to continue to provide insight and impact for our audience.

We are currently at 357 subs with a 37% open rate.

BlocScribe

We have started shipping on our BlocScribe mirror publication. We are currently running a content campaign where we publish optimism content on there for people to collect. We intend to leverage this to apply for RPGF from Optimism as part of a current ongoing integrated content campaign with other bDAO projects.

Community & IRL

We media partnered with Blockchain & Beyond conference which saw 2000 + attendees.

New event - media partner and co-organizer of EthAccra

Bankless Africa is helping organize EthAccra, a 3-day in-person hackathon aimed at educating young generations of web3 developers and builders. The hackathon will encourage the creation of new applications to help address local problems in West Africa and advance the Ethereum community in West Africa.

SEASONAL KPI

We will continue building Bankless Africa into the ideal crypto education and information hub for the everyday African while inspiring a new breed of cryptonatives to add value to the Web3 space. We also aim to improve our content strategies to optimize for high-impact and potential revenue generation.

image
image1192Ɨ858 20.1 KB

KPIs for season 9šŸ‘‡šŸ¾

Bankless Africa Podcast

Downloads ā†’ 35,000

Episodes ā†’ 20

sponsorship ā†’ at least 1

Pidgin Parlour Crypto podcast

Downloads ā†’ 7,000

Episodes ā†’ 10

Newsletter

Issues ā†’ 8

Subs ā†’ 1000

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Season 8 revenue split

Revenue source Amount Commitment
Gitcoin Beta Round 839.5 DAI 10%
Clr. fund public good round pending 10%

Season 9 revenue mobilisation strategies.

:next_track_button:More effort to get into public good funding rounds - Gitcoin, Optimism, clr, DAOdrops etc.

:next_track_button:Listing & driving more publicity to our project on open funding platforms such as Giveth -
Bankless Africa |<!-- --> Giveth

:next_track_button:Isolate pidgin parlour to start applying for Grants - experiment.

Season 9 funding ask

BA Consolidated Seasonal funding Budget Ask

Project/Category Season total
Podcast 658,000
Newsletter 112,000
Pidgin Parlour 514,000
ProjectOps/community 320,000
Total 1,604,000

COMMITMENTS

ā†’ 10% of revenue generated will be used to add value to the DAO.

BRANDING

We continue to align strongly with the mission and vision of bDAO. We continue to use the Bankless brand in our various projects and initiatives.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

Discord: Bankless Africa

Linktree: banklessafrica | Twitter, Instagram, TikTok | Linktree

Twitter - https://twitter.com/Bankless_Africa

Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal. We appreciate you.

  • Yes to proposal
  • No to proposal
0 voters
1 Like
2

Thanks Bankless Africa. Could you please provide a summary of your nonBANK income from S8?

  • According to Gitcoin Grants: Beta Round - #12 by Jengajojo the income from the Beta round should be higher

  • How much OP will be earned from the recent optimism grant?

  • Is there any revenue from sponsorships or any other sources?

3

Hey @thinkDecade thanks for posting your proposal! Iā€™m your GC reviewer and have some questions/comments for you.

  • How often are you shipping podcasts? How many podcast episodes did you ship in S8 and how many will you ship in S9?
    • I ask. this question because I find your KPIs can be hard to contextualize - some are ā€œall timeā€ numbers and some are ā€œper seasonā€
    • Followup: why does a Pidgin Parlour episode cost so much more BANK to release than a BA/S&G podcast episode?
  • From a GC perspective, your KPIs are pretty complicated. Itā€™s great youā€™re sharing this depth with the DAO, but Iā€™d like to narrow your KPIs for our reporting purposes. Here are my suggestions:
    • Monthly engagement (add all podcast downloads and newsletter opens together)
    • Monthly non-BANK revenue (grants, NFT revenue, etc)
    • Note: In general Iā€™d prefer if you didnā€™t report all-time downloads or set your goals around all-time downloads. Itā€™s a fun number, but itā€™s not really one that is useful from a strategy perspective IMHO. Feel free to poke me if you wanna know why.
  • What do you know about your audience? Who is downloading your podcasts, where are they, and why are they finding your content valuable?
  • How many sponsors did you reach out to in S8? Will you continue in S9 or focus on getting your grant/donation machine going?

In general I am supportive of your project, and I would like to help you have a tighter reporting structure so the DAO can understand your strategy and progress.

1 Like
4

  1. Interesting, we only received that amount indicated in the proposal. I will look into it ASAP.

  2. 10,500 Op + retroactive. not sure of retroactive though.

  3. nope

5

1a. We ship podcast weekly, we have shipped a total of 26 episodes.
1b. The downloads are given for both all time downloads.
1c. Pigdin Parlour episode includes the newsletter and translation captured in that budget. So technically that budget is for pidgin parlour podcast, newsletter, publication and other expenses.

2a. I differ on your thoughts about all time downloads not being strategic. in facts itā€™s the most strategic KPI among the KPIs. the others are basically short term or medium term. even Bankless HQ brag about their all time high numbers of twitter. It gives a bigger picture of where we have reached quantitatively. e.g, if we are onboarding 100,000 people, how do we justify that number? one way is with all time KPIs.

  1. on audience, top 10 countries are

  2. Ghana

  3. Nigeria

  4. United States

  5. United Kingdom

  6. Kenya

  7. Canada

  8. South Africa

  9. Netherlands

  10. Lesotho

  11. Japan

  12. In season 8, we reached out to atleast 5 potential sponsors. We will continue in season 9.

6

All-time numbers are vanity metrics, and need to be unpacked to understand the true momentum of a project. If you have 10 monthly listeners over 10 years, you have 1200 downloadsā€¦but if a project has 1200 downloads after 1 year, wouldnā€™t you say the second project is doing better?

All-time metrics effectively multi-count individuals. 100,000 downloads does not mean you have onboarded 100,000 people to bankless. This is why I ask that you start reporting your metrics monthly instead of all-time.

As per my original question: will you also be working on grants? Which one will take more of your focus, grants or sponsors?

7

On monthly KPIs
Am not opposed to Monthly numbers as you know, I already report them.

On All Time figures

All Time Download as a metric is an indication of accumulated effort + Impact. Referring to it as a Vanity metrics is down playing and disregarding all the work that has gone into making that happen.

All Time numbers are used all over the place to gauge growth and health of projects over time. In fact it is one of the most important metrics in the crypto space. Itā€™s used everywhere, from the technical layer to the Media/social layer.

So should I compare a project that has survived for 10 years with a 1 year project. sure. What is more important? Survival or virality?

Survival is all about thinking long term and maximizing impact.

Virality is all about short term and doing whatever it takes to boost short term numbers - We see projects that make noise and disappear in months. We have seen a bDAO project that bought thousands of twitter followers overnight or so. Didnā€™t really end well.

Getting obsessed about short term metrics such as monthly often leads to tunnel visions and inability to properly access projects impacts effectively.

Key take away is to combine both which is what we are doing. So yeah, All Time figure is not a vanity metric in this situation.

On Grant & Sponsorship

  1. The answer is a resounding Yes. Definitely working hard on that front.

  2. focus will be on Grants. sponsorships mostly involve obligations that might go against our ethos. The last project that sponsored us basically collapsed due to regulations in Nigeria. We had lots of our community members sign up and deposit money on the platform. We donā€™t want to be in a position where we jeopardize our listeners because we want to chase money. So the sponsorship front will be more cautious.

Lastly, we are basically a public good and Grants are more aligned.

1 Like
8

@thinkDecade can we align on the following KPIs?

  • monthly podcast downloads for all podcasts
  • total current newsletter subs (i.e. donā€™t include unsubscribes)
  • monthly # grant applications submitted
  • monthly sponsorship revenue
1 Like
9

Hereā€™s an adjustmentā€¦

  • All Time Download - Podcasts

  • Monthly Download - Podcasts

  • Open Rate - newsletter

  • total current newsletter subs (i.e. donā€™t include unsubscribes)

  • monthly # grant applications submitted

  • Sponsorship - season

10

@thinkDecade you are welcome to keep track of all of those numbers, but I need monthly numbers to put in the KPI database.

  • Can you help me understand why we need both All-time downloads AND Monthly downloads in the KPI sheet? I can put both in but it seems kind of silly
  • How are you going to report monthly open rate? Average open rate of all emails for the month?
  • Why sponsorship by season? Itā€™s literally the sum of the monthly numbers isnā€™t it? Why not report the monthly numbers and then just add them together?

I think I am having trouble understanding why you want to report these metrics, so maybe you can explain it to me.

11

Your questions are repetition of earlier questions and I have given ample explanation in my earlier replies.

12

Okay, well GC typically only records 2-3 KPIs per project, so I am hesistant to track 6 like you have mentioned. So I will choose 3:

  • monthly podcast downloads for all podcasts
  • total current newsletter subs (i.e. donā€™t include unsubscribes)
  • monthly sponsorship revenue

Do you accept these KPIs?

13

Copy that. will do.