BanklessDAO Writers Cohort Funding Proposal

Grants/Funding
1

Project Champion: HiroKennellyᵍᵐ🏴#0001

Squad: HiroKennellyᵍᵐ🏴#0001, grant#2959

Affiliation: Writers Guild

Purpose: Public Good

Authors; Editors: grant#2959; HiroKennellyᵍᵐ🏴#0001

Date Created: February 15, 2023

Date Posted: February 15, 2023

Funds requested: 140,000 BANK

Project wallet: 0xdd12EB2f7642aa74f843892F0BC5B2054E2F24Ab

Own subDAO/Discord server: bDAO Writers Guild

Table of Contents

  1. PROJECT TEASER
  2. SUMMARY
  3. RETROSPECTIVE
  4. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
  5. SEASONAL KPI
  6. COMMITMENTS
  7. BRANDING
  8. FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

PROJECT TEASER

BanklessDAO to partner with Taptive to run the 4th BanklessDAO Writers Cohort.

SUMMARY

Project Description

This proposal seeks consensus to fund a continuing partnership with Taptive, a company which helps communities grow with the power of writing-focused, cohort-based courses.

To date, Taptive and BanklessDAO have partnered to run three BanklessDAO Writers Cohorts, and we’ve seen both community enlargement and cohesion increase with each cohort, as well as been able to ship first-time DAO authors through Bankless Publishing, which makes special allowances for cohort participants in terms of the original content policy.

The goal of the partnership is to have Taptive run its 4th cohort for BanklessDAO that will, as discussed in the Commitments section, achieve three main objectives:

  • Strengthen relationships in the DAO.
  • Boost the online presence of the DAO.
  • Level up BanklessDAO members’ brand, network, and writing skills.

Past/Preparatory Activities

Taptive and BanklessDAO have run three successful cohorts. We’ve made improvements to the model and are building upon the momentum (and email list) to run another cohort.

RETROSPECTIVE

Taptive has run three cohort-based writing programs with BanklessDAO.

Over the course of these cohorts, the community has published 159 essays. These essays have led to thousands of impressions for the DAO on Twitter and elsewhere, facilitating the sharing of BanklessDAO-aligned content with an audience that may not have otherwise been exposed to it.

In addition, the marketing of the cohort has generated its own engagement. Through a landing page (generating hundreds of page views), social media announcements, and Twitter Spaces, the cohort has spread the word about BanklessDAO and given people a straightforward way to get involved in the DAO.

Through these cohorts, we’ve also built an email list of over 250 potentially interested cohort participants (which we will activate again with each new cohort).

Finally, we’ve hosted 12 live Zoom writing workshops that furthered DAO relationships through feedback and discussion.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Project Breakdown

This proposal requests 140,000 BANK. An additional 140,000 BANK will paid to Taptive by the Writers Guild, as provided for in its Season 7 Proposal. A total of 280,000 BANK will be paid to Taptive for this current cohort.

The funds will be allocated to Taptive to run the cohort, provide course materials, manage the onboarding processes, and coordinate the cohort from end to end.

Compensation Breakdown

All funds will go to Taptive.

SEASONAL KPI

The core metric for success will be the number of essays BanklessDAO members publish. An increase in published essays is indicative of other positive impacts — more participants, more impressions for BanklessDAO, more potential for word-of-mouth growth, more learning, and more relationships built.

Additional metrics include:

  • Net Promoter Score score in an offboarding survey to determine if Taptive is able to deliver a high-quality experience to BanklessDAO members. We shoot for an NPS of around 80.
  • Number of feedback messages sent following Taptive’s feedback format.
  • Number of 1:1 discussions held in breakout rooms.

COMMITMENTS

The utility this project provides for BanklessDAO revolves around three core outcomes:

  • Strengthen relationships in the DAO: the cohort-based experience prioritizes peer-to-peer interaction, feedback, and support. Also, by focusing on the vulnerable act of publishing writing online, this cohort will create the opportunity for deeper connections.
  • Boost the online presence of the DAO: each cohort we run produces dozens of community-generated articles. BanklessDAO can elevate these posts in its newsletters, through Bankless Publishing, and on social media to share the authentic voice of your community.
  • Level up BanklessDAO members’ brand, network, and writing skills: writing is a powerful skill in the digital age. Building a digital portfolio of writing helps bDAO members connect with new people and grow their networks. Taptive has developed comprehensive resources and frameworks that will help bDAO members improve this web3 superpower.

Based on past cohorts, we will:

  • Market the cohort to the community leading to over 100 sign-ups.
  • Onboard these sign-ups into the community and the cohort.
  • Through our onboarding process, live meetings, library of writing resources, and group accountability, we will encourage the publication of over 60 BanklessDAO-aligned pieces of written content.
  • Encourage the social media sharing of over 50 of these pieces of content.
  • Generate thousands of impressions for BanklessDAO.

BRANDING

Taptive will use the BanklessDAO brand in the name of the cohort. For example, “BanklessDAO Writers Cohort”

  1. Taptive will create a short landing page that will give interested participants a place to input their emails to join the cohort. The landing page will use the cohort name and Bankless branding.
  2. Taptive will also create the “BanklessDAO Writer’s Cohort Notion Home” as noted above. This will include BanklessDAO branding.
  3. Taptive will send email reminders that will include the name of the cohort “BanklessDAO Writers Cohort” in the communications.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

BanklessDAO x Taptive Partnership Proposal — Additional Materials

https://twitter.com/BanklessWriters

  • Yes, fund the BanklessDAO Writers Cohort
  • No, don’t fund the BanklessDAO Writers Cohort

0 voters

5 Likes
2

In all honesty, I am always skeptical of funding services from outside of the DAO, and rather I favour the option of providing the talent from within. This being said, given the success of the Writers’ cohort, the past collaborations and the decent financial ask for the services, I couldn’t vote no.

I was wondering, what reasons could have someone to actually vote no?

4 Likes
3

why isn’t this funded by the Guild?

4

It’s 1/2 funded by the Guild. If we funded it w/ only Guild funds, it would be nearly 1/3 of our S7 budget. Given the scope and impact of the program, I think it’s more than appropriate to seek 1/2 of the funding from the GC.

3 Likes
5

correct me if I am wrong, but it does seem like ‘onboarding’ which is the guild task is being outsourced. If onboarding is 1/3 of the guild responsibility then 1/3 of the guild budget should be spent on this goal.

6

Hi Jenga, Without addressing any number of assumptions you are making about how Guilds should spend their budgets, you may misunderstand the objectives of this proposal:

I don’t know where the nexus is between onboarding and education in this proposal, for the Guild, the DAO, or the ecosystem (but it’s somewhere, hence why we are allocating 140K from the WG budget), but its impact is much greater than on just the Writers Guild. We’re building relationships in web3, and spreading the DAO’s message and presence.

2 Likes
7

I think there’s just some confusion how “onboarding” is being used in the proposal.

@Jengajojo onboarding in this context isn’t onboarding to the writer’s guild, it’s on-boarding to the cohort.

3 Likes
8

Is there a cost to folks that sign up for the cohort on that platform?

9

I’m not sure what you mean by platform; it’s just run through Discord, Notion, and Zoom. Regardless, 100% free to participants.

1 Like
10

@hirokennelly This is a well thought out proposal, thank you. Can you help me understand what the differences (if any) are between the BanklessDAO Writers Cohort and Bankless Academys Writers Cohort? Thank you

1 Like
11

I can’t speak to the BA Cohort, as I’m not part of that, but perhaps @iSpeakNerd or @Grant could!

1 Like
12

Hi Sprinkles, great question.

We specifically targeted marketing at teachers and authors in outside communities not focused very much on bDAO native writers to see if we could source outside lesson writers from people who already knew how to write their own lessons and think about knowledge transfer holistically.

@hirokennelly can talk more about the difference between writing a personal essay and writing a lesson at Academy from his extensive experience as a solo author and his work on Academy’s recent Layer 2 lesson.

So we got a different take on things, many essays focused around blockchain/NFT use in education. We hosted the Cohort through the Academy gm.xyz community Bankless Academy | gm.xyz where you can see the over 50 essays published as part of the cohort. :muscle:

Finally we were experimenting with community creation and curation of content to go in the Academy’s Learn Library leveraging gm’s upvote feature.

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There are plans to run a second BA cohort that would have writers hosting their essays on a secondary community site on BA to encourage regular return of readers to reviewing Academy content and attracting more writers over time.

2 Likes
13

Am leaning towards Yes for this proposal. I believe the DAO needs this.

On top of that, I have got 2 requests - @hirokennelly

Once this goes through.

  1. Can the writers guild connect with other projects/media nodes to participate - making it an ecosystem thing? I believe the net benefit could be tremendous this way. I know it exist in a subtle way but it’s not concrete and elaborate. What that means is that, nodes can even present their members interested in the program in a sort of formal way🤔

  2. Could an NFT or POAP be issued for this? add a little bit of gamification and fun to it. give graduating participate some bragging right😉

2 Likes
14

gm gm! The WG promotes these efforts across the DAO’s social media platforms, including the CCs leading up to the cohort. TBH, most cohort participants come from outside the WG, and I love the idea of a more concerted marketing effort in our Guilds and Projects, and, for example, would love it we could drop announcements in the BA and FC servers (was already intending to for Bankless Consulting, whose members have been active in previous cohorts). Great thinking :brain:

As for NFTs, @Grant and I were recently discussing this. You could do an NFT for the weekly vote winners, and cohort participants in general, and the POAP could be serve as proof-of-publication, like a Bill of Lading for shipping! Whatever it is, I just know the POAP needs a boat on it lol.

Thanks for your input ser, and please let me know if I addressed your questions, esp #1. I’ll ping @Grant for his input too. Cheers!

2 Likes
15

Yup. Nailed it. :facepunch:t5::facepunch:t5:

1 Like
16

@hirokennelly Sorry that I didn’t previously ask this, (my oversight as I am having link fatigue) Is this a new discord server for the BanklessDAO Writers Guild or specifically for thiw writing cohort?

1 Like
17

The WG has had its own server for close to a year, but honestly we don’t use it for much atm. It’ll be good for the Cohort b/c bDAO onboarding is challenged, and we’ve lost a ton of cohort participants in prior seasons b/c of onboarding issues (can’t verify, guest pass expires before cohort is over, peeps overwhelmed/can’t figure out how to find the cohort channel etc.)

2 Likes
18

I’m a member of Cohert 3, and I can say what an amazing project for new BDao members, like myself, and actually all BDao members. Fantastic program and I hope to see it continue!

3 Likes
19

Thank you for participating, and for showing your support on the Forum!! I’ve really enjoyed your articles!!

2 Likes
20

Thanks, @hirokennelly that really means a lot! :slight_smile:

1 Like