Education Department S10 Funding Request

Grants/Funding Season 10 Proposals
1

Education Department S10 Funding Request

Authors: Paulitobankless, Hypolithe
Editors: Oluwasijibomi, KingIBK
Date: 11/11/2023
Wallet surplus: 90,500 BANK
Funds requested: 577,500 BANK
Multisig: 0xcF8422021b408B32983B525778CE45420715f094
Multisig signers: Paulitobankless, Oluwasijibomi, KingIBK, Nikilbrawal, Thinkdecade, 0xzfi, Quietfox

Department Purpose & Mission/Value Alignment

One of the fundamental values upheld by the DAO is Education, and the Education Department assumes a pivotal role in onboarding new members to the DAO as well as maintaining a dynamic educational infrastructure for various entities within the organization, including guilds, departments, and projects.

The services offered to DAO Members and Units align with the core mission, vision, and values of the DAO, encompassing the following:

  1. Live onboarding sessions for newcomers to the DAO

  2. Practical training on DAO tools for all members

  3. Knowledge Sessions covering DAO financial and governance infrastructure

  4. Development of talent among educators

New members are introduced through the New Joiner Sessions, providing them with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the people, projects, and processes within BanklessDAO. For those who are new to DAO environments, we provide essential information to facilitate a smooth start.

The Knowledge Session series is designed for members seeking to deepen their understanding of Web3 and DeFi, essential for effective engagement in web3 activities. Concurrently, the How-To series tailors its content to members aspiring to evolve into proficient DAO contributors, offering a continually evolving calendar of workshops to support their development.

Seasonal Summary

Seasonal KPIs

KPI Data Tracked by Type S8 S9 Comments
# of How to Sessions [S8], [S9] 25 15+ S9 data based on 11/11/23 on or before
# of Added Sessions 3 3 How to Gitcoin, How to Snapshot, and How to Discourse (Forum)
Total # of attendees for New Joiner Sessions [NJS Data S8], [NJS Data S9] 38 24+ S9 data based on 11/11/23 on or before
# Events with Talent Development [S8], [S9] 20 10+ S9 data based on 11/11/23 on or before
# of Unique Attendees in How Tos [S8], [S9] 31 24+ S9 data based on 11/11/23 on or before
# of New teachers onboarded 2 3 S9 data based on 11/11/23 on or before

Previous Season Activities

In Season 8, amidst a noticeable dearth of new members in our Discord community, our focus shifted towards enhancing the skills of our existing educators. Over the course of the season, two instructors underwent a comprehensive training and improvement process for their courses.

However, Season 9 witnessed a decline in overall engagement, prompting a strategic redirection of our efforts. Our emphasis shifted towards the creation of new courses and the systematic upskilling and training of our teaching staff. Notably, two new instructors were successfully onboarded during this season, contributing to the expansion and diversification of our educational offerings.

Operational enhancements were implemented to augment the overall learning experience.

  • Our Live Sessions Calendar, now functioning as an asynchronous educational library, provides participants with easy access to materials by clicking on specific calendar events.
  • Additionally, a platform transition from Zep to Google Meet was executed for new joiner sessions, prioritizing accessibility and mitigating connectivity issues.
  • The marketing department played a pivotal role in maintaining visibility for our educational sessions, leveraging platforms such as Twitter to effectively promote our initiatives.
  • In response to the evolving landscape, new courses were introduced, encompassing topics like “How to Gitcoin,” “How to Snapshot,” and “How to Discourse (Forum).”
  • Acknowledging the significance of community support, we streamlined the process for donations through our Spect.Network feedback forms. Not only does this facilitate financial contributions, but it also allows us to incentivize attendees through the distribution of Kudos, providing on-chain credentials that recognize and reward active participation.
  • These strategic adjustments and operational highlights underscore our commitment to continuous improvement, ensuring that our community remains a vibrant and enriching space for learning and collaboration.

Previous Season DAO Updates

Next Season Plan

  • Increase the number of new joiners attending the new joiners session.
  • Create an onboarding road map for new members coming into the DAO
  • Involve talent coordinators of various guilds for the New Joiner sessions to aid in the onboarding of new folks into various DAO units.
  • Migrate the New Joiners session back to the Discord server.
  • Increase the number of participants attending the How to sessions and knowledge sessions.
  • Develop new courses on new tools and protocols used in the DAO.
  • Add New Joiners session materials and quizzes on the How to sessions to the bDAO onboarding site.
  • Onboard and upskill new teachers.

Financial Implications

Previous Season Accounting & Current Holdings

The expected expenditure for S9 is 590,000 BANK
Cuurent expenditure as at November 11, 2023 = 294,000 BANK

Third-Party Funding and External Revenue

The department does not receive any external revenue or funding.

Next Season Budget Breakdown

Role salaries: 400,000 BANK

Role BANK
Operations Coordinator 144,000
Operations Understudy 80,000
Administrative Coordinator 112,000
Administrative Understudy 64,000
Total: 400,000

Bounty expenses: 268,000 BANK

Bounties BANK
New Joiner Sessions (8 per season at 9000 BANK each) 72,000
How-To Sessions (49 per season at 4,000 BANK each) 196,000
Total: 268,000

Total BANK: 668,000 BANK

S9 left over: 90,500 BANK

Total seasonal funding request: 577,500 BANK

Compensation Breakdown

Roles:

Operations Coordinator (9 hr/wk x 16 weeks)

  • Meeting prep and facilitation for the Weekly Sync and Working sessions
  • Strategic course planning and course development
  • Accounting, reporting, and member activity tracking
  • Scheduling of events on Live Sessions Calendar, including NJS
  • Update templates with teacher reviews
  • Manage Notion Kanban
  • Serve as contact point between department and the DAO
  • Take care of seasonal funding proposal
  • Host feedback reviews

Coordinator Understudy (5 hr/wk x 16 weeks)

  • Assist the Department Coordinator in tracking member activity
  • Steward Weekly Sync occasionally and when Coordinator is unavailable
  • New teacher onboarding
  • Get breakout room training if they don’t have
  • Provide mentorship to breakout room facilitators and presenters in the NJS
  • Familiarize with Praise thread and Kanban onboarding process
  • Learn how to manage Notion pages for events
  • Attend and participate in weekly sync and work meetings (work priority)
  • Creation of feedback forms and Kudos; reporting of feedback data (weekly report)

Administrative Coordinator (7 hr/wk x 16 weeks)

  • Payment tracking and processing for tasks/NJS
  • Assist with treasury accounting
  • Safe/Multi-sig management
  • Upkeep of Education Department Notion pages
  • Write, respond, and follow up on Discourse polls and posts
  • Attend and participate in Weekly Sync
  • Back-up facilitator for Weekly Sync
  • Creation of marketing content for educational sessions to be delivered to the marketing department.

Administrative Understudy (4 hr/wk x 16 weeks)

  • Create “Journal” and post Learning Opportunities update
  • Community Call prep and slide presenter
  • Assist the Admin coordinator where needed
  • Manage NJS events in Notion calendar and fill in properties
  • Add events to Sesh Bot Calendar
  • Attend and participate in Weekly Sync

Department Members

List your key members and the roles they play

  1. Paulitobankless (Operations Coordinator)

  2. Oluwasijibomi (Adminstrative Coordinator)

  3. Hypolithe (Operations Understudy)

  4. Kigibk (Administrative Understudy)

  5. 0xzfi (Multisig)

  6. Ornellaweb3 (NJS /Onboarding)

  7. Aloy (Teacher)

  8. Ifeoluwakiitan (Teacher)

  9. Marvel (NJS/Onboarding)

  10. Melasin (Teacher)

  11. Nikilbrawal (Multisig)

  12. Thinkdecade (Multisig)

  13. Warrior.eth (Teacher)

  14. Ximpli_ana (Teacher)

  15. OIT (Research & Design)

  16. Sakeenah (Research & Design

  17. Quietfox (Multisig)

Additional Information

Should the Department be Funded
  • Yes of course
  • No, I disagree
  • Abstain, here’s why
0 voters
2 Likes
2

I feel the Education Department needs to redefine its outputs for higher value impact before I can agree to a half a million more BANK in funding for the current operations. I still support having an Education Department, but it’s time to think about a new, healthier approach.

It seems like a large portion of the salaried roles are dedicated to organizing, marketing, and staffing sessions with zero to minimal turnout. Despite increasing salary spending to accommodate additional marketing for these sessions at the beginning of Season 9, seven of 23 sessions (so far) have been canceled or no-shows.

Across all live sessions so far this season, the maximum number of attendees for any given session, who weren’t already a part of the Education Department, is two. If we’re spending 4k BANK in bounties per session, and 400k BANK per season in salaries dedicated mostly to prepping and managing the rotation of these sessions, to reach up to two people, then I think it’s time to rethink the live sessions approach.

Maybe creating an instructional video one time and embedding it on the Notion page, for example would be a more efficient and effective use of resources. Or maybe record the next live session and embed that recording. We could even link out to these tools’ actual websites or videos already made by someone else that contain the information we’ve been trying to teach.

I can’t vote in support of funding the continuation of current operations.

There are some really good new goals here for Season 10, like the onboarding roadmap and outreach to talent coordinators of other subgroups. I think there are other efforts going on across the DAO in consolidating and clarifying the onboarding process, so this would be a great opportunity for cross-subgroup coordination. I also support moving the NJS into Discord for visibility.

However, I think much of this list is out of the control sphere of the Department. Increasing new joiners and increasing participants, for example, are driven by actual demand for education by outside parties. Optimizing for them is not likely to be worthwhile. This could very quickly lead to an additional increase in runaway spending in the pursuit of an unreachable goal. Adding new sessions that don’t have existing demand, is likely to result in more no-shows. Onboarding and up-skilling new teachers should be informed by demand, as well.

Increasing new joiners and live session participants should not be an objective of the Education Department, but rather a trackable metric indicative of general interest from outside parties in joining BanklessDAO. If additional funding is thrown at marketing to try to pump these numbers, it will just be more wasted funding. And who would benefit? Does the DAO need to pump it’s new member count up for the sake of having more member count? I don’t necessarily see an incentive alignment here.

These head counts could instead inform where funding could be allocated more efficiently. For sessions that consistently have no attendees, maybe pull them from the session rotation. This used to be a departmental KPI that was built in to prevent wasteful spending, but it appears to have been removed for this season’s funding request, while also being more important than ever.

2 Likes
3

Thank you for the feedback, ser. So I will just point out a few things. We are actually redefining a lot of things in the department.
First, the department is working on restructuring the bDAO onboarding workflow alongside Ornella and other members of the DAO.
We have developed new courses about bDAO protocols that weren’t in existence before.
We have had four new members from the New Joiners session retained, and they are contributing to different guilds and departments currently.
We are working towards creating how-to sessions on topics relating to the Arbtrium network, and this proposal is being worked on by Jenga and has been submitted to the ArbtriumDAO forum. You can check out the proposal here:

So with all that been said, a lot has been done and a lot are still in the pipeline and I can say even with the bear market, we have made some remarkable achievements.

3 Likes
4

I support all of these things! What are your thoughts on reallocating a portion of the live session resources to these things instead? I would argue that it would be a more effective use of the BANK ask.

3 Likes
5

That’s a very good suggestion. We would look into it. Thank you so much for bringing it up.