Education Department Season 9 Funding Request

Grants/Funding Season 9 Proposals
1

Author: Paulitobankless; Hypolithe, Oluwasijibomi, KingIBK
Date created: 7/15/2023
Date posted: 7/21/2023
Affiliation: New members/on-boarding, Operations, Treasury, and Governance Departments
Funds requested: 296,115 BANK
Department wallet: 0xcF8422021b408B32983B525778CE45420715f094

SUMMARY

Department Description

One of the DAO’s core values is Education. The Education Department plays a key role in DAO Member Onboarding and maintaining live educational infrastructure for members, guilds, departments, and projects. With our new Ed3 DAO collaboration continuing in Season 9, our Live Sessions will be available to non-Bankless DAO Discord members as well.

The Services we provide to DAO Members and Units that align with the DAO’s Mission, Vision, & Values are as follows:

  • Live onboarding for new joiners to the DAO
  • Hands-on training on DAO tools for all DAO members
  • Knowledge Sessions for DAO financial and governance infrastructure
  • Educators talent development

New members are first welcomed with New Joiner Sessions, which provide an opportunity to become more familiar with the people, projects, and processes of BanklessDAO. Then, for those who may never have worked within a DAO before, we offer the necessary information to get started.

The Knowledge Session series is primarily focused on members wishing to advance their web3 and DeFi understanding to the next level, which is necessary for effective work in web3, while the How-To series caters to members looking to develop to become effective DAO members through an ever-evolving calendar of workshops.

Past Activities

In Season 7, with the lack of new folks in the Discord, more attention has been paid to getting new teachers up-skilled in their ability to teach. We have had 4 teachers get a whole season of teaching and improving their courses, and we have 2 new teachers this season stepping up to teach courses.

In season 8, we had a decline in engagement, and as such, we paid more attention to developing more courses and upskilling and training teachers. We had 3 new joiners get onboarded to become teachers, and we had our teachers develop and improve their courses. We also have the following operational highlights:

  • Our Live Sessions Calendar is also an async educational library. Click on an event in the Calendar to get access to the async material
  • We changed our new joiner session Platform from Zoom to Zep which is a virtual classroom environment. This is to allow for easy accessibility, ensure the adoption of Web 3 tools in our operation, and also create an environment for new joiners to interact with.
  • We switched our feedback platform from Google Forms to Spect Forms, which happens to be a Web 3 protocol.
  • We started promoting our education sessions on twitter through the marketing department.
  • We have a more defined process for quickly creating content based on the needs of projects and organizational units. We spun up educational courses for How to Gnosis and Parcel, Praise Bot, and How to Bounty Board/Dework.
  • We tested and opened our courses to folks outside of the BanklessDAO Discord, and we have plans in partnership with Ed3DAO, which is an educator’s DAO and also the provider of the zep space we use.
  • We now accept donations via our Spect.Network feedback forms, and with these forms, we also get to incentivize attendees with Kudos (onchain credentials).

MISSION & VALUE ALIGNMENT

The Education Department plays a key role in the empowerment of DAO members through

  • onboarding new joiners,
  • teaching DAO tooling that members need to familiarize themselves with in order to succeed in the DAO, and
  • hands on workshops for those looking to further their crypto exploration beyond the introductory level.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Budget Breakdown

Role salaries: 416,000 BANK

Role BANK
Operations Coordinator 148,000
Operations Understudy 72,000
Administrative Coordinator 128,000
Administrative Understudy 68,000
Total: 416,000

Bounty expenses: 250,500 BANK

Bounties BANK
New Joiner Sessions (7 per season at 10,500 BANK each) 73,500
How-To and Knowledge Sessions (45 per season at 4,000 BANK each) 180,000
Total: 253,500

Total BANK: 669,500 BANK

S8 left over: 373,385 BANK

Total seasonal funding request: 296,115 BANK

Compensation Breakdown

Roles:

Operations Coordinator (9.25 hr/wk x 16 weeks)

  • Meeting prep and facilitation for the Weekly Sync and Stand-Up meetings
  • 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
  • Mentor the presenters in notetaking and updating of course (1.25 hr per Tu-Th)
  • Register events and coordinate marketing with Ed3 DAO (1hr/wk)
  • Host feedback reviews

Coordinator Understudy (4.5 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 meeting (work priority)
  • Creation of feedback forms and Kudos; reporting of feedback data (weekly report)

Administrative Coordinator (8 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 and Stand-Up meetings
  • Back-up facilitator for Weekly Sync and Stand-Up meetings
  • Creation of marketing content for educational sessions to be delivered to the marketing department.

Administrative Understudy (4.25 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
  • Steward NJS Level 2 Outline biweekly planning meetings
  • Add events to Sesh Bot Calendar
  • Attend and participate in Weekly Sync and Stand-Up meetings (w/Stand-Up priority)

SEASONAL KPI

KPI Type KPI Description & Success Environmental Factors
Breadth of Knowledge Increase in Knowledge Base and Sessions Increases in quantity and quality seasonally
bDAO Onboarding Increase the number of New Joiners to the DAO & the number of talent development opportunities. Correlates with general DAO population cycles
Educational Reach The number of unique participants in the educational sessions. Correlates with general DAO population cycles
Workshop Demand If this threshold is met, demand for the course is assessed. ≥3
KPI Data Tracked by Type S7 S8 Comments
Breadth of Knowledge
# of How to Sessions [S7 1], [S8] 21 15+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
# of Knowledge Sessions [S7 1], [S8] 8 6+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
# of Added Sessions 4 3+ Praise bot, how to bounty board, how to parcel
# of Courses In Development [S7], [S8] 9 3 Filter by Season
bDAO Onboarding
Total # of attendees for New Joiner Sessions (NJS Data table 1), (NJS Data S8) 26 22+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
# Events with Talent Development [S7 1], [S8] 19 15+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
Educational Reach
# of Unique Attendees in How Tos
S7 1, S8 19 22+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
# of Unique Attendees in Knowledge Sessions
S7 1, S8 11 4+ S8 data based on 7/21/23 on or before
Workshop Demand Benchmark
Minimum # of attendees for each live How-To or Knowledge Session 3 2 If there are fewer than 2 attendees or low survey scores, courses may be dropped or the time may be used for talent development

FURTHER DEPARTMENT CHANNELS

Member Guild or Department Affiliations
0xzfi Education Department, Ops Dept, AV Guild
Quietfox#2574 Education Department
paulitobankless Education Department, Writers Guild, DAOlationship Guild
kingibk Education Department, Ops Dept
warrior.eth Education Department
aloy6049 Education Department
Marvel :black_flag:#0536 Education Department
thinkdecade Education Department, Bankless Africa, Grants Committee
hypolithe Education Department,Translators guild ,Pm guild
ximpli_ana Education Department
oluwasijibomi Education Department, Ops Dept, Marketing Dept
melasin Education Department
bohjypellar Education Department
ifeoluwakiitan Education Department

NEXT STEPS

  • Remove some courses from rotation, recruit teachers for new courses.
  • Continue to open up events to folks outside the BanklessDAO Discord.
Should the education department be funded
  • I agree to funding the department
  • I dont agree to funding the department
  • I have a question before i vote
0 voters
3 Likes
2

  • Since these sessions are open to nonDAO members, what are the plans of the department to find nonDAO sources of income to fund these initiatives?

  • i do see the point in continuing the New Joiner Sessions, but I do not see the value in teaching the same people the same things again and again. If we are not impacting atleast 10-20 new members in each workshop, we are spending resources on things that could be better spent elsewhere.

  • In fact i think we maybe doing a disservice to people by spoon feeding and hand holding them instead of teaching them generally how to learn anything new in an ever changing environment.

3 Likes
3

While I’d like to see the Education Department continue existing in some capacity into Season 9, I do not support any portion of this funding request amount. Here are my concerns:

  1. The Season 8 funding amount was intended to cover a full workshop schedule and biweekly New Joiner Sessions. About one-third of the workshops and New Joiner Sessions that were budgeted for have not been held, so there is an accumulation of unused funding as a result. This funding could be applied forward to Season 9 expenses.

  2. Of the actual workshops presented in Season 8, more than half of them were sessions in which there were no attendees. Additional unused funding is available as a result, because scheduled sessions that end up with no participants provide a half-pay reward. Savings here could be applied forward to Season 9 expenses.

    This compensation policy detail is one I championed for the Department as a teacher, and still fully support. The argument was that these sessions still required preparation and the blocking of presentation time from the teacher’s personal schedule, and therefore should be rewarded at least partially for setting aside the time. BUT, this policy was also intended to be checked by the KPIs that were set for Season 8: Live workshops with fewer than three participants were to be removed from rotation.

  3. Further budgetary reductions could be secured by reducing the frequency of New Joiner Sessions to once per month. The last several New Joiner Sessions had fewer than three attendees. Cut frequency in half and expenses will follow similarly. Better yet may be to set a minimum number of RSVP’d attendees to ~10 and to only hold the session if the demand proves it exists.

  4. The Season 8 funding request was 674,500 BANK, for a fully-booked schedule. The Department treasury already holds 800,885 BANK, which should be more than enough to fund next season’s expenses, even if they are similar to the full-schedule Season 8 projections. However, this Season 9 funding request asks for an additional 666,500 BANK.

  5. There are no Season 9 KPIs. It appears the table above has been recycled from the funding request I posted last season, but was not updated.

  6. Given these collective reductions in required workloads, role holder time requirements (and therefore salary expenses) would also likely follow. This could provide further savings.

6 Likes
4

This amount leads me to believe that there are not many actual contributors to this guild.

Why are these amounts so high? I know that the price of bank isn’t the highest but I’m highly perplexed at these bank allotments for roles.

5

This is true!

(If you give a man a fish quote comes into mind here)

@Paulito , I wonder if the idea is to help folks learn how to learn? Instead of walking through the same programs week after week.

I believe the edu department has an overflowing amount of unused potential that could be helped with a series of being self assertive, using logic to think outside of the box, and more.

Instead of coming to the guild to pick up bounties, we’re instead coming to the guild to encourage people to explore.

So as it stands, I don’t support this.

6

Gm ser as regard funding, we have created a spect form that allows for contributors to donate to the education series. We are also extending our reach by partnering with Ed3DAO which happens to be an education community. This is a work in progress, and we intend to kick it off fully in Season 9.

As regards the education sessions, we have new members coming in, and they need to be guided on the tools used in the DAO. Everyone does not have the same capacity, but some people are able to get much more involved when they are guided. This was the case for me when I joined, and I wouldn’t want to deny another new member that opportunity.

As for the attendance, we all know that we are in the bear market, but we are working towards improving it, so we have started marketing the sessions on the BanklessDAO Twitter through the marketing department.

3 Likes
7

For clarity, Education is actually a Department now, not a Guild. So this list here is just the four role holders, and not indicative of the actual active members.

Active members of the Education Department also include the teachers and support crew running the workshops, facilitators for the New Joiner Sessions, and new contributors who are actively learning how to teach these sessions themselves.

The amounts are calculated based on estimated time spent fulfilling weekly Department duties. Each role’s responsibilities are broken down here.

2 Likes
8

Thank you very much ser for your observation.

Firstly, I am happy that the department wallet address is open for all to see; according to the Department template given, there was no provision for putting up what will be left over after S8 spending. Which I would have done if requested. We don’t have any intention to accumulate BANK that will not be in use. We are bDAO-aligned, and as such, we are looking for ways to improve the department and also find ways to generate revenue as much as possible.

As for the KPIs, we left them the same way we reviewed them together as a department in the weekly meetings and stand-up calls and decided to keep them that way and improve more in season 9.

We intend to get more engagement for the NJS sessions, How to sessions, and Knowledge sessions.

The idea of reducing the NJS to once a month doesn’t sit well with me, and the reason is that people keep coming into the DAO and I have noticed so far that when these individuals are not engaged over time, they tend to lose interest or vibes, and hence we find ourselves losing valuable contributors. The idea is not to have so much of a gap in between Sessions so we can engage new members who come in from time to time.

Your feedback is very much appreciated ser.

2 Likes
9

Yes, I apologize for the mis-statement

I think the idea is that the education department is important. But it may be worth it to look at a rehash of the edu great format instead of piling tokens on an approach that may not have the same amount of traction versus piling on a new idea.

I’m interested in whatever approach!

@Paulito , in research guild, we have been looking at revisiting the approach taken for research to help others learn about fundamentals, while tackling a few projects.

Perhaps, there could be the same idea in edu department. You could take requests from the crowd on what tools could be useful at the time, and either form classes quickly around those ideas, or work on a process of connecting educator to learner.

I think there are opportunities that you can build on.

I still think your role holder amounts are high, but I think I am mixing guilds up with departments as was addressed in the message with @0xZFi.eth .

What do you think?

Or even fun games like Pictionary for education purposes. You and I had discussed this once. It may work well here.