Being too free-flowing with our funds has been a repeated concern expressed in community calls and forum posts. I’m looking for the exact post from Frogmonkee, but it’s the one that started the idea that we need to slow down and “work on the DAO”. The point he made was that in the first few seasons we were in build build build mode and funding all projects that asked. He then challenged us to slow down, make it more difficult to get funding, and introduce things like KPIs which the GC has been experimenting with. I’ll link the exact quote from the post when I find it.
Funding all projects/guilds that ask, while not 100% true, is true enough to have sparked debate over how we decide what we prioritize — revenue-generating projects/guilds over cost centers for example. How many times was a guild denied their funding request? I cant think of an example. If there is one and someone call call it out that would be great. These were all some of the things that sparked the GSE. Hopefully these jog your memory. Here’s one link although not exactly the one I’m looking for
When I’m saying overspending, it’s from the GC. Over allocating may be better. I should have also said overestimating to cover the guild/project perspective. If a guild/project has funds left over for 1 season or 2 seasons, that’s not a trend. However, what I see in this report is that the vast majority of all guilds and projects overestimate their needed funds every season. Combine that with the fact that many of us are on multiple projects, and multiple guilds voting on these budget proposals, we are not learning. Our carryover from season to season should be getting closer to 0 as we learn what resources we actually need to fulfill our goals.
I do recognize the extremely valid point of the issue with the hard dates. Once the guild leaders help correct the data based on the true timelines and when the seasonal funds were dispersed, we will take another look at the data. Maybe it will reveal something totally different
Yes they are still overfunded. From looking at the numbers, when guilds/projects reduce the amount of funds because of carryover, the new total that is in their multisig is still too high because every season there is carryover. If season over season, the carryover was getting closer to 0, then I would say they are not overfunded. But the carryover is consistently high season over season. But again, let’s get the version 2 of this report with the trued-up dates from guild leaders.
The point of this post was to present people with the data and start the discussion. I didn’t intend to provide crystal clear solutions. But the clear next step that I do point out is that we need this set of detailed financial information available on a recurring basis. New guild leaders are brought in all the time with limited context from the past. We need to provide them that context through historical data like this report.
Another next step is to take more time when forming a budget proposal. If after the version 2 of this report comes out and it still shows consistently high carryover, then we aren’t learning. Or maybe just not taking enough time to budget properly.
Finally, we can use this information to experiment with future improvement proposals. For example, assume this data is accurate ignoring the hard date issue just for a moment. We could say that an improvement proposal is to put a cap on initial guild funding that is based on your historical average. You can ask for more later, but it has to be justified. Another could be to say, guilds should not be automatically funded every season because we haven’t been able to accurately budget or justify our requested resources.
There’s a lot left over in the budget…like almost all of the workgroup budget. We also haven’t paid ourselves yet, and most have agreed to keep working past the end of the season to make sure we deliver a final package of recommendations. We will be giving out 1,000 BANK per meeting for note taking (Joe will have that total amount), 35k for this report plus extra for version 2 will be distributed soon, and Justice can give the amount he will distribute for help with the constitution which is going to people who helped create it and designers for creating the cover design.
You’re right that the GSE should have been a line item. Oversight on my end. It would have said “100% overestimated” because how workgroups would be formed did not end up working the way we initially planned. For the same reason I put little weight on the Season 1 overspending in the report, I also put little weight on small workgroup dispursements from the GSE. It’s been a process trying to figure out how to solve this problem and how to integrate workgroups. Now… in 4 seasons from now, if there is a GSE still and the carryover is consistently high, then there’s a problem. This report is all about identifying trends and learning from the data to make more informed decisions.