[V2] Establish and fund a Governance Department

Grants/Funding
1

Author: jengajojo
Date created: 17 Feb, 2023
Date posted: 20 Feb, 2023
Funds requested: 800,000 BANK

SUMMARY

Department Description

Mandate:

  1. Steward the governance conversation in BanklessDAO
  2. Update and maintain governance docs and constitution

Scope of work:

Based on a prioritisation exercise which was conducted we identified the following action items for S7:

  1. Update governance docs
  2. Revamp constitution
  3. Kickstart governance incentives
  4. Conduct micro experiments in guilds and projects

As well as long term goals which are:

  1. Clarify the mission of BanklessDAO
  2. Upgrade and maintain Governance tools
  3. Identify and implement a framework for mitigating governance attacks
  4. Maintain governance docs and constitution

Past activities

The DAOStewards project held regular governance meetings in the amphitheatre on mondays to collect feedback from the community on the state of governance and possible solutions to address some of the challenges in this area. The Governance Department is an idea which came out of these conversations. We have been running weekly meetings

MISSION & VALUE ALIGNMENT

The design space of governance is answering these two questions:

  1. Who makes decisions?
  2. How are these decisions made?

Good governance helps assure the DAO that decisions are made in a way which generates engagement and ownership over those decisions from the highest number of contributors. No org can hope to succeed long term without good governance. We will use these resources [one, two] as inspiration while building the department

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Budget Breakdown

Title BANK
Role holders 130,000
S7 WorkGroup Comp 400,000
Long term work group comp 100,000
Governance Rewards Program 100,000
Bounties and misc 70,000

Compensation Breakdown

Title Calculation BANK
Department Lead 7000 BANK/ week x 13 weeks 91000
Admin 2000 BANK/week x 13 weeks 26000
Accountant 1000 BANK/week x 13 weeks 13000
S7 WG 100,000 BANK/WG x 4 WGs 400,000
Long term WGs 100,000
Bounties 70,000

SEASONAL KPI

Factor KPI Success Metric
Governance updates # number of proposals which pass quorum #≥1
Governance rewards # number of unique participants #≥10

FURTHER DEPARTMENT CHANNELS

Department Notion Page: here

Any other organisational information of interest:

Role Descriptions:

Disclaimer: all actions are limited to Gov Dept category in the server

  1. Department Coordinator
  • Assist the department fulfils its overall mandate towards the DAO
  • Allow individual contributors to stay up to speed at a higher frequency than async updates.
  • Moderate discord channels in order to: Minimise silos and Encourage collaboration in the governance category
  • Co-Represent the department during DAO Community Calls
  • Welcome & direct new members in the department
  • Facilitate weekly department meetings, moderating meeting flow & agenda
  • Coordinate all activities in the Governance Department
  1. Admin
  • Oversee end to end notion and discord administration for the department
  • Create agenda template and record meeting notes
  1. Accountant
  • Create the seasonal budget
  • Create and record all Tx according the accounting principles followed within the DAO

Roles selection:

For the first iteration of the Governance Department, roles are filled using a sesh poll. Here is link for the selection

NEXT STEPS

  1. Test governance rewards program with thrivecoin
  2. Continue weekly syncs and sub-groups to tackle governance challenges

POLL

Do you accept the formation of a governance department and funding it with the ask as outlined in this proposal?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

2

I want to know what the mechanism of operation of the governance department will be.
How many votes will it take for this proposal to reach quorum?

I need you to throw more light on these questions in connection with the function of the governance department.

2 Likes
3

According to the GC this would need 32 votes to pass quorum

The function of the department is to assist the DAO in making these decisions. Who and How are both dynamic with respect to context and tools, hence the department itself takes an iterative approach towards any suggestion it makes.

4

imo, I don’t think the KPIs have anything to do with the goals of the Gov Dept and don’t actually reflect the desired outcomes of well organized governance operations.

3 Likes
5

Do you have suggestions for what KPIs could be instead?

6

I would expect the folks that designed the roles to makke good KPIs, there is also no documentation on how the group itself will actually make decisions or elect role holders

2 Likes
7

I think it is too much for an appointed Lead Role when historically only a couple hours a week has been spent Leading the Governance Workstream.

2 Likes
8

Another department, more money printer go brrr! Rinse, recycle, repeat…

I realize that governance is of great importance, it’s something that all members of the bDAO should be taking seriously. I’m rather surprised that this isn’t something that the Legal Department isn’t involved with.

1 Like
9

Mission vision are not governance functions.
They flow from Long term strategy;

I am surprised to see that after almost two years the same circle is going on around mission vision despite no presence of ambiguity or lack of clarity on the issue.

2 Likes