Funded Proposer Sub-Circle

[IMPACT]

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Funded Proposer Sub-Circle Treasury

The Funded Proposer Sub-Circle is a global group of 5 people which has come together to support the Catalyst Circle Funded Proposers Representative (Mercy A.) with problem-sensing and organising in the Funded Proposers community. The sub-circle is supported until May 2022 using funds from the Catalyst Circle Funding Mechanism https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384249 , to enable it to do initial ideation and set-up work. This continuation proposal will set up a treasury to enable the sub-circle to go on to establish an active Hub for funded proposers.

The treasury established by this proposal will fund administration and documentation of the sub-circle’s activities over 3 months from May to August 2022, including regular coordination meetings, engagement with Town Halls across the world in 3 languages, & an open process of community outreach to funded proposers and challenge teams. The sub-circle will record issues raised by funded proposers from all across the ecosystem, aggregate and cluster them to enable the community to identify patterns and connections, research and collate details of proposed solutions that are being developed in the community, help forge collaborations and interaction between solution-makers, and track progress on solutions. It will also funnel issues towards Catalyst Circle where needed.

Note that a separate proposal, Catalyst Circle - Funding Mechanism in the F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem Challenge https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403562 will provide $7,000 per elected Circle member which they can distribute to support community-led solutions to problems on the Circle Prioritized Problems board. By contrast, this proposal funds the necessary complement to this - i.e. the organising and documentation of a Hub to problem-sense, foster collaboration, and engage the community with funded proposers' issues.

Catalyst Coordinator GitBook

This proposal is supported by the Catalyst Coordinator GitBook (https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-coordinator ) The GitBook was set up during Fund 7 to collate information for Funded Proposers, and its continuation and development will help the Funded Proposer Sub-Circle to do its work. The GitBook provides:

• A useful FAQ for funded proposers - https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-coordinator
• A means to gather feedback from Funded Proposers - https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-coordinator/feedback
• A reference tool for the Funded Proposer community.

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This proposal addresses the Scale Up Community Hubs Challenge by enabling the Funded Proposers Sub-Circle to build a Hub where funded proposers can organise. Funded proposers are a large and significant community within Catalyst; but because they are distributed so widely across the ecosystem (and also because, for many of them, their main focus is working on their funded projects rather than organising within Catalyst), they have not naturally come together as a group in any existing Catalyst forum. But they nevertheless have a growing sense of community and shared concern, so there is the “readiness” described in the challenge setting; they are a community that has reached a point where a Hub is necessary.

The sub-circle will help to provide this much-needed focus where funded proposers can raise concerns, communicate with their Circle representative, and develop the resilience and self reliance as a community that the F8 Challenge Setting mentions. The sub-circle team are all funded proposers themselves, from fund 5 onwards and in a wide range of different Challenges, so they have a solid understanding of their target audience; and the global reach of the sub-circle’s members (LatAm, Eastern Town Hall, African Town Hall, US, Europe) is also significant in supporting funded proposers to (as the challenge setting suggests) get information that they might otherwise find difficult to have access to, e.g. by using languages other than English.

The intent of this proposal is to sustain communications, and to provide a documentation platform and a means of problem-sensing, for the funded proposer community. It is at a modest scale, offering a “Minimum Viable Hub” covering 1 / 5 of full launch costs, as required in the F8 challenge setting (please see “Budget” section for details).

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• Risk that the majority of funded proposers will not engage with the Hub: This is mitigated by the range of connections and languages amongst the Sub-Circle team, so that a wide range of funded proposers will at least become aware of the Hub. Its existence will be mentioned prominently within Catalyst (e.g. at Catalyst Circle, at Coordinator meetings, via Challenge Teams, and at various Town Halls around the world). But as this is a “Minimum Viable Hub”, in line with the challenge setting’s requirements, we do not hope to engage large numbers of funded proposers to be fully active at first, but simply to create a mechanism, a focal point, and documentation processes, which can then build organically over time, e.g. via word of mouth.
• Risk of communications issues between the Sub-Circle members due to their distribution across time-zones. We are mitigating this by pioneering the use of asynchronous Zoom meetings using this methodology https://hackmd.io/@dhh1128/Sk5_Gb2J9, and by additionally using tools such as Telegram and Miro to communicate and collate information gathered from funded proposers.

[FEASIBILITY]

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Timeline

Prior to Fund 8 vote :

• The Catalyst Coordinator GitBook and GitHub is currently being maintained by Stephen Whitenstall using funds from the F7 proposal Catalyst-Coordinator Hub .
• The Funded Proposers Subcircle is doing initial scoping work, funded by the Fund 7 Catalyst Circle - Funding Mechanism.

If Funded (May to August 2022)

• A treasury of $ 10,000 will support the administration of the Funded Proposer sub-circle.
• Once funded, Catalyst Coordinator GitBook and GitHub will continue to sustain communications, provide a documentation platform and a means to gather feedback for the funded proposer community.

Funded Proposer Sub Circle Stipend

• Stipend of $1,500 per Sub-Circle member x 6 members = $9,000 - this supports each member to do c. 9 hrs work a month @ $55 p/hr.

Work will include regular (asynchronous) team meetings x2 per month; supporting Funded Proposer Rep's Office Hours to answer individual questions from funded proposers; problem-sensing in the community via Town Halls and liaison with Challenge Teams; translation into and out of community languages; recording and grouping the problems raised, in order to identify patterns and see priorities; collating information on the progress of community-led solutions; developing collaborations by putting people in contact with others working on the same problem; and where needed, escalating problems to Catalyst Circle's Prioritised Problems board.

Admin

• Treasury management (handling project wallets and distributing remuneration to sub-circle members) $40 per month x 3 months = $120
• Miro subscription to enable use of shared Miro board to cluster problems $200

GitBook Maintenance - Documentation

Regular updates to add content: $55 per hour x 21 hours per month x 3 months = $ 3,465

Social media engagement

Building and moderating Funded Proposers' spaces on social media (Twitter, Telegram, Youtube, Discord, Reddit) where funded proposers can engage with each other and build community; sharing relevant information from Catalyst Circle meetings to funded proposers: 2 hours per week x 13 weeks = 26 hours x $55 hour = $ 1,430

Total : $14,215

NOTE: As required by the challenge setting, this is only a “Minimum Viable Hub” representing approximately 1/5 of the ultimate cost of fully launching an independent Funded Proposers Sub-Circle Hub effectively. In order to fully establish a Hub and develop the needed community resilience and independence in the Funded Proposer community, we would need an additional 3 months' engagement and community support work, and a long-term way to fund community-led solutions to identified problems.

(The approximate additional costs would be: sub-circle members’ stipend for a further 3 months’ community outreach and engagement $9,000; translation of all information into 3 languages $6,000; training and mentorship to enable new people to take on documentation and management roles $6,000; a rapid-funding treasury to support, develop and implement a minimum of 4 community-instigated solutions to identified problems $20,000; management of community solutions process $6,000; documentation of community solutions process $6,000; publicity and promotion of the subcircle and its activities $2,000; treasury and wallet management for sub-circle and rapid funding process $2,000.

Plus this minimum viable Hub, $14,215

Total approx $71,215

so this MVH is approximately 1/5 of total costs.)

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Mercy (@MercyA1) is the Coordination Lead for Wada (https://www.wada.org/) . She has extensive experience in project management and process improvement. She’s the Circle v3 representative for Funded Proposers (Catalyst Coordinators) due to her passion for decentralised governance and is always ready for new challenges.

Steve Lockhart - Funded proposer, community builder, decentralization advocate, arborist, dog owner.

Emelia Sarfo – CA, vCA and voter; entrepreneur, training consultant, community worker, Human Resource Practitioner of over 20 years experience, philanthropist, marketer of over 10 years experience.

Mie Tran - English and International Business major by training; experienced in working cross-continent corporations. Funded proposer, Challenge Team member, Co-host for Eastern Town Hall.

Stephen Whitenstall (@swhitenstall) - Co-Founder QA-DAO. Circle v2 representative for funded proposers (Catalyst Coordinators). Funded proposer in F6: Improve and Grow Auditability.

Vanessa Cardui (@CallyFromAuron) Community engagement professional with 20+ years' experience of working with communities to record and collate their information, archive it, and make it discoverable (see for example https://creationofacommunity.wordpress.com ). Part of QA-DAO where she is leading on documentation of Catalyst Circle (see https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle-oversight-v3 )

Alex Pestchanker - Alex has 20+ years of experience building Digital Products and Companies. Alex is also a professor and public speaker, helping to build common knowledge around Digital Transformation, Exponential Organizations, and Abundance. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apestchanker/ . Within Cardano, Alex is an active community member, co founder of the LATAM Cardano Community helping to building impact in and out of the Latin America ecosystem and host of the LATAM TownHall, performed as Community Advisor in F6 and F7, with high ratings on his assessments, vCA in F7 and won several funds for his proposals, such as: F6: Proposals Mentors Marketplace, F7: Easy Engagement - New members -AIM, F7: LATAM TownHall by Catalyst Swarm, among others.

[AUDITABILITY]

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We will measure:

• Number and geographical range of meetings/Town Halls etc attended by the sub-circle in order to problem-sense
• Number of problems sensed and recorded by the sub-circle
• Number of funded proposers raising problems via the sub-circle
• Number of community-led solutions to problems
• Number of problems brought to Circle for Circle-led solutions
• Number of posts and regularity of posts on the sub-circle GitBook
• Number of people engaging with subcircle documentation – GitBook views, social media views, impressions and engagements

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Success would be:

• an active SubCircle for funded proposers, working to sense problems and document them, across the world in several languages
• The majority of funded proposers at least becoming aware of the sub-circle and how to contact it and raise problems
• Funded Proposers reporting increased awareness of Catalyst Circle, and of mechanisms such as the proposed Catalyst Circle funding mechanism, if that is successfully funded https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403562 , and of the opportunity it would offer to propose solutions to problems 
• Social media spaces on Discord, Telegram, Twitter and Reddit where funded proposers engage, discuss, and continue to develop a sense of community
• At least 6 key problems from the community being sensed, clarified and recorded, and either being taken to Circle for a Circle-led solution, or being worked on by the community for a community-led solution
• All this being able to transition readily to support the next Circle Funded Proposer Representative in CCv5.

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This proposal continues and merges elements of the Fund 7 Catalyst-Coordinator Hub proposal (F7 Scale-UP Cardano's Community Hubs Challenge) and the Fund 7 Catalyst Circle - Funding Mechanism proposal (F7: Catalyst - Rapid Funding Mechanisms Challenge)