Proposal Writing Service

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

This service will provide a face-on-face Project Catalyst Proposal Writing Service, that will help to produce a starting draft proposal for the proposers.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Our small team has combined experience in meeting coordination and facilitation, general formal writing, translation, and experience in the Catalyst community.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We start the writing process with a meeting with the proposer to clarify and collect information about the proposal. The writing of a draft proposal follows. Next, we plan a follow-up meeting to refine the proposal. We strive for detailed and easy-to-follow proposals that are not too technical or educational. This service is suitable for everyone, especially those, who are not well versed in the English language, in the Catalyst community. The service makes the project ideas and goals easier for the community advisors to comprehend.

This project is scalable in the sense that we can create extra educational content like general guides for proposal writing, as we gain more experience.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

It addresses a fundamental issue preventing Cardano adoption in Africa, which is transferring ideas from their local culture into the digital proposal form. Through face-to-face online meetings, we aim to give people more clarity and a solid direction on their ideas. Currently, this is a small-scale proposal with a local impact. If this project is a success, then scaling it can lead to a more global effect.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

The biggest risk is misunderstanding the proposer. The online face-to-face meeting helps to mitigate this problem. We also provide the proposer with a channel, through which they can share new information. After redrafting we come to the follow-up meeting, to ensure that proposal is briefly and clearly expressed.

Another risk is that the proposer might not have the required information to build the proposal. As a solution, we can ask definite guiding questions about their idea(or let them fill out a guiding form). If needed, we can direct the proposer to another team with similar goals or helps them find expertise that they can refer back to us.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Three weeks before the start of the fund, we will start the process by accepting proposal submissions to the Proposal Writing Service. Next, we make the selection and schedule the timeline and meetings with the selected proposer. Then, the next week we will make contact and gather the essential information. The following week the first proposal draft follows. We get together once again the week after that and refine our draft together.

We also survey the proposer to ask for feedback on our services, assessments and how could we improve in general. All the measurements and assessments will be available to the public.

After this point, we start tracking the proposal voting results and assessments.

In fund 10 we will start by accepting two proposals.

In fund 11 we will start by accepting four proposals.

This proposal is well paced between multiple funds to ensure we could deliver multiple proposals if funded. Also, other proposals will accommodate the knowledge needed anyway.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The budget will be separated into two parts: recurrent and non-recurrent.

Non-recurrent: Total: 27 hours

6 hours of work to form the initial submission form. The form includes questions to get the proposers to get a good understanding of how the meetings are conducted. It also has straightforward questions to supply the proposal with information.

12 hours of work for preparing the Miro board for taking proposer notes.

1 hour to prepare a public Google Sheet to track proposal scores and voting results.

8 hours for setting up a Project Management process with Dework.

Recurrent: Total: 138 hours

10 hours of work for team meetings and 4 hours for meeting with proposers per proposal. For two funding rounds that totals to 14x6 hours.

5 hours for creating each of the draft proposals. 30hours

2 hours per proposal for creating an open channel in discord, engaging with the community, and gathering feedback. Total of 12 hours

An Hour for tracking each of the proposal statuses and proposal scored on Miro Boards and Google Sheet. Total 6 hours.

An hour for tracking and documenting each proposal service task on the Dework per proposal. 6 hours

All tasks together: 165 hours

Our hourly fee is 40$ per hour. That equals 1080$ for the one-time tasks and 5520$ for the repeating tasks.

The total budget is 6600$.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Tevo - Co-founder of The Catalyst Swarm and Catalyst School.

Facilitates and coordinates meetings. Handles Miro Board. Engages with the community and tracks the finalized proposal stats. 

Tõnis – Experienced freelance writer.

Analyzes gathered information, writes drafts, organizes information, and refines proposals.

Caue - Creator, Founder, and manager of "Catalyst School LATAM".

Marketing, Outreach, and communications

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes, we will return, since we imagine the demand for proposal writing in this challenge is considerable. Also because there is potential for this project to develop further.

If this proposal and service feedback is successful we will expand this process to Catalyst School and provide an opportunity for more proposers to receive proposal writing service.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

There are several measures to track our project's progress. The first is the proposer's feedback. This will be public and posted on the Proposal Writing Miro Board page.

Secondly, proposal statuses and their final results are public and so are the proposal drafts. If the proposer agrees, we will be recording the workshops and the videos will be made accessible to the public. They can be found at the following link.

We will be using public Dework space in the Swarm Dework project board to track the main tasks which were described in the feasibility section.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

How many proposers found value in the workshop?

How many of these proposals got funded and had a score over 4.2?

How participants rate the proposal workshop effectiveness after the proposal is finished, with a 1-5 score rating.

The goal is to achieve a score rating over 4.

How do participants rate how well was their feedback considered after the proposal is finished, with a 1-5 score rating.

The goal is to achieve a score rating over 4.

2 approved proposals in Project Catalyst during the course of Fund 10 and 4 approved proposals in Fund 11.

Positive feedback from the users, good reviews, and ratings from the Proposal Assessors.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

New service, but is similar to Mini Proposal Workshops.

Mini Proposal Workshop - Fund 7 Closing Report

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

4.4 - By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship