Threshold Marketing Guild Q2 2023 budget request
Vote Type: Single choice voting (Yes/No)
DAO-elected Marketing Guild Committee: John Packel, Ashley (@MrsNuBooty), Ryan (@Carusosa), Benjamin (@ZeroInFo56), @nico186, @ben, @Will, @beemeeupnow
tl/dr
- The Marketing Guild Committee requests a budget of $50k for Q2 2023
- Accounting for the previous budget approved for Q3 2022 is provided
- Projected categories for Q2 2023 spend are listed
- Context and links are provided regarding 2 pending Marketing Guild structure proposals
Milestones and Deadlines:
Forum discussion: April 27 - 30
Snapshot vote: May 1 - 5
Previous budget accounting:
The Marketing Guild last requested budget in June 2022 for Q3 2022. The request for $124,450 was approved June 19, 2022. While we expected to be able to spend close to that amount, this was based on the intention at that point for both tTBC vs and thUSD to launch sooner. Because it was an approved limit and not a spending mandate, we were able to stretch the funds through Q1 2023, and the current balance remaining is $4,310.
The intention was to invest in these categories:
The Marketing Guild’s H2 2022 report here details the accomplishments this budget supported, as well as the efforts to iterate on the operating model - an update to which is pending in governance proposals TIP-49 (committee restructure) and TIP-50 (marketing lead contractor).
Our actual outlays were as follows (the discrepancy in totals is owing to token price changes; while we converted most of the T tokens to USDC, we also held some funds in T and ETH):
Combining the Education and Design categories, the 11% spent was substantially less than the 21% projected, as we were able to repurpose some content rather than having to commission as much as expected. The Content category came in at 13%, very close to the projected 15%. We found more opportunities for both campaigns and sponsorships, so that 26% essentially matched the projected 27%. Where we invested substantially more than expected (drawing on the 28% discretionary category) was events. The vast majority of this was our major investment in the ETH Denver presence, based on that event’s size and importance in the ETH community (6 years running and approximately 20,000 attendees this year), but we also had a smaller presence at ETH Barcelona, ETH Mexico and Devcon. Spend on administration came in slightly lower than planned (5% vs 8%), in spite of the time we needed to devote to iterating on the committee’s operating model.
Q2 budget request
The Marketing Guild Committee requests $50k in budget for Q2 (a limit, not a mandate) to support activities in the following categories:
- Events: $15k
- Sponsorships: $10k
- Campaigns: $10k
- Content: $10k
- Other: $5k
As noted above, there are proposals pending to restructure the Marketing Guild Committee and hire a contractor for 30 hours per week as marketing lead. Thus this request should take into account the budget impacts of those proposals (TIP-49 Restructure snapshot ends on April 29th, and TIP-50 Contractor will begin 5-day snapshot a little more than a day after this proposal is posted to the Forum - so this budget can go to snapshot once the outcomes of those are known).
If TIP-49 Restructure passes, the annual committee compensation will be reduced by $168k to $42k (vs current $210k). If TIP-50 goes to snapshot as proposed and passes, the annual cost of contractor would be $127,500. So if all 3 proposals pass and this $50k Q2 budget request is annualized to $200k, total DAO annual expense for marketing would be projected at $370k.
Note: the Treasury Guild’s Q2 budget request line item of ~$250k in compensation for all guild committee members, the Council and the thUSD team reflects the current Marketing Guild Committee compensation, not the reduced amount proposed (and in terms of process and accounting, the contractor and committee compensation will continue to be budgeted via the Treasury Guild).