Vote type:
Token holder DAO Snapshot with a 5-day vote period
DAO-elected representative sponsors:
John Packel, Ashley (@MrsNuBooty), Benjamin (@ZeroInFo56), Nico (@nico186), @beemeeupnow
tl/dr:
Based on 15 months of iterations and lengthy discussion among the Marketing Guild Committee, we propose to separate the guild’s oversight and execution functions, reducing the former to a more manageable scope and outsourcing the latter (i.e., no longer attempting to rely on the committee itself to execute on our OKRs).
Overview:
Threshold’s Marketing Guild has tried a number of approaches over the last 15 months to execute on marketing activities while also providing oversight over funding provided by the DAO (note that the sponsors of this proposal include 3 who have been on the guild’s elected committee since inception).
The current Marketing Guild Committee (MGC) has concluded that we need to separate the oversight and execution roles, making the former more conducive to the bandwidth most members have, while continuing to improve on the latter by prioritizing, commissioning and compensating contributors based on value and impact, rather than fixed monthly compensation.
The Proposed solution section under Detailed Summary below details how this will work, while Background provides token holders with context leading to this recommendation.
In terms of budget impact, these changes would:
- reduce our current committee compensation cost from $210,000/year to $42,000/year ($2,500/month x 7, as Ryan has waived compensation since inception)
- recommend a line item of $127,500 annually for a new 30-hour/week role designed to provide a lot of what Ashley has been contributing without compensation for a year, as well as contributions from the temporary “extra hours” the committee has contracted with John for (~20 hours/week from November - February), which will be discontinued; a separate proposal fleshing out this role will be posted to the Forum shortly
- provide a net savings of $40,500 annually, assuming the new role is approved and continues for a full 50 weeks (it will be designed to cover most of the work execution Ashley has been providing without compensation beyond her committee pay)
Timeline:
- 5 days for comment / discussion on this proposal
- token holder DAO Snapshot with a 5-day vote period
Who Is Involved:
Threshold Marketing Guild, Threshold community and Threshold work token holders
Detailed Summary
Background
Threshold’s Marketing Guild Committee was founded on March 1, 2022 via ratification of Bootstrap Threshold DAO Guilds, which outlined the structure for all guilds and set compensation for guild committee members at $2,500/mo. for 8 hours/week of contribution on average (also see GP-008 Founding of the Threshold Marketing Guild Committee for detail).
The design was that, “each guild will have a discretionary budget to fund community proposals and give contributors outside of the committees a chance to participate and earn. This is particularly relevant to the Marketing Guild where the intention from the committee members is to create a proposal process and a job board where community members can take bounties for completing specific marketing-related tasks.”
During the first 6 months of 2022 the Marketing Guild accomplished a lot, as detailed in our H1 Retrospective report here, including creating explainer videos, the Threshold Time email newsletter, Marketing Guild Notion sites, and the debut of the One Fern Between Two Keys series. Challenges we noted in the report included, “bandwidth of committee members relative to the ambitious goals… need committee and others to all contribute asynchronously, as well as in team meetings…. Several committee members are spending far more time than anticipated when the compensation was set, and this presents a risk to be addressed.”
In an effort to address these challenges, and noting that marketing needs would increase substantially in the lead-up to the tBTC v2 launch, in October John made a Forum proposal for a temporary full-time role where he would 1) execute on guild Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), 2) align committee member efforts with those OKRs and those of the Keep and NuCypher contributor teams and 3) support contributors with what they need in order to deliver results. While the Forum comments and conversations about the proposal showed significant support for such a role, there were also concerns over the cost of a full-time role and whether the guild structure could be improved.
The MGC acted on that feedback by approving funding for up to 22 extra hours/week for John, as well as adopting his recommendation in December to test sprint planning as a way to ensure focus on the highest priorities, provide clarity on each committee members’ tasks, track progress and address roadblocks. (Note: John invoiced an average of 19.8 hours/week through February 12th; hours worked past that date have not yet been approved by the committee.)
What the sprint planning and review process in January and February (see here) showed was that Ashley and John were completing the vast majority of the tasks (in addition to planning the sprints, preparing for team meetings to review them and following up with committee members) while other committee members had challenges with bandwidth. This continued in the lead-up to ETH Denver, where we needed to devote several weekly committee meetings almost entirely to event planning and yet there still was not enough contribution to avoid last-minute rushes the week of the event.
Our H2 Retrospective (see here) details significant accomplishments relative to OKRs (which are: 1 - Support the tBTCv2, thUSD, and other launches, 2 - Create content that educates on Threshold’s benefits, 3 - Amplify Threshold community growth, 4 - Develop and maintain Marketing Guild Infrastructure). But it also notes continued challenges: “one committee member resigning for personal reasons, another being asked to leave because they were not contributing or even attending the weekly meeting, several experiencing changes in their day jobs that significantly impacted their available time and flexibility for MG meetings and work streams” and explains that too much of the output continues to depend on John’s temporary extra hours and on Ashley taking on even more uncompensated work than she had previously.
Proposed solution
In the March 22nd MGC meeting John and Ashley cited the December recommendation and subsequent challenges in outlining the need to restructure the committee by separating its oversight and execution functions (see pp. 7-11 in this deck), elaborated on it the following week (see pp. 4-7) and then in the April 3 meeting fleshed out the basis of this proposal (see pp. 1-3).
FUNCTION 1: Allocation & oversight of budget
While we considered an alternate approach of potentially dissolving the Marketing Guild Committee and moving the oversight function to the Treasury Guild Committee, this proposal’s sponsors believe that would not be a practical solution and would also violate the founding structural principle of “delegating more granular working group decision making and capital deployment to committee members, allowing the Threshold DAO to operate more effectively in a way that ultimately adds more value to the network”.
Also, since token holders voted 7 weeks ago to select 4 committee members we believe it’s best to retain the current committee in a scaled down oversight function that fits the bandwidth most members have (expectation being ~6 hours/month), while also including accountability enforcement. We propose the following structure:
Decision scope
1. Voting on quarterly Marketing Guild budget request, plus allocations greater than $10k - as signers on the multi-sig
2. Expected number of votes per month: 1 - 3
Cadence
1. One 2-hour meeting per month, with actionable agenda aligned 3 days prior
2. One week in advance, Chair provides background material for discussion topics
Meeting format
1. Q&A on decision/discussion topics, meeting materials
2. Hold vote & record; Coordination role will action any topic not able to be voted on
3. Align on next steps
Accountability
1. Each person’s ongoing committee membership is contingent on them participating fully
2. Secretary records attendance, votes & minutes in Notion within 24 hours of meeting; Chair confirms committee member participation monthly
3. Adopt a “commitments” document modeled on the MG Committee’s current one - required meeting attendance, input, votes, etc.
4. Each member performs a role on the committee, contributing to one of these 4 functions: Chair, Secretary, Coordination, Accounting
Compensation: reduced to $500/mo. from current $2,500/mo.
FUNCTION 2: Execution on Guild OKRs
Rather than task the same group of people to both provide Threshold DAO with oversight over budget as well as execute on the guild’s OKRs, we propose an approach that borrows from Gnosis Safe DAO’s “Outcomes Based Resource Allocation” (thanks to Jake Lynch for sharing).
These principles will drive how we go about getting guild work done:
-
Prioritize & assign work based on expected impact in driving Threshold’s mission
We are here to make an impact and are accountable to token holders and our DAO colleagues, so all activities need to support OKRs and have clear benefits or measurable outcomes. We will resume sprint planning, but on a bi-weekly cadence and ending each sprint with a retrospective that informs the next sprint plan.
-
Source multiple types of contributor to make the MG more productive & resilient
Existing committee members who are willing and able to commit to projects with clear outcomes and accountability are encouraged to make project proposals. We will also solicit proposals from marketing/communications professionals - and develop a process that delivers the best impact/price with the least amount of overhead/administration.
-
Compensate contributors based on achieving projects’ results
We will develop rubrics/scorecards that evaluate work output compared to what was commissioned and measure the impact wherever possible. Larger projects will have retrospectives for improving our process.
In order to achieve the above we need a highly trusted and capable person to manage this process, as well as to execute on the aspects of the MG’s critical core work streams (Social media, Content creation and Event marketing) that are most efficiently delivered “in house” and/or can’t wait for another contributor to be sourced, commissioned and evaluated.
To that end, several of the sponsors will post a separate proposal to the Forum in the next few days recommending that Threshold DAO contract with Ashley (MrsNu) for a 6-month renewable period working 30 hours/week. Ashley is a Threshold “OG” community member (going back to NuCypher), she is a positive and helpful voice everywhere Threshold is being promoted and discussed (Twitter, Discord, Notion, YouTube, emerging Web3 platforms, etc.), and she has proven her value by contributing more to the Marketing Guild’s output over 15 months than anyone else.
Thank you to @ben, @Carusosa, @sap, @derek, @Eastban, @Vict0r and Will for providing helpful feedback on our draft proposal, as well as Luna for ongoing support for all guilds.