Lots to digest here. Some initial feedback from a first read:
Suggested Budget
I see that there is a suggested budget per commitee per season. This is really good. Thank you. One of the biggest problem I have personally had was giving out other people’s money without an idea of any budget constraints.
This will help.
I would even turn it into budget. Not suggested. Staying in budget should be a requirement. Would really help guide decisions.
Council work
- approve grants in 3 week cycles
I would like to ask for this to be better defined by using some of the learnings we have had.
A typical grant proposal’s life looked like this in this season:
- Forum post is created
- Trying to get eyes on it
- Trying to get committee eyes on it
- Somehow it ends up on a vote before even committee had time to deliberate on it
- Forced to vote
I would like to explicitly split the cycles. Have cohorts. Only a specific number of grants go in a cohort, perhaps in a first come first serve basis? Perhaps in a simple application process?
Then the council goes on a 3 weeks round of feedback and back and forth with the proposers to improve their proposal and align it with the interests of optimism.
Then we can go on a council vote period which would be … dunno … 2 weeks?
Delegates compensation
I truly think that this is still the biggest elephant in the room. Perhaps it’s offtopic to this particular post but all delegates, irrespective of being in the council or not should be compensated.
There is considerable work involved as a delegate even if you are not in a council/committee and the governance process relies on delegates performing that work. Right now it’s done pro bono. This is wrong.