Milestone Completion and Accountability Review Season 6
The Milestones and Metrics Committee will be responsible for assessing and tracking milestones for grants that have reached the Final Review as well as finalists from Seasons 4 through 6.
Milestone Hub
A Milestone Hub on the Grants Council Landing Page that serves as a space for grants finalists to report their milestone progress has been created. Over the course of the season, the Milestone and Metrics Committee shall assess whether the Milestone Hub is well-suited to its purpose and may, with the assistance and guidance of the Operations Manager, adapt the Milestone Hub as it deems appropriate.
Prospective Applications
In order to be considered as a finalist, an application must include multiple milestones. Milestones are intended to show good faith effort and a baseline of success toward the goals articulated in the grant application. Additional milestones (used to be called benchmark milestones) are intended to show impact to the Optimism Collective that can be used to assess the project in the future, and can be added to strengthen an application. The Milestones should be aimed at creating discrete, trackable milestones for each successful application.
At the beginning of each Final Review, the Milestones and Metrics Committee will review each application selected by each of the grant reviewers to determine whether the application’s milestones meet the standard of sufficiency set forth in the Milestones Guidelines.
In order to be eligible to become a finalist, an application must receive a favorable vote of a majority of the Milestones and Metrics Committee members verifying that the application’s milestones meet the standards of sufficiency.
Past Applications
The Milestones and Metrics Committee shall make recommendations to the Foundation or Optimism Collective as to whether or not to proceed with the remainder of past seasons’ Experiments and Builders grants. In general, the Milestones and Metrics Committee shall not recommend proceeding with a project unless all critical milestones have been achieved (per the vote of the Committee).
The Milestone and Metrics Committee is generally responsible for voting on whether or not milestones have been achieved. In circumstances where the Committee determines that it would require expertise beyond the capacity of the Committee, the Milestone and Metrics Committee Lead may submit a milestone for consideration of the Committee that originally voted to designate the application as a prior finalist. In such cases, the majority vote of the relevant committee shall be considered determinative.
Standard procedure
- Applications for the continuation of a grant should be submitted to the Milestones Hub. (Season 6 will also be CharmVerse)
- In general, applications will be reviewed only after a project confirms that all relevant required milestones have been completed. However, the Milestone and Metrics Committee may consider requests to review individual milestones in certain cases.
- Absent an approval for a greater amount of time, critical milestones will be considered past due twelve months from the locking of the grant for Builders applications.
- Milestones and Metrics votes shall be recorded.
Other procedures
- In cases where a project has failed to complete its critical milestones in the allotted time, the Committee will default to recommending against proceeding with any further steps of the grant. Projects are free to voluntarily recuse themselves from a grant if they are unable to finish before the deadline.
- In the case where a proposer makes a proposal to change the substance (or extend the time) of a critical milestone, the Committee may consider the change only if (a) the Committee determines that there is substantial good reason to support the request and (b) a super-majority of all of the Council reviewers vote in favor of the proposal.
- When relevant, the Committee shall wait for the Developer Advisory Board to confirm the completion of the critical milestones prior to confirming completion to the Foundation.
The guidance in this section yields to any contrary rule, guidance, or vote from Token House or the Foundation.
Reviewer Metrics Accountability
Similar to Season 5, the committee will ensure grant council reviewers communicate effectively with the grant applicants and are accountable for their work. For Season 6, specific metrics and processes as mandated by the charter will again include: reviewer comment frequency on substantive rubric components, reviewer comments on failed intake applications, reviewer attendance of committee meetings, reviewer voting on committee and full council polls.
The metrics as a whole will possibly be adapted over the course of the season as best practices reveal themselves in this trial run period. The goal will not be to micromanage each reviewer but more so to identify and allocate additional support for those reviewers that need such, while also offering comparison between reviewers for delegates and token house members.
Official Record and Rule Changes
- The Council will maintain a tracker of applications considered, finalists named, milestones for finalists, and the progress / completion of milestones.
- On a bi-weekly basis, the Council may review the effectiveness of its internal procedures and make proposals for improvement. The Committee can amend the internal procedures by a simple majority vote of the members of both Committees (provided that any vote to amend the rubric comports with the procedures described above). Amendments will be recorded as a comment to this post.
Rules of Decision
- If one or more Committee members abstains from a vote, a vote will pass by the simple majority vote of the remaining members, provided there are more than one voting members remaining. If only one member of a Committee votes, the result will be to take no action on the proposed matter. For instance, if the matter being voted on relates to whether or not to include an application in the final review, the result will be not to include the application in the final review.
- Any Council-wide votes must include members of each Committee to achieve a quorum.
- The Grants Council Lead may correct any clear errors in the Internal Procedures or resolve any conflicting provisions. For resolving conflicts, the Lead may submit a question of the best resolution to a vote of the Committee members, the results of which may be recorded on the Landing Page.