FWB Garage Season 6

Author(s): Emerson Kirk (Emo - @emolikememo), Alex Zhang (Zhang - @alexxzzhang)

Abstract

FWB Garage™ is a grants program of $50,0000 ( ~800 $FWB today) for Season 6. The grants program will allow any approved FWB member to request up to $10k for a specific project or initiative where the community will collectively decide which projects are funded for the season.

Motivation

FWB has incredible talent bursting with ideas to make FWB (and web3) a better place to live. 

However, we have noticed four challenges when it comes to the efficacy of community-led proposals, including:

1. Potential applicants aren't familiar with what types of proposals would be most additive to the DAO, so likely don't submit when their ideas and skills could be helpful.

2. Proposals are developed separately from the existing roadmap, and can lead to conflicts or very similar projects receiving funds.

3. Funded projects don't receive the same level of visibility, marketing, and integration because they are developed independently from the rest of the DAO.

4. Voters are shown the proposal budget but aren't given enough context into related costs within the DAO or adjacent projects, leading to less informed voting.

Impact on FWB Community 

Grants will enable the community to more easily experiment in a way that expands upon our current programs, products, and initiatives. Our hope is that the grants program will enable FWB members to experiment with new ideas and approaches, which may lead to the development of projects that become core to FWB and our mission.

Overview

We believe the current challenges faced by community-led proposals can be improved upon by the introduction of a more formalized, prompted, and overarching FWB grants program. 

Garage™ will seek to provide $50,000 ( ~800 $FWB today) in grant capital to fund creative, experimental projects on a seasonal, three-month basis starting with Season 6 (which runs April-June 2022). 

For Garage Cohort 1, we are doing an open call for projects that seek inspiration from FWB's theme while also addressing these below prompts and operate generally within these existing categories of operations. 

We are looking for projects that may address the following prompts:

• FWB's core values include agency, convergence, advocacy, and ownership. What do these terms mean to you, and how can we expand on that in our programming?

• As Web3 has become a household name, it's also become an entire industry, and unimaginable amounts of capital, talent and attention have flown into the space. What is gained through that process, and what's lost that we want to actively hold onto?

• FWB is designed to be non-hierarchical and exploratory, breaking with traditional models of the past. What is a traditional model of a past industry that FWB could champion or push forward?

• Through open, shared discussions across the DAO, we're collaboratively building what we want and need, and allowing new forms of connection to emerge. It's about autonomy, following one's gut instincts, and being an active, fully-alive participant. How can we encourage involvement as new members join the DAO?

Garage™ is designed to support FWB members in developing new products, experiences, content, or any experiment that makes FWB a better city to live in. This is NOT limited to just technical products or artworks but any small, creative endeavor that may resonate with other community members that falls within this Season's core categories.

Community -- Events, City Initiatives, Public Discourse

Tooling -- Products, Features, Discord Bots

Content -- Stories, Narratives, Visuals, Videos, Explainer Guides

Art -- Public Art, Music

Other -- 😈 

This is an open-ended grants program that supports community driven initiatives financially as well as providing support by situating the grantee in the larger FWB organization if necessary. 

Practically, here are some types of projects that Contributing teams would be keen on integrating

• Long form investigative research piece on WIP [Content]

• Public art project [Cities]

• and many more!

Process

FWB Garage is structured to allow grant recipients a meaningful amount of time (one season) to create an impactful version of their project while also ensuring its success in adoption, marketing, and distribution by attaching it to an existing Contributor Team vertical. 

1. Application period will run for two weeks at the start of each season. 

2. The Governance Team will review, format, and prep proposals for community vote.

3. The community can allocate up to $50k to projects with a cap of $10k max per project with guidance from the Governance Team. 

4. Once grants are approved, the recipients will attend biweekly meetings with an associated contributor team to track the project's progress and receive support. 

5. At the end of the season, the Governance Team will prepare a document outlining the outcome of the projects, including wins, lessons learned, and successfully integrated projects. We'll also share a proposal for the next season's budget to either increase or decrease based on the current Season's success.

Outcomes & Success Metrics

At the end of Season 6, we'd ideally like to see at least two projects from FWB Garage become fully integrated into the DAO, so that we can provide resources to build them out in full. For example, this could be an MVP that we build into the website or an article we design a program around, etc.

FWB Garage is envisioned as the experimental arm of FWB, where community members can test new ideas that improve our community---and web3---for the better. 

We're also excited to offer continued funding to projects that show exceptional promise, which means we'll be able to support new products, departments, and events that showcase the best of web3.

If the program is successful, we can also explore increasing the budget through strategic sponsorships, similar to how we've funded hackathons in the past.

Benefits

• Increase community experimentation and participation in making FWB a more interesting place to live

• Ability to fund projects that show exceptional promise and implement them into core work streams of the DAO

• FWB is distributed to creatives, builders, and contributors

Drawbacks

• There is not clear output/impact of the large sum of money that we are putting towards these projects

• Hackathon will be deprioritized for Season 6

Budget

We'll allocate $50k of the treasury in FWB tokens towards FWB Garage, with each project receiving no more than $10k. A portion of the funding will be allocated from the hackathon budget, which will be replaced by FWB Garage. Our intent is to provide grant applicants with a longer timeline to create projects, and to engage the community more broadly in the process.