H2 Proposal [Budget] - Grants Labs

This budget proposal is a follow up to the Grants Lab H2 Strategy, posted earlier this week: H2 Proposal [Strategy] - Grants Labs 3

This budget proposal covers H2 2024 (July - December.) We want to be lean, but not hungry, with our overall budget. We have trimmed down expectations for travel and miscellaneous expenses for H2 2024. We only have two anticipated new hires, a Principal Engineer and a Social Media Manager. We expect to cease hiring for the next 6+ months after the positions are filled – we have put a huge effort into filling key leadership roles at the start of this year, exiting folks who are not aligned with our talent bar or mission, and now have the resources we need to succeed.

Headcount:

With the wind-down of the Ecosystem Collective, we are moving RPP (Owocki, two engineers, and EA) into Grants Lab to create more coordination between engineering, embrace our multi-mechanism future, and more holistically resource our bets. We are also retaining a Brand Manager on the marketing team and filling the needed social role above which is left vacant with the ECC spindown. This accounts for the headcount budget increase of ~$85k/mo.

Additionally, you’ll see a severance line item for July. As part of our ongoing efforts in building the right team this year, we gave all Grants Lab contributors the opportunity to opt into the next chapter or choose a severance package and opt out. This is a common tactic at organizations that are undergoing cultural or strategic shifts like we have. Two of our 18 contributors opted out; we’re grateful for their contributions and wish them the best.

Consultants:

This line item will rise substantially for Q3 and remain higher in Q4. The primary driver of this is our retention of Wonderland at $40k/mo for engineering and protocol leadership. We’re really excited about the quality of talent that they bring to our protocol and dev tools effort. Additionally, working with Wonderland provides us flexible engineering capacity, which we plan to exercise with an additional engineer during Q3 to lead an indexer improvement effort. We are also transferring some legacy RPP costs into Grants Lab in this bucket, in particular a monthly $20k contract with Raid Guild. Raid Guild works on projects that have high GMV potential but represent one-off builds that are not part of our core stack.

Software:

This line item remains mostly flat for H2. We are taking on some costs from the EC, including website hosting, Figma, and KYC tooling which accounts for a slight increase.

Travel:

This line item should also remain flat for H2. We are decreasing our regular travel budget as we don’t use it as much outside of popular events (EthCC, EthDenver, and Dev Con.) The $15,000 spend in November represents DevCon costs, which are particularly high given that many leaders are traveling from North America and Europe.

G&A and Miscellaneous:

G&A was a catch-all bucket that we have deprecated now that we have better tracking of individual line items. We are opting for better tracking and tighter budgets over the traditionally requested safety net of funds.

The biggest line item in the miscellaneous bucket is audits – we plan to spend $75k on the Allo 2.1 audit in Q4, and likely $15-25k on an audit for new mechanisms before the end of the year. The cost of that new mechanism is distributed across various months.

Budget Request The total budget requested is $2,646,608 for July - December 2024.

This budget was requested in late July because Grants Lab was anticipated to have sufficient remaining funds from the Q4 2024 funding cycle (across PGF, GSD, GS, and Allo) to cover July expenses. Due to token volatility, Grants Lab requested a 150,000 USDC loan from CSDO to cover part of July expenses, which will be paid back once a budget successfully passes.

H1 spend: $2,505,655, including Grants Lab, Allo, and Public Goods Funding

H2 projected spend: $2,646,608 (includes all of the above + some absorbed responsibilities from Ecosystem Collective)

Current Treasury: The current treasury can be found at 0xd1f5d2A59Ef194aE00F27b2DA6599ce207ddE7cB and is summarized below.

Conclusion Feedback is welcomed on this budget request as well as the strategy post! H2 Proposal [Strategy] - Grants Labs 3 -> https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/h2-proposal-strategy-grants-labs/19198