Summary

When discussing how to define BuilderDAO’s mission, vision and values (MVV), many envision it as the platform of choice, a public good, the future for communities built onchain.

One of the most important tools to build is one that helps us efficiently and effectively weigh the alignment of any decision with our values–this permeates many, many things we do: proposal evaluation, feature prioritization, choosing marketing language, incentivizing/recognizing members, and more.

Think of a grocery store’s produce department. There’s a lot of produce to choose from, but our handbasket has limited capacity and our budget has limited funds. We’re constantly weighing the value of sprouts to apples to celery to peppers to bananas (ie, funding a contest vs. a new feature vs. seeding a community vs. a residency, etc), basically, each day comparing apples to oranges.

There is one thing in the produce section that can help us: the weight scale. Let’s build a scale that measures alignment for any decision we need to make.

We are requesting 3 ETH to identify key stakeholders, lead group discussions, analyze and wireframe a guidance tool that can be incorporated into the DAO tools (ie, this could be, but is not necessarily similar to the rubric Zamees has been building in public).

The Existing Challenge

We are currently facilitating a negative cash flow that is 24x what we bring in via auctions each month. Yes, we are working toward revenue generation ideas and are hopeful for grant funding, but we're still spending in a way that is not effectively contributing to our sustainability--we MUST prioritize a business model from our core values that focuses on our survival.

The Solution: Builder DAO Guidance Rubric

A guidance rubric can “guide” us through indecision, help us feel more comfortable and confident in casting our votes (particularly if against the current), increase participation, prioritize work (like revenue generation), identify our shared vocabulary, reinforce and remind us of our culture, provide a litmus test for evolving values, even serve as a social marketing tool as members publish their decision rubrics.

Building artifacts are important assets for reinforcing our connection to the DAO’s purpose. With integrated shared values, we can implement traditions, rewards, celebrations, shared vocabulary, market decisions and more. A guidance artifact can permeate all aspects of the community–from the way we talk to what we build to what we fund, and more.

As an example, we currently see a lot of variation in the format of funding proposals; authors can easily bypass values that are more difficult to address in a proposal. Solidifying a guidance rubric would allow us to not only evaluate proposals, but also align the proposal creation process with the evaluation process, making it easier for authors and voters alike.

In this proposal, CULTURECREW seeks funding to:

• Work from our current consensus of community mission, vision, values
• Define wants/needs of members wrt group efforts, project selection, etc based on team member interviews and input (research)
• Refine (wireframe) a guidance tool to repeatedly assess decisions/opportunities (eg, funding proposals, feature prioritization, marketing opps, etc) to measure their alignment with key criteria

Future vision:

• Work with a developer to investigate creation of tool/s that automatically generate opportunity scores per proposal
• Explore how to and seamlessly integrate tool(s) into platform
• Evaluate how to convert this guidance tool to an online solution
• Rewrite the Proposal Guidelines document (evaluate making it an online step-by-step process)
• Make it easy to share results to social channels (eg, X and Farcaster)
• Identify next steps/tools for:
• Updating the proposal guidelines and creating a tool for submission in alignment with our values
• Embedding culture in our language and processes
• Encouraging (and structuring) recognition / incentives / rewards to reinforce culture
• Adding our cultural values to our “about” and other places that define us
• Crafting marketing language and UX standards
• Prioritizing features and other builds
• Etc.

Improving Zamees’ Rubric

Many of you have seen the work that Zamees has been doing with his initial version of a guidance rubric. Although many positive comments have been received, as well as comments that we need such a tool, this initial version has its limitations.

It is our opinion that this tool feels “good” because we currently don’t have an evaluation tool at all–this tool could truly be more representative of the community and its values.

For example, it currently defines our core values using an either/or, yes/no, binary approach (either this prop does or doesn’t align with this core value), then suggests that a non-binary scale of 1-5 be used for that evaluation. It would be better served to more specifically define those levels for each core value, as seen in the working document image below:

Additionally, Z’s work assumes that all core values are weighted equally by the community, when that may not necessarily be the case. To be an effective tool, more work should be done on the weight of our values relative to each other.

Finally, the core values listed in Z’s tool are solely his perspective. In other words, they are what he values as important for community health and growth. We have more than 100 other community members–it would be a more representative tool to find shared values from their diverse perspectives.

Definition of Proposal Success & Principles

The goal of this experience is to identify the characteristics of the final solution that guide development decisions.

A BuilderDAO guidance rubric will:

• Become a trusted tool for DAO members
• Be easy to use/administer
• Reduce time spent deciding on projects
• Reduce expense of deciding on projects
• Continue to show Builder DAO as an industry leader in community tooling

A successful result will include the following:

• Members interviewed/surveyed about the proposal process report high ease of use
• Members have higher confidence in the proposal process because it takes less time, there’s more trust and more consensus on what’s worthy of funding (less of a time-consuming popularity contest, more of a criterion-based, inclusive process for all)
• Increased engagement prior to proposals being put on chain using the shared vocabulary of our values
• ~5% increase in voting participation by making it easier and safer to validate your reasons publicly
• 30-50% of voters using the evaluation tool and publishing their results socially
• Members who use the tool with more frequency also more openly discuss the proposed changes they seek; eventually having social transparency with all decisions being discussed and made in the DAO

We understand that businesses, movements, communities, products/services all evolve, and that the MVV will also evolve over time–which is why we feel it is important to commit time and effort to a foundational version of a guidance rubric now, from which we can build with more efficiency and effectiveness and alignment with our current values.

While bringing consultants into projects doesn’t guarantee return on investment, this project considers the following principles (and anti-principles) that will be leveraged to achieve our shared goals.

We believe Builder DAO outputs should be:

• Tangible, tactical
• Fast, efficient, time-saving
• Logical, straight-forward
• Relevant, useful
• Purposeful, intentional
• Made for us, contextual, specific to our people & organization



We intend to facilitate a project and outputs that will not be:

• Murky, opaque
• Slow, gatekeeping, bureaucratic
• Emotional
• Useless, touchy-feely, incorrect
• Inadvertent, tangential
• Irrelevant

Budget & Timeline

The budget for this project is 3 ETH, to be distributed as follows: 2.75 ETH to Robin & Leslie (research, analysis, wireframing) 0.25 ETH to Bob (project management, writing, marketing)

This project will take approximately 6-8 weeks.

There are two key components to the work:

Research (6-8 weeks)

• Review Z’s tool in comparison to the MVV
• Critique Z’s tool to help identify strengths and weaknesses
• Create a new guidance template from analysis and research
• Review existing artifacts (and any artifacts in progress)
• Interview key stakeholders
• Document findings and review for intercoder reliability
• Share insights, process for collaboration and permission
• Introduce the concept and test more broadly
• Document findings, facilitate discussion, seek approval

Implementation (future proposal)

• Discoveries in the research phase we will determine how long it will take to implement a guidance tool
• We will follow up with another prop once we’ve wireframed the tool

Proposal (The Ask), Treasury Impact & Taxation

We are requesting 3 ETH to identify key stakeholders, lead group discussions, analyze and wireframe a guidance tool that can be incorporated into the DAO tooling.

At the time this proposal was put onchain, it would assign 1.05% of the current treasury to build a vital guidance artifact and tool that can be applied to all decisions the DAO faces.

For taxation purposes, W9s will be provided upon request.

About the Authors

Leslie Scott Leslie Scott is a seasoned research leader and strategy professional that likes to “help smart people build things that matter.” With a career spanning Google, Microsoft and Wayfair, she has a track record of initiating and managing impactful research programs, identifying cost-saving opportunities and advocating for user-centered design principles. Leslie has introduced research methods at both Microsoft and Google that are still in use today. Beyond applying her research acumen to interesting things for a living, Leslie spends much of her time in Seattle with her 17-yr old twins, and learning to pilot an old fishing boat.

Discord: lscottseattle

Robin Force Counts Robin is a seasoned User Experience Research (UX) leader with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). With 18 years of experience at Microsoft, she has since transitioned to consulting roles to amplify her impact on understanding user needs, facilitating inclusive teamwork and scaling effective product strategies in large and small business and non-profit sectors. With over a decade of effective team management, Robin boasts skills in mentorship, strategic visioning and infrastructure development as well. Her unwavering commitment to DEI initiatives is highlighted by over 5 years of facilitating workshops aimed at advancing anti-oppression efforts within individuals and organizations. When not facilitating connected understanding across human differences, Robin can be found in her Central Seattle garden cultivating art, plants and food with family and neighbors.

Discord: Go_RoCo

Bob Roth (Zamees) Bob is a long-time marketing and strategy generalist, serial entrepreneur, web3 enthusiast, business owner, DEI advocate and published author/writer who does a little bit of everything–in 25 years of startups, corporations and agencies–who often sees the little things that tie the big things together. Bob has worked with Sam’s Club, the University of Chicago, Globant, Walmart, Universal Technical Institute, Yahoo!, HealthMart, FIFA, Arvest Bank, as well as co-founded HealthMeans, the world’s largest online health educational event platform. Bob is an avid traveler, poet and published novelist, who considers both Portland, OR, and Kansas City, MO, as “home.”

ENS: zamees.eth TW/IG: @zamees Discord: zamees