Submitting an Application to #ssb-grants for External Grant Writing

TL;DR: if this is not fleshed out enough for an application for this month, can someone help me?

We should have a major resourced sprint this month

We have a bunch of grants on table which could do with major focus this month.

• Blockchains for Social Good : 1 Million EUR
• Unicef Innovation Fund : 100k EUR
• Blockstack Social Networks Grant : 100k USD

We're also lucky that at the moment we have the likes of zelf and others who have expertise in Grant writing. I also have connections (with a successful grant writing background) who can do such work, but not for free.

I'd suggest we apply for 5k USD this month from #ssb-grants #ssbc-grants so that we can put someone on this full time this month as a project lead such as zelf (she has capacity).

We get a nice cascade effect from this grant - even if we are not successful with these grants much of the work, effort, coordination and documentation which is an outcome from the efforts will make future external grant applications easier.

I would be inclined to do match funding of such an effort.

Image from here

Have just arrived back to Suva and looking around the house I can see that I have a busy week ahead of me before an international relocation (with child) to Melbourne will mean I am running on low capacity.

Rather than get this grant over the line I will use the capacity that I do have to do the back channel coordination for the Blockchains for Social Good grant. Can someone speak up and act as the lead for this Grant so that we might be able to secure an income for Zelf to act as project lead for Grant push this month. I am sure there will also be monies left over - but it will be giving ourselves the best possible chance for a positive outcome with one of these pots of money over the next month..;.

@cblgh can you direct comms zelf and ask them if they have capacity for fulltime work on this if it is funded and we can get this internal grant over the line?

A.K.A You gotta to make

FWIW I actually think having two people working on this fulltime/overtime over the next month would likely be the best course of action.

This would be possible with #ssb-grants + blockades.org match funding and then likely also enough in the pot to pay for other peoples time in an adhoc way as needed.

Even with two people with inhuman hours it would still require others from within this #solarpunkgarden to rally around and storm together when called / when you see.

tagging some people I have seen get stuck into grants stuff before:

• @mix
• @mikey
• @Piet
• @Alanna
• @masukomi
• @Dominic
• @noffle
• @cel
• @corlock
• @SoapDog
• @Angelica
• @rabble

@mc@ticktack "Hi, let me know how I could help. I am not sure if Blockstack's grant is suitable for us. Since we have our own infrastructure to do messages relay and replication, we are not building on top of Blockstack."

Best to get stuck into the relevant linked conversation/thread listed in the opening post.

Clarification: Application to #ssbc-grants for June 1st 2018

This is to put together an application for a grant to submit for June 1st (no grants thread for upcoming month has been put together)

@Alanna "Also, has the grants person (grant poombah? head grantcho? executive granter?) been specified for this upcoming round yet? I'd like to talk to them about how it could work to have someone (maybe me) coordinating the SSB grant but someone else doing a lot of the work."

@corlock is currently trying to pass the hat

Can someone give me a direct comms link to Zelf? Are they on SSB? Or can I email them or something?

I have emailed everyone who has expressed interest for whome I have an email just now

Thanks for showing this leadership @Dan Hassan, despite having so much on your plate right now.

"If You Want Something Done, Ask a Busy Person To Do It".

I'm super keen to see this happen - but won't if an emergent storm doesn't happen... my spidey senses are tingling though and I feel enlivened when feeling like this, so it's not a drag on the resources that I do have :) I think my boundaries and limitations are hard enough at the moment that I don't even need to think about watching out for burn out :D There are perks to old life choices :D

This is turning out awesome.

@Alanna and @zelf I have confirmed with my rad grant writing friend that they are available and super interested in what we're doing. I'd like to line up a call with the three of you (and me to do quick intros) to chat more. They are EU based so also potential for face-to-face meet ups between zelf and them which in my experience is invaluable for a working pair... IMO two people pairing on such work is less isolating and spreads the workload...

I'll start a doodle soon!

Question to the Audience-Participants-Scuttleverse

What further padding/information/planning would you require from this group of butts to vote for this thing as fundable for this month?

I'll start a doodle soon!

@zelf @Alanna sent by email with friend bcc'd in as they are in the process of changing their email.

@Alanna we can see a link to all successful previous proposals in the Meta Thread. It might be worth us formatting this proposal in a similar format to the successful ones.

1. First step will be seeing if there is a common format.

cc: @zelf

Ok, having quickly looked through them all, there isn't a super consistent format, which is nice. I like this one

Local Community On-Boarding

Which is the following format:

• Title
• Synopsis
• Team
• Goals

I don't have more time today but I think we have most of this content already scattered through the rest of the thread.

On and then a follow up post with:

• Backstory

/incomingspam

Pinging everyone who has received funding so far (minus those who have already interacted with the thread) on the off-chance any of you is interested in the subject matter of our proto-proposal

-@duncan
-@Aljoscha
-@luxxor
-@cel
-@Zach!
-@nanomonkey
-@arj
-@SoapDog
-@keks
-@Angelica
-@mikey
-@Matt McKegg
-@Luandro
-@gmarcos87
-@benhylau

/endspam

I'm super for this. I think it's an opportunity to enable some people with great skills to contribute more to this community, and to value some hard work. Even in the event we don't get any grants, there will be lots of learning about communicating our values, and clear concise writing about our principles. Both the process and the output will be really valuable IMO

@Dan Hassan this is an awesome thread. I am still unpacking everything but I just want to voice an opinion that I think that having someone receive a grant for writing grant proposals to external initiatives is fantastic.

I've been a part of funded projects and experienced how complex it is to write good proposals. Having people with experience doing it for the scuttleverse benefit is a very good path forward. I don't think I have much to add except another pair of eyes into the potential future proposals. I've given feedback and did research on grant proposals but I was never the grant writer, we had experts doing that for us.

First up - everyone I spammed. Apologies for not laying out a clear invitation. Whoops! What I had meant to ask was if you had specific questions, queries or worries about this application.

From my end I think one of the main questions that I would have would be:

"What is the hourly rate?"

From the grants details outlined here

Each grant will be :

• $5000 USD grants (payable in USD, BTC, ETH)
• equivalent to 1 month of full-time work, if you would rather work part time, this can be spread out as makes sense (just say what you are doing in your proposal or dev diary)

This might be a thorny issue - but "how many hours are in a solarpunk work week?" Is this the right way to be looking at this? Would a better way to be to to look at how much an hourly rate for grant-writers? How have other people who have been working on #grants been thinking about this?

The reason that I am asking this is that this will indicate how many grant-hours there are available to split out amongst the grant teams as stuff comes up.

I wonder if this has not come up before as most other grants have been distributed to individuals (except perhaps ssb-loomio) so people have been in the subjective position to be able to value their own time...

cc: @Alanna & @zelf

RE: my own contributions I will be in a more supporting role so will not be applying for funds from this grant reserve.

@zelf: "@Dan Hassan did loomio do a collab with SSB?"

Check this out!

ssb-loomio proposal which got funded and is being built with a alpha already having been released

@Dan Hassan one of the intensions to having a fixed rate on the grants was not to have to count the hours, or do the various admin stuff that eats into productive time when consulting. It's really up to the recipient to decide how much time to spend exactly. Also, many of the things that the grants are applied to arn't easy to quantify anyway. If I am thinking hard how to solve a problem on the bus does that count? If I wake up with an idea how to solve something, how do you count the hours I was sleeping? etc.

@Dominic I like the cut of your gib

I said similar things In the mmt clarifying our pay experiment:

I find the contractor compartmentalisation the most intuitive given this is the realm that I have come from (billable hours with a fixed amount and fixed deliverables with a feedback loop to adjust expectations based on unfolding realities). On the other hand this approach often felt kind of arbitrary to me - I knew I'd speak to people about my work, I'd dream about it, I'd stairwell thought about it. Were these billable hours? Were these valorised?

And what about the efforts of those around me who have helped to reproduce me - who have put up with me when I've brought some negative vibes due to an upsetting thing which has happened during "work-hours", who have listened to my worries over cups of tea?

+1 for what zelf said

@Alanna "I'm very confident in our ability to fairly allocate grant resources within our little team. "

100% agree

Perhaps as part of our SSB grant we can give a quick TL;DR to each of our experience in this area as not everyone may be familar with that fact this is well trodden ground for us

e.g. build little lego versions of ourselves

e.g. build little lego versions of ourselves

Went and made a lego version of myself super fuzzy and first draft

@rabble "So i managed to get the grant proposal off to Unicef"

Great work rabble and co.

See an example costing here in the #blockstack application zelf just submitted.

See an example costing here Unicef Innovation Fund

@rabble "We probably put 20 to 30 hours in to it, and really really really cut corners. They wanted a ton of info and to do it really right would have required maybe 5 to 10 times more effort."

With the proposed budget this would have been

30 USD * 30 (hours) = 900USD

Interestingly to do it properly rabble has suggested it would take between 5-10* more effort ( 4500 to 9000 USD) to do this properly...

This would be about 9% of the 100k USD which is speculatively being bid for...In this world of grant writing I have understood that it is not uncommon for organisations to be spending 20-30% of their incoming searching/applying for grants...

mu is currently comparing the Blockchains for Social Good grant to previous successful grants they have made to EU. We'll have a better understanding of estimated requirements for the Prize then...

"In this world of grant writing I have understood that it is not uncommon for organisations to be spending 20-30% of their incoming searching/applying for grants..."

I just wanna clarify I am not suggesting ssb provision this percentage towards grant writing :)

@Alanna "any luck getting Mu on SSB?"

There is a tight coupling of operating system upgrade THEN ssb install... ASAP is the order of the day.

I think alanna, zelf and mu as core is a great team - from what I have read everyone else is playing a supporting role.

I think a call at the end of the week sounds good. I'll get a doodle lined up tomorrow if there is not one done before