Innovation Funding Rounds: Leveraging Democratic Funding

Usually research and innovation is funded by professional investors who take the risk (to loose money) in hopes of reward.

Professional investors have this job, because determining good investment requires a lot of work, niche experience and talent.

Can the public spontaneously determine the right investments (about the future) instead of professional investors? I am not sure. I have doubts.

I agree that the public can successfully fund things that it is familiar with (aka. sustaining existing projects), but with innovation - the future is by definition unfamiliar and unclear.

To make things familiar, the idea author may need to do a lot of convincing and advocating for many years to receive funding, but this has a few problems:

1. Precious time would be spent convincing, instead of innovating the actual product.
2. Most often innovations cannot wait for many years (especially with AI example).

In theory, interesting approach could be:

1. If individual believes in the idea, person could go straight into building the product (research, innovation, experimentation and a lot of programming), instead of very long fundraising spree (save time)
2. In case, the product becomes widely used, then individual could be rewarded somehow (in order to compensate for huge time investments that innovations require).
3. This may create good incentive structure for people to innovate. Also this may motivate the investors to support the innovators during the intensive research phase as well, because not everyone has the luxury to support the development process themselves

Anyways, at the moment:

• open source idea authors are neither supported during development of their project
• nor after development is complete and the project is successful

making this path of open source development very difficult and unattractive (or even impossible for many people).

So thanks a lot for doing this work trying to make a difference.

Quadratic Funding is an interesting idea, which looks it can surely help with "sustainability" as this project is about.

Excellent points @mindaugasd- thanks so much for your input!!

One reason we're hoping to work with Drupal Association is we can pool resources to unify this community and branch out to [#3377002}. Benefit of the latter are the collaboration and partnership opportunities that DA involvement can open up in Open Collective's vast open source ecosystem (https://discover.opencollective.com/?tag=open+source). Quadratic Funding and a complimentary public fund experiment are entry points to a much larger pool of contributors and funders in that ecosystem.

Another reason to be skeptical of the idea - people may not use the platform, because reading pitches for many may be a tedious activity they would rather do something else like what they usually do.
But during conferences as a fun activity like pitch-burgh was - quadratic funding may be used.

Set up Quadratic Funding Platform

@gusaus What are the sub-steps achieve this step? For example, what is "Quadratic Funding Platform" and how it would be setup?

Solidify partnerships with groups, organizations, and individuals with expertise and capacity to support and grow Drupal by enabling ongoing Quadratic Funding rounds.

There reason I haven't provided an update is we're still stuck on this task because our platform and marketing partners became unavailable soon after we shared our proposal with the Drupal Association.

Just over the last week or so I've reconnected with the same people we were forming a partnership with...and long story short...it looks like there's not only interest but access to additional platform and marketing resources provided by the company that created the Quadratic Model and platform in the first place.

In addition to using a third party platform, it looks we'll be able to integrate the Quadratic Funding component into Drupal. Doubtful that we'll be able to find skilled/available contributors without funds.

@mindaugasd You raise valid points in your other comments. As a participant in the FundOSS pilot (the brought the Quadratic Funding model to open source projects on Open Collective), our (WordPress) project raised more funds in two weeks than we ever had before (or since). Considering the original program has been so impactful, a renewed platform and marketing partnership should bode well for a Drupal program and/or Drupal participants in FundOSS (which we're also planning to revive).

Still may not be a good fit for every project or maintainer. So we'll keep evaluating and experimenting with other models and partners.

Analyzing this more, I think quadratic funding is great idea if clients and site builders vote too (in addition to agencies/developers).

Goals:

• It would be more representative to what clients and site builders want, instead of filtered by what Drupal makers want. Serving Drupal client has to be the primary goal.
• Clients would learn about Drupal, get excited about and spread the word providing means for Drupal to grow.
• Since clients are the sponsors of Drupal by the ends of the day, it would enable to attract more funds for Drupal projects.

Inclusion process:

• This way we would have to reach our clients, and include them into decision making process. For example, it would be my responsibility to find all of my clients and invite them to vote about exciting projects
• Authentication process - maybe it could be owning a Drupal website (or domain).

> I think quadratic funding is great idea if clients and site builders vote too (in addition to agencies/developers).

I understand why this idea is confusing to the Drupal community (because no Drupal projects/programs/orgs have participated), but the program and potentially the platform we'd be leveraging and extending have existed for several years.

There's already a process and policies we can incorporate into our own (our specific goals and needs will be different). Even a new training cohort that can we repurpose or participate in (depending on how we pool resources with our parters).

Everything is dependent on if/how the Drupal Association becomes involved. After a brief pause (largely because our platform/program lead changed jobs), we're restarted discussions (in the #drupal-association Slack channel) and will continue those (in-person and virtually) during DrupalCon.

@gusaus: I understand why this idea is confusing to the Drupal community (because no Drupal projects/programs/orgs have participated),
Indeed, I visit those websites but this still looks very obscure. Is there a different way to present it?

Let's imagine its the future:
Quadratic voting already works inside Drupal community, it is is very popular, people understand it easily, projects get funding.

How well does it work?
How does it look like?
Where does the funding come from? Why the fund is being funded?
How people vote and fund? (its probably very simple process to understand and use, right?)

Is there a different way to present it?

YES! If the Drupal Association supports the effort, we'll customize the program so it's clear to Drupal stakeholders. The Gitcoin program and platform is not the best example (mainly because it's currently centered on web3/crypto), but FundOSS (which was a partnership between Open Source Collective and Github) is better since it focused on sustaining open source projects without the crypto dependency. As a pilot participant (with a WordPress project), I can say it was similar to other crowdfunding programs/platforms. The funding model made it unique actually has a pretty good explainer on this site https://www.wtfisqf.com/

We're addressing and answering similar questions to yours in the google doc and Slack conversations with the Drupal Association. We all agree it needs to be clear for DA and the community to adopt. That's exactly what we're in the process of doing.

I narrowed down the project scope to reflect the realistic commitment Drupal Association would have to make in order to enable quarterly Quadratic/Democratic funding rounds. Reason for the limited investment (time and funds) is we'll be able to leverage the FundOSS platform and resources when the program comes back online in early 2024.

The only investment DA would need to make is incorporating the match fund (and potentially a stand-alone Fund (https://docs.opencollective.com/help/financial-contributors/organization...) into their existing fundraising strategy.

gusaus → credited alexmoreno → .

gusaus → credited hestenet → .

We're starting off 2024 by consolidating this and #3099877: SustainDrupal program → as they overlap with goals and ideas described in https://www.drupal.org/project/innovation_ideas →

We've also been discussing having active contributors join forces as maintainers... which would make sense considering there would be multiple team members (@hestenet and @alexmoreno) representing what 'seems' like it would need buy-in and involvement from the Drupal Association to move forward.

Specifically we need to determine the following:

1) Can the Drupal Association include in their offerings to supporters (using their existing tools and resources)?

if yes

2) What can we do (Innovation ideas maintainers and members of the Sustainability Team) to help make it happen?

Considering https://www.drupal.org/innovation/pitchburgh-2023 → at the last US DrupalCon was the catalyst for this plan and project, wouldn't it be fitting if we could do something similar for https://events.drupal.org/portland2024 but leveraging the funding tools we're in the process of building?!?

I think providing a way for the community to vote by actually funding projects during a Driesnote would be really powerful (and buzzworthy).

As noted it the last comment, it seems like we'd need buy-in from the DA to make it happen. Maybe we already have that considering we're in the process of unifying overlapping projects/programs in #3325045: Community Enabler Initiative → and have a team which now includes both DA CTO and Innovation coordinator?

Found a term for my concerns in the first comment called "retroactive funding", and this solution apparently is also an idea of Vitalik Buterin which may work together with Quadratic funding. Created an issue to continue exploring retroactive funding: #3422010: Retroactive funding of public goods →

@mindaugasd Thanks for the additional input (and creating the related issue). Considering Vitalik Buterin is a key innovator for the model we're leveraging, I'm sure there are components of Gitcoin's evolving platform and solutions that will address challenges and concerns.

With regards to how it relates to what we're proposing here, Drupal (via the Innovation Working Group?) would be participating (not owning) in a program organized and sustained by FundOSS (in partnership with organizations like Open Source Collective and Gitcoin).

The same model that has raised over $56 million towards public goods in a short period of time https://impact.gitcoin.co/

Narrowing down the scope to focus on enabling the program to coincide with with Drupalcon Portland.

I narrowed down the project scope to reflect the realistic commitment Drupal Association would have to make in order to enable quarterly Quadratic/Democratic funding rounds.

would be participating (not owning) in a program organized and sustained by FundOSS

Good direction, a lot more likely to get to fruition. Thank you for all your work.

updated the title to better reflect the ongoing nature of these funding rounds (and what they would fuel).

Added prefix, cleaned up title, set category and status to indicate that this is under review by the DA

Steps taken

• Removed [Proposal] prefix in title.
• Changed component to Proposed Plan.

Next steps

• Continue to work with Innovation Working Group to refine the proposal and clarify their role and required commitment

Marking RTBC because the proposal has already been shared with key members of the Drupal Association/board and we've been on/off working together over the past year to execute the plan (skim the Google doc comments and this Slack canvas for more context).

Assigning to @hestenet as he's been interfacing with members of the DA/board and members and partners of FundOSS (the program we'd be leveraging).