Establish a Micro-Grants Pilot for Vanilla DAO Community Experiments

Summary

Allocate a capped 2,500 USDC budget to fund a small batch of lightweight community experiments over 8 weeks, testing demand and delivery before committing to a larger grants program.

Motivation

The DAO wants to fund community work but has no track record to size a full program against. A small, time-boxed pilot surfaces what proposals show up, how well recipients deliver, and what review overhead costs — at bounded risk.

Specification

• Total budget: 2,500 USDC from the treasury; per-grant cap: 750 USDC (up to ~3 grants).
• Eligible project types: developer tooling or integrations; educational or documentation content; community events or workshops; governance/analytics dashboards. Each must have a clear deliverable and a public writeup.
• Review process: rolling applications submitted to the forum; a 3-member review group scores each on clarity, feasibility, and DAO benefit, approving by simple majority. Funds disbursed from the existing multisig on milestone completion.
• Duration: 8 weeks from passage; unallocated funds return to the treasury.

Reporting

• Each grantee publishes a short deliverable writeup at completion.
• The review group publishes an end-of-pilot retrospective — funds deployed, outcomes, and a recommendation on whether to launch a full grants program.

Voting Options

• For — Approve the 2,500 USDC micro-grants pilot.
• Against — Do not run the pilot.
• Abstain — Acknowledge without taking a position.

Conclusion

A bounded, self-terminating experiment that generates real data on grant demand and delivery, with no spending commitment beyond the capped pilot.