Proposals Delivering Impact
What are the different ways that proposals can ensure they deliver impact to the ecosystem?
Listing out what could happen after a proposal receives funding. There is no guarantee what the outcome will be of a funded proposal. Many are at the idea stage and there are many variables that can change what gets executed and how impactful it ends up being.
The list is ordered based on a rough preference of how the proposal would ideally be executed.
Execute proposal as described to a high quality
How it could happen
Sufficient funding - Enough funding was secured to execute the proposal fully.
Required team established - Enough team members were available or joined to execute the proposal effectively.
Infrastructure, services and tools in place - The proposal team had what was required from the ecosystem to execute the proposal.
Positives for this outcome
Higher chance of delivering impact - Executing the proposal to a high quality gives a good chance the proposal team are able to deliver an impact to the ecosystem.
Insightful and educational - Success of the proposal gives good examples to the community on how to execute their own proposals.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
None - This is the ideal path!
Execute proposal after pivoting to a high quality
How it could happen
Customer or market data - New data about the market or feedback from customers could lead to finding a better way to execute the proposal that should produce more impact.
Execution complexity - The initial execution plan was flawed or not feasible and as such the team had to pivot to something that could be delivered.
Team decision - The team made a decision to go down a different route due to their own research, analysis or intuition.
Positives for this outcome
Higher chance of delivering impact - By pivoting to something that the proposal team is more confident in, or at least more passionate about, there is an increased chance they can deliver impact.
Reactive - Pivoting can be a good thing when the team is able to realise when something needs to change. Pivoting in software with new ideas is very common. A team that can act quickly on new information is more likely to deliver impact than one that executes their proposal as planned but their execution does not deliver as much impact.
Insightful and educational - Success of the proposal gives good examples of how proposal teams take in information to make decisions on when to pivot to a new idea or approach.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Misleading the community - If the proposal pivot to something that is very different than the original proposal this could be seen as an action done in bad faith. Being funded to execute one thing then changing it to any large extent is misleading the community.
Redirect proposal funding with good reasoning
How it could happen
Market timing - The proposers realise based on feedback or market data that the timing for what they want to deliver is not good timing.
Unable to build team - Proposal team are unable to build the team needed to execute the proposal.
Change of focus - The proposal team decide they could be more impactful working on other areas of the ecosystem that are unrelated.
Lacking Infrastructure, services or tools - The ecosystem did not have what the team required to be able to execute the proposal at the time of funding.
Positives for this outcome
Reactive - Proposal team took initiative to resolve their problem and found another related project in the ecosystem that can deliver the impact with that funding.
Making use of funding - The funding can more immediately be impactful to a different project rather than stay dormant with the proposal team that had issues with executing at that given time.
Insightful and educational - Reasoning for redirecting funds could provide useful information to the community on areas of the ecosystem that need further development, why the market timing might not be right for a type of idea or where shortages exist for certain required talent.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Funding gatekeeper - Proposers being a gate keeper of funds can give them influence over others. Redirection of funds is not a desired outcome but instead acceptance of a compromise to the situation.
Misleading the community - Releasing funds to another related project still results in misleading the community as they funded that proposal to be executed.
Execute proposal as described to an average to low quality
How it could happen
Team skill or size - The team either lacks the size or skills required to execute effectively.
Funding issues - There was insufficient funding to complete execution to a higher quality.
Positives for this outcome
Insights and education - Community can see where either team size, skill or funding caused issues for different proposals and use this as insights when thinking of their own proposals.
Moderate chance of impact - The proposal team delivered what was intended which gives a moderate chance for creating impact that can guide future efforts.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Community reputation - Future access to funding could be impacted by the proposal teams ability to execute.
Execute proposal after pivoting to an average to low quality
How it could happen
Team size or skill - Lacking team size of skill results in the team needing to pivot to another idea.
Over ambitious - Original plan was too ambitious leading the team to pivot to something else.
Funding issues - There was insufficient funding to complete execution to a higher quality.
Positives for this outcome
Insights and education - Community can see where either team size, skill or funding caused issues for different proposals and use this as insights when thinking of their own proposals.
Moderate chance of impact - The proposal team delivered something else than what was intended but there is still a moderate chance for creating impact that can guide future efforts.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Community reputation - Future access to funding could be impacted by the proposal teams decision choice to pivot or for their ability to execute.
Limited impact - The proposal may likely have more limitations on being as impactful as it could be if it was executed to a higher quality.
Redirect proposal funding with poor to no reasoning
How it could happen
Market timing - The proposers realise based on feedback or market data that the timing for what they want to deliver is not good timing.
Unable to build team - Proposal team are unable to build the team needed to execute the proposal.
Change of focus - The proposal team decide they could be more impactful working on other areas of the ecosystem that are unrelated.
Lacking Infrastructure, services or tools - The ecosystem did not have what the team required to be able to execute the proposal at the time of funding.
Positives for this outcome
Reactive - Proposal team at least made efforts to redirect funding to be better used however they were not well justified.
Moderate chance of impact - There is a moderate chance to create impact providing the other project selected is able to deliver something with the funds.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Community reputation - Future access to funding could be impacted by the proposal teams decision to direct funding elsewhere with poor to no reasoning for their actions.
Misdirected funding - The funding if directed to something very different than the original proposal means the funding would not go towards helping solve the problems outlined in the original proposal.
No execution of proposal
How it could happen
Team breakdown - The team had conflicts leading to a breakdown that prevented execution.
Scam - Proposal team scammed the funding process.
Positives for this outcome
Insights and education - Reasons why this proposal team has failed could provide feedback to improve the process to prevent it in the future.
Reasons to avoid this outcome
Wasted resources - This wastes the community resources that could have been better allocated.
No impact - Not executing on the proposal means no impact is delivered.
Community reputation - Future access to funding should be impacted due to not making sufficient effort to deliver any impact.
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