Options for next step for new approach to crowdmatching

Add another proposal (8?) which I don’t love but which I think is viable and simple and worth reviewing to fully understand the problem space:

  • Projects set both the crowdsize and a single patron-max (and thus the dollar goal)
  • Patrons simply pledge or not
  • We could limit the ranges available for these

This is identical to our current live model with a single match-factor, except it simply replaces the per-patron budget cap with a project-goal budget-cap.

This proposal could still have the features with additional stretch goal(s) which could have their own different numbers (different match factor).

Incidentally, by linking crowdsize and money goal together, this can be framed as money-goal or crowdsize-goal, whereas the other approaches can only be one or the other (or at least require vague ranges of crowdsize, such as saying “we’ll hit our money goal with a crowdsize between X and Y”).

2 Appreciations

I don’t think we need a crowdsize-goal for people to feel as part of a crowd. I think that is already the case on Patreon and Kickstarter.

Screenshot from 2020-09-30 23-43-27

Source: https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor

There you see how big the crowd is and how much money the project gets. Both is important.

And i think in the end, our project is about funding the commons, not collecting a crowd for whatever reason. It’s about money. Making that clear by showing a money-goal is simply transparent.

Our first priority is funding (getting money to projects), our second is how we do funding. We are only different from e.g. Patreon or Kickstarter in how we do it, the goal is the same.

We can still use framing in the presentation like “Join the crowd (of people who contribute money)” instead of “Throw your money in”.

Maybe one nice visual would be actually showing the people. Having drawn images of crowds of standing people with 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000, … so you really get a feeling for it.

outline-crowd-of-people-on-stadium-image_csp59641476

We could generate those images from e.g. 10 drawn characters chosen randomly. A funny gadget would be that any patron can choose their character in the profile and they see themselves highlighted in the crowd and see the chosen characters of the others. Like those avatar pictures, but as an actual crowd.

We as snowdrift can hire an artist do create characters that people would like to have…

But i would like them very small and with few detail.

Or we have some detail, but it’s generated from a neural net from photos people upload is a style like this. Wo can go completely crazy with this and it might become the thing snowdrift will be popular for.

crowd-abstract-hand-drawn-people-450w-583670560

3 Appreciations

Alignment so far

In meeting today, we all agreed to this basic direction:

projects set goal(s), patrons pledge what they will contribute at that goal, and then each month’s donations will be proportional to the percentage of the goal the crowd has reached

(This does not say whether the goal or % is based on $ or patrons or any other details).

Next steps

In further discussion, we should identify any other principles that we have complete alignment on (meaning everyone has an unqualified whole body yes to going in this direction, but not meaning that we can never change our minds).

We should make a static file (wiki page for updated-mechanism?) where we collect the precise agreed-upon specs.

For anything without full alignment, we’ll continue discussing concerns and questions etc. I suggest we make a running list. Examples: patron-goal vs crowdsize-goal, and capping-the-percentage-of-a-goal-one-patron-may-pledge.

Further alignment?

I suspect we will find alignment that:

  • projects may change their goals (at all, not sure whether we’ll set constraints)
  • pledges should scale down with any reduced goals so that reducing goals does not automatically get projects more money from patrons
  • pledges should remain the same (not scaled up) for any increase in project goals
  • any goal change will be announced to patrons with a prompt for them to consider adjusting their pledges in light of the change
    • particularly with an invitation to opt-in to their original pledge for scaled-down goals

Any concerns at all about these specs?

4 Appreciations

I am aligned with the four bullet points except for the one about scaling up. I agree that it should not increase, but I can see an argument for the pledge decreasing, at least in the amount taken out each month.

1 Appreciation

If the goal increases, then my unchanged pledge will result in me donating less already.

So, I’m donating $1 of my $10 pledge when project is getting $1000 of $10,000 goal. But if they raise the goal to $100,000 and I keep my $10 pledge, I’m already down to giving only 10 cents, unless somehow the 10-fold higher goal suddenly also brought in 10-fold increase in pledges from others.

1 Appreciation

Kay, just wanted to clarify that’s what you meant. Then yes, I am aligned with all of those.

1 Appreciation

pledges should scale down with any reduced goals so that reducing goals does not automatically get projects more money from patrons

ok, let’s see what that means in practice.

let’s assume your project has 100 patrons which contribute 1$ each and your goal is 10.000$. you will get nearly nothing. wouldn’t it be legitimate to adjust your goal according to the actual potential in the community? for example to 100$, so you get 100% and wait for community to grow

imagine projects adjusting it always to 100%, then we don’t have the crowdmatching effect which our whole effort is about. so we might not want that since we believe this effect will bring in more patrons. so we have to communicate to not do that and maybe not even allow it.

i want some more discussion about this

maybe we can create a mechanism where the projects goal is automatically adjusted to maximize the crowdmatching effect. let’s discuss that idea in Idea: Automatically adjusted project goal

1 Appreciation

I don’t want to lose the key point that I’m suggesting has alignment. Regardless of whether that adjustment makes sense, the principle is: When 100 patrons each say “I’m willing to contribute $1 of the $10,000 goal”, the project shall not be able to suddenly claim all the $100 by adjusting their target to $100! Because that violates the trust of the patrons who pledged to give $1 as part of the $10,000-giving crowd!

So, whatever we allow in terms of crowd size and target goals and multiple goals and whatever including your other idea… The project shall not have the ability to claim more of the patrons’ pledge than the patrons expected without an opt-in. If the patrons want to go ahead and give their full $1 to the $100 goal, they can opt-in to doing so. The principle I’m asking for alignment on is that we will not let the project-goal-change violate the basis of the matching pledge that the patrons made. The patrons must opt-in to any giving of more money at the less-matching lower-goal.

I’m not saying it’s good for the new $100 goal to have all the patrons scaled down to $0.01 pledge levels. I’m saying this is required to keep the trust of the pledge. If the goal of $100 is actually supported by the patrons, we let them choose to keep their $1 pledge, we don’t do it automatically.

2 Appreciations
  • projects may change their goals (at all, not sure whether we’ll set constraints)

As I said in the meeting, I don’t think this is necessary for the first version and I don’t think we need to address multiple or changing goals right now. However, I do think it’s a good long-term goal, and it seems like the conversation is going in that direction anyway, so I’ll pitch in.

I think a notification to patrons is equally important regardless of direction, so I disagree with the last bullet. Otherwise, I agree with the principle behind the bullets, especially as clarified in @wolftune’s most recent reply. However, I disagree with much of the phrasing.

Idea that I don't like due to no goals from projects

Patrons make a pledge like: “When the project’s (pledged) income reaches $X, I am willing to donate $Y.”

To calculate what an individual actually pays, do these calculations:

  • I pledge to donate $10 when the project reaches $20k pledged
    • By linear interpolation, this means I’ve pledged $5 at $10k.
  • You pledge to donate $10 when the project reaches $10k pledged
    • By maximum, this means your pledge is still $10 at $20k.
  • With just the two of us pledged, my current donation level is $10 * ( $15 / $10 000 )

You can basically think of this as, each patron sets their own goal for the projects. A more complicated version would be: allow patrons to set multiple different goals per project:

image

I do think some version of this could work (and indeed, the multiple levels thoughts that I’ve repeatedly alluded to are one form of this, where patrons cannot pick arbitrary targets for themselves).

Why share that idea at all? Because it’s the fewest-restrictions (not simplest!) version of how multiple or changing goals can interact:

  • Project sets a goal, $X. I pledge $Y towards that goal.
  • Project lowers goal to $X/2
    • I agree, my pledge MUST automatically “adjust” down to $Y/2
  • Project raises their goal back to $X
    • I don’t want to rule out the possibility that my goal could automatically “adjust” back up to $Y.

I’m putting “adjust” in quotes because you don’t need to change anything about my pledge. It would be adjusting (raising) my pledge if it were changed to “I’ll give $Y when the project reaches $X/2”. But you could also just look at it as keeping my pledge the same, and just adding a cap based on If I pledged to give $Y at $X, and the project wants to cap my actual donation at half that, so be it, but this doesn’t need to change my pledge.

I can distill down the remaining parts of the bullets that I agree with to these (last is unchanged):

  • We should never raise a patron’s “pledge rate” without their consent (or allow a project to do so).
  • Ideally, we would also not lower their rate without consent, either.
  • Any goal change will be announced to patrons with a prompt for them to consider adjusting their pledges/rate in light of the change

They don’t have a public goods focus or requirement. I would say our goal is similar, but not the same.

I can’t imagine reaching out to our first real projects and saying that they are supposed to choose a goal but when they say, “can we ever change the goal?” we say either “no” or “we haven’t decided whether that will be possible.” The answer has to be some version of “yes” or “yes, but the feature is still getting finished, but definitely planned.”

I can’t see launching absent a clear understanding that goals will be changeable. And then we have to have answers about at least the potential details for how that would work.

I like this as a model to think about. I agree that it’s too open-ended, too many things to set for the patron, too much cognitive work.

Updated principle bullets

Adjusting the wording further and adding back a version of the first bullet:

  • We will (at least post-beta) have some way for projects to adjust their goal(s)
    • Not yet specifying the options. It could be adding stretch goals or inserting new early-starting-goal (so the initial goal is now the stretch) or a simple change to the one goal number or what other options
  • The mechanism should never raise a patron’s match-rate or budget-max without their consent
  • Any goal change will be announced to patrons with a prompt for them to consider adjusting their pledges/rate in light of the change

Do we have alignment on these?

  • Fully-aligned, whole-body yes
  • Not yet
0 voters
3 Appreciations

@wolftune what do you mean with match-rate here? the situation where a project set a lower goal and the patron would pay more % of their pledge?

i’m still not sure if that isn’t a legitimate move from a project when they realize they will not reach the ambitious goal

Yes, that’s what I mean. And yes, the move is perfectly legitimate. But it must have the patrons’ consent!

So, it’s fine potentially for a project to say “we were too ambitious with even our first goal, we are adjusting down to something more realistic” and asking patrons to thus give more of their percentage, i.e. keep their max the same even for the lower goal. But the mechanism shall not make this change without the patrons consenting to continuing in that way. The patrons pledged for the higher goal. We will not violate their trust by changing the goal on them and automatically taking more of their money without reaching the goal they had pledged for. We must ask them to accept or adjust their pledge for the new lowered-goal.

2 Appreciations

Thanks for the clarification.

I’m not sure if most patrons care that much and would really see that as violating their trust and i fear that many would not care to think about it and not change it. Result is that the project don’t get much funding because our system requires too much effort from patrons.

On Patreon, you just choose how much to contribute and that’s it.

But i see your point and we can start that way and see if it is a problem in practice.

“Opt-in” and consent could mean that patrons say in advance that if the goal is lowered, they want to keep their max unchanged. I don’t think that feature makes sense any time soon if ever, but it’s not blocked by the principle of consent here.

2 Appreciations

I am mostly talking about before that stage. I think we ought to get clearer on the other aspects, like what restrictions we want to place on patrons pledging to a single goal (eg, discussing options 1-5 from the original post in this thread) before we start talking about multiple[1] or changing goals.

On answering "Can we ever change the goal?"

Of course not, that’s a straw man. But I do think “eventually” would be an acceptable answer here.

Whatever single first outside project we choose will — must — join the platform with the understanding that we are at an early beta stage and that e v e r y t h i n g[2] is subject to change as we work with them to define the platform. Similarly, early patrons need to understand this is the type of system they’re pledging in.

And so, while we must never violate patrons’ trust that we will only charge as much as they have agreed to, something like “In order to change limits, we need to drop all existing pledges and start fresh” would not be the end of the world.

Bad? Yes. Unnecessary? Almost certainly. Off the table? I don’t think so.

Commercial products frequently “launch” several times. We are permitted the same flexibility. With a novel idea like crowdmatching, there is no expectation that we’ll get it exactly right the first time.

Our first project should not view Snowdrift.coop as a stable source of income at first. At some point, we (obviously) want them to, and when we are ready to reach that point, we should be explicit about it. For example, offering a “grandfather plan” guarantee where, if a project has a stable income they rely on using an old model of crowdmatching, they can keep it even if we’ve modified the formula for new projects. But maintaining multiple systems in parallel incurs a large development cost and we cannot afford to slow ourselves down like that, yet.


  1. Eg, some of the ideas I have around multiple goals + tiers, that you alluded to in Idea: Automatically adjusted project goal ↩︎

  2. Formatting here is a bit excessive… but it’s late on Friday night and I’m having fun :smiley: ↩︎

2 Appreciations

To clarify, I am not opposed to talking about changing/multiple goals soon.[1] But we still have a lot to discuss before we get there. To start this topic, @msiep listed 5 different variations on a single goal, and a few people added other options since then. I would like to figure out what we like and don’t like about each of them, and pick/create one that we like the most.[2] Concretely, I would like to discuss / get alignment on:

Edit: moved to Building consensus on crowdmatching options for a single goal

Once we’ve made progress on that, I’ll be ready to move on to the topic[3] of changing/multiple goals. This is also when I think we should discuss what happens when a project reaches their goal (do patrons continue giving their max, or start to “share the burden”?).


  1. Actually, I can’t wait to share some of the ideas I’ve been stewing over. ↩︎

  2. To whatever extent this involves discussing changing/multiple goals, that’s fine; they are related and I just don’t want to let those topics distract us from actually having the conversation. ↩︎

  3. Pun intended — I think this forum topic will be quite long at this point, so it will make sense to start a new topic (which should start with a summary of our conclusions so far). ↩︎

4 Appreciations

A post was merged into an existing topic: Building consensus on crowdmatching options for a single goal

I think one of the reason my questions have not gotten much response is how long this thread is; I created a new topic to continue the discussion — Building consensus on crowdmatching options for a single goal — and moved [parts of] the two posts above to that topic.

2 Appreciations

A post was merged into an existing topic: Patron based proposal for mechanism 1.1