Everything we’ve learned (so far) about building Outcome-Based Donations

This is everything we’ve learned about making Outcome-Based Donations in 10 learnings.

It’s been about a year and a half since our first post talking about why we started Govrn and why we think Outcome-Based Donations (OBDs) are so powerful (find it here).

• If you’re not sure what an Outcome-Based Donations (OBD) is, read our primer here.

A year and a half is a long time, and in that time we’ve learned a lot about how to ensure OBDs are successful. I wanted to take a moment and share with you our learnings, as it is influencing our strategy on how we’re growing.

In this article and all future articles, we are going to be fully transparent and open. We want to be built by the community, which means we can’t hold anything back. Our community is the best part about Govrn, so we want to bring you all into as much of the process as possible.

Our Learnings:

1. Building OBDs is hard

This feels obvious, but I think it’s worth saying out loud. This is not to garner pity, but rather to say “doing this the right way” is hard. What does “doing things the right way” mean? It means we want our OBDs and Metrics to be based on research from experts. We are very conscious of the power Govrn can have to help or hurt communities. Building OBDs the right way ensures we help communities, not hurt or make them worse.

2. First, we tried empower users to build their own

At first, we tried to get constituents to build their own Outcome-Based Donations (determining the required goal and metric). What we found is that (a) Users don’t want to build their own, they prefer to donate to existing ones and (b) Most users self acknowledge they don’t have enough information to build their own.

3. So we went to non-profits and experts and asked them to build them

With this learning, we went to Non-Profits, NGOs, and Issue/Research experts to help us build them. These groups were super excited about OBDs and Gorvn. They wanted to get involved, but are constrained when it comes to their time. They barely have enough resources to finish their own to-do’s and as a result, they were hesitant to help us work on an OBD until they knew users wanted them.

4. How about Politicians?

We also spoke to Politicians at the same time. And while some are unsure what OBDs would mean for them, almost all we’re excited because they see how Govrn enables them to work for the people, rather than political parties. But similar to non-profits and experts, they said they’d go where the constituents are. That constituents are the most important piece of the puzzle.

5. So we ended up back with you, the users, the most important stakeholders.

We were stuck in the classic “chicken and egg” problem. Users were ready and wanted to donate to OBDs, but didn’t have any to donate in. Experts wanted to create OBDs for users to donate to but didn’t want to create them before users were on the platform. Both sides needed the other and were waiting for the other one to go first.

So we took these learnings and tried to build a process to circumnavigate the problem. How could we build a process that:

• Allowed users to signal what issues they wanted to fix before making an Outcome-Based Donation.
• And allowed Experts to see what users cared about before proposing Outcome-Based Donations.

After looking at it all, we came up with something we call Outcome Communities.

6. What’s an Outcome Community?

Outcome Communities are a new way to organize and coordinate funding to solutions that solve an issue you care about. Right now they are currently organized around City + Outcome.

• For example, you could join the Outcome Community called San Francisco + Environment

Outcome Communities have the following features:

• Joining and pledging means you receive an ownership stake in the community. This essentially means you’re sponsoring the solution.
• As the total amount of pledges for a community grows, it incentivizes experts to start proposing OBDs (they see what people care about).
• Once you see an OBD you like, you can commit your pledge to the OBD.
• If you never find an OBD you like or lose interest in fixing the issue, you can quit the community and receive your entire pledge back.

This creates a risk-free way to start signaling what issues you care most about. We will be writing more about these soon.

7. We think Outcome Communities are the first step to building the Govrn Movement. They fix each of the issues we ran into.

• They allow constituents to donate to outcomes before an OBD is built.
• Show experts what OBDs need to be built.
• Allows Politicians to know what priorities they should be running on.

8. This all rolls up into our overall Govrn Strategy

• The election is happening this November, this would be a weird time to start any new OBDs.
• The current goal is to build up these Outcome Communities as much as possible over the next 5 months. We want robust communities across a diverse range of issues.
• Then, come January when all the new politicians take office, experts will be ready to propose outcome-based donations to these outcome communities.

9. Growing with our community it key

We don’t think it’s our place to tell the community what political governance should look like. We should work with them to understand the best way to ensure they feel representative in Politics. We believe this is a more responsible and humble way to grow that also aligns with the Govrn ethos.

10. The journey is the destination

Govrn is a journey, and a crazy one at that. What we’re building at Govrn is more than your average startup; it’s a philosophy, it’s a movement. Trying to get people to make Outcome-Based Donations right out the gate is too much. It’s like trying to get you to eat an entire elephant in one bite.

We’ve stopped thinking about Govrn through this lens and now think of it as a journey, as a movement. One where we are only as strong as our community, one where we want you to come on this journey with us instead of following us.

Over the next months, we’re going to start releasing stand-alone features to our members so they can start getting value out of Govrn.

• To do this, we build a Govrn Dashboard for all our users. Think of this like Mint.com, but for politics. You can manage all your political and non-profit giving from this view.

We’re excited for the next phase of this journey and are happy to have you with us. If you have thoughts or want to join — you can shoot me email, come check us out at Govrn.io, or follow our twitter.