Background
The Bridge Builders group is an aligned group of highly engaged and committed Catalyst Community members coming together as a community-driven Assembly to provide value to their environment. We sensor and identify gaps within the ecosystem to co-design and initiate required solutions. In collaboration with well-established community projects, we co-build and design "tailor-made" solutions in line with the Cardano & Catalyst Philosophy… from the community, with the community, for the community.
We see each funding round amazing projects growing up in the Catalyst Ecosystems. The experiment to explore the highest potential of human collaboration seems to work out quite well. People meet and connect, build relations and trust and build whole projects out of their collaborations. We even see a trend of people leaving their day job and dedicating their time and engagement full time to Catalyst.
<u>The Problem</u>: once projects grow and take shape, pass successfully through the Catalyst Process, get voted, and receive funds, the funded projects face huge challenges.
- How to transform collaborative structures into professional projects
- How to build stable and sustainable projects in the Cardano Ecosystem
- How to transform projects into "legal bodies"
- How to find what you need when you need
- How to find collaborative projects which perfectly fits your project, idea, and vision
Many Projects are seeking professional education and Mentorship to move their projects to the next level but the Catalyst Community currently lacks experts and skilled structures to provide fast and effective support to those projects. –> That's where the Bridge Builders step in.
We establish and grow a team with experts in specific Domains to provide tailor-made services to funded proposers primarily. This proposal is to continue funding the activities of Bridge Builders. Bridge Builders performs several valuable functions in the community:
Governance Events - Bridge Builders has hosted a number of events to date, including Cafe Sur le Pont, and two Election Fest events. Bridge builders also hosted the first Catalyst Circle Congress where members from Catalyst Circle v1 and v2 were able to meet and mentor the newly elected Circle v3 representatives.
Community Mentoring - Bridge Builders work with various community groups to mentor them on a wide array of business and leadership capabilities. This mentoring includes proposal feedback and coaching, setting up core team leadership systems and mechanisms, creating vision and values statements and strategic plans, introductions between community members and projects, and coaching and emergency leadership assistance to both individuals and project teams.
Ecosystem Networkers - Bridge Builders actively engages with existing and emerging projects and leverages its capability of observing and reflecting on the dynamics of the broader ecosystem spectrum, in order to identify gaps and initiate effective solutions to improve the Catalyst Network as a whole.
Community Architects - Bridge Builders are constantly looking to improve the architecture of the community network by proposing new ways to the benefit of Project Catalyst and the wider community network. In concrete, we explore and establish communication streams to the Cardano entities which enables us to communicate community needs, opportunities and challenges directly to IOG & The Cardano Foundation.
Targeting funded proposal, entrepreneurs and startups providing solutions that are directly linked to the challenge:
- Proof of concept: criteria definition of mission and vision driven projects of the Project Catalyst;
- Center of Gravity concepto to increase communication, coordination resulting in increased collaboration (MVP)
- Co-creation of system and sub-system: Designing autocatalytic systems & organic governance structures
In detail we will provide the services in 3 main parts:
- Public - Online Live Sessions and Workshops
- 1:1 Online Live Sessions and Workshops for funded Projects
- Open Source - Content Creation of educational Resources
We will mainly focus on the following aspects: Team structures and agile concepts, Leadership education, Tailor-made business plans and strategies. Those topics will be covered in different ways:
- <u>Online - Open Sessions and Workshops</u> with project teams and individuals: Once per month, we will host a breakout room in the Project Catalyst After Town Hall which is organized by the Catalyst Swarm. In these breakout rooms, we will provide open Workshops and Sessions for the Community. The Workshops will be recorded and uploaded on the Bridge Builders Youtube Account.
- As we aim to support as well our friends in the eastern hemisphere, we will also offer a 1-hour Workshop each month in the Eastern Town Hall to invite people from the Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, and East African communities to join our Workshops. The Workshops will be recorded and uploaded on the Bridge Builders Youtube Account. These Workshops are organized in Collaboration with the Catalyst Swarm & the Eastern Town Hall teams.
- <u>Online - 1:1 Team Workshops & Accompaniment </u>for funded Projects: As we believe in "do not measure quality by quantity" we will start with a small number of Projects to whom we offer 1:1 "tailor-made" Workshops in private calls. This allows us to develop specific and unique succession plans, Guidance, and Mentorship. In the first 3 months, from April 2022 to June 2022, we will concentrate on a maximum of 10 Projects which will have our accompany over an estimated timeframe of six months. During this time, we will stay in close and permanent contact with the accompanied projects, provide direct communication streams via the Bridge Builders Slack account and weekly Team meetings. In the 1:1 Accompaniments, we build close relations with the teams and their projects. This close relation is needed to fully understand the needs and desires of the project and to co-design tailor-made succession plans.
- The Bridge Builders Series. Providing a Series of, <u>open source-based, educational content</u>: Bridge Builders Series is a collection point or library of education information, videos, workshops, and items that can be utilized in training, building, and growing organizations in their business models and stages of growth. In addition, Bridge Builders will look to the community to assist in building out this series of open-source offerings. Initially Bridge Builders series will focus on providing a library of templates. Some examples include:
- Presentation templates for raising funds, sales engagement, and partnering recruitment.
- Business plans, executive summaries, and strategic plans templates Marketing, public relations (PR), and launch templates
Other information will continue to be added as the market needs to expand and new business models emerge.
We are a committed team with a strong spirit on providing value to the community. Commitment of these individuals has been proven throughout their engagement prior to Bridge Builders. We evaluate it to be a low risk proposal and challenges will be tight to our level of quality service and impact of our work to funded proposals.