🗳 How we Picked the 12 Impact DAOs to Study

Picking the right DAOs to study was critical. This is our selection process and some of what we learnt through this process.

Deepa

and

Yvonne

Jul 20, 2022

Hi Folks,

For the next couple months I’ll be sharing tons of insightful information on DAOs. As part of the Impact DAOs research study, we’ve been having amazing conversations with DAO founders and contributors. We are learning a great deal about this new operating model and mindset needed to work in it. Below is how we identified the 10 DAOs for the research and our learnings through that selection process 👇

Our goal for the Impact DAOs study is to find 12 Impact DAOs and to study them intensively through conversations with the DAO builders themselves. Our aim to have an equal mix of social and climate DAOs.

We ourselves are also a DAO (so meta) and during our first couple weeks we analyzed several Impact DAOs to come up with our target list of 10.

We fixed three criteria around which we would evaluate:

Is it a DAO or just a web3 project? For instance if it’s a protocol not governed by a DAO we are not including them in this study.
The DAO needs to be an Impact DAO - a DAO whose core purpose is to help the people and the planet. We believe Impact DAOs are formed with different value systems and to guide future changemakers we need to understand the DNA of DAOs that are purpose driven.
They need to be operating as a DAO for at-least 5 months. We called them “meaty DAOs” so we have lots to study and learn from them

Initially we also had “impact” as one of the hard criteria but gradually we removed it as we learned that the space is very new (just a year old) and that for impact to be seen it takes time. Keeping this in mind we also included DAOs that have a potential or presents a model for future Impact DAOs

🗳 Selection Process

The process of selecting DAOs for our study led to some interesting findings

There are three emerging categories of Impact DAOs. Enablers (enabling impact either through funding or training) Social Impact (direct impact with people) and Climate (direct involvement with climate solutions)
This space is very new. Most Impact DAOs started in 2022 and many of those are just taking off. This makes the case of studying experienced Impact DAOs even stronger. The first Impact DAO could be traced back to 2020 and couple springing up in mid and late 2021.
Many web3 impact projects are planning on launching a DAO. They have existed as a blockchain project for long but now have plans to launch a DAO in order to govern their projects.
There are far more web3 climate projects as compared to social impact. However very few are governed by a DAO. Most are either transitioning into a DAO now or launching as DAO first or aspire to become a DAO. We’ve had a hard time finding the “meaty DAOs” in the climate space.

To help our DAO members make a selection for the study, a small team (of 3 members) made a list of Impact DAOs based on the set criteria described above. They then vetted the DAOs that made it to the list by looking at their Twitter, website, and Discords to evaluate how active they were, their story and values, theory of change, and their perceived impact or in some cases measurable impact.

Our entire team (DAO) was then presented with the list and were given 4 days to pick 5 DAOs in each of the 3 categories (Enabler, Social and Climate). We opted for a ranked choice method of voting (first being the most preferred). DAOs with the most votes made it to the study.

Our list of 12 DAOs

🚀 Gitcoin DAO
🚀 Dream DAO
🚀 Commons Stack
🌎 Impact Market DAO
🌎 Human DAO
🌎 Proof Of Humanity DAO
🌎 Good Dollar DAO
🇺🇦 Ukraine DAO (also a model for humanitarian aid)
🌳 Klima DAO
🌳 All for Climate DAO
🌳 Regen Network
🏙 Pact DAO, NYC City

We are having 3 interviews per DAO. Our interview based research methodology is working wonders. We are collecting rich insights into how DAOs operate and also the nuances and their back stories.

With 10+ conversations that we’ve had so far we’ve started to realize this book will not just be about Impact DAOs but also about the future of work and organizing. The scope of this book is far bigger than our original purpose.