Strategic planning and resource planning / allocation are critical components to the smooth functioning of any organization. This planning is especially important for a project like Dash, where our resources in a given month can fluctuate with the price of Dash.



At the end of last year, we began formalizing these processes, starting with a clearly defined long-term and 2016 strategy & roadmap. So we have very clear ideas about what we wanted to accomplish and execute.



However, with large purchases last year such as dash.org consuming much of a (looking back now) quite meager budget, we have often found ourselves in a reactive stance to expenses or reimbursing costs to core team members that fronted expenses on the network's behalf. We also risked using the available budget in a sub-optimal way if lower priority items just happened to be submitted before higher priority ones.



With some good planning and well-deserved price appreciation this year, we are finally in a position to stop being reactive and start being proactive in our budget and resource planning. The core team recognized the emerging change in our position a couple of months back. Seeing a path to finally get ahead of the problem, we've been undergoing an extensive process to plan our resources for the second half of 2016.



After many grueling 3-hour long planning sessions to align our funding with core team priorities, we are pleased to announce that we have concluded the process and have an overall plan for the rest of the year, and an ongoing budgeting / prioritization process in place to update the plan as funding amounts and opportunities change.



There were several principles the core team has incorporated into the processes, drawing on best practices from my consulting days, but modifying things to account for our status as a decentralized organization and less-predicable non-fiat income sources. Here are some of the key principles:

1) The core team will always reserve at least 20% of the monthly budget for community-driven proposals, "competing" teams, and corporate requests (e.g., SpectroCoin) to ensure a healthy ecosystem of contributors besides the core team

2) We will seek to fund needs ahead of time, based on our best estimates and use any excess funds for similar purposes as they were originally allotted to the extent possible

3) We have plenty of valuable uses for additional funds at this time, so if any community-reserved funds appear likely to go unused a week prior to the budget payout date, we will "pull forward" expenses to fully use the advantage our budgeting system is providing our network.



Over the coming days, I will be submitting the core team payment requests up to the 80% limit we've set for ourselves. We have 10 new proposals being added, so it will take some time for me to get through them all and gather the information from the various project owners that you'll need to make informed decisions. Included in these proposals are:

- Extensive new funding for designers and programmers for Evolution development

- Continuation of the liquidity providers program

- Other very basic infrastructure requirements

- Business Development funding for recently-secured integration commitments with business partners with a collective 1 million+ users

- A stand-alone marketing budget (previously included in Public Awareness) which we will now be breaking out separately



In order to make room for these new proposals, we will be requesting that the Public Awareness budget be voted down. Evan will update the original posts for those proposals and we will ask you to take the time and please vote "no". We have nearly three weeks to get it voted down, so we do not view this as a risk.



Keep in mind that all of these proposals will be for only one month in duration. This is because the 12.1 release in July will wipe out all historical budgets. However, where we intend budgets to be "ongoing" through the end of this year, I will make that clear so that masternode owners can make informed decisions.



Exciting times lie ahead. The core team is better organized than ever and ready for the next phase of growth. We have more resources than ever at our disposal and we want to take full advantage of the opportunities we have to grow. We sincerely hope that the community will support these proposals as they are part of an overall strategic plan with many interdependencies, but this should provide a great deal of clarity on our intended path forward.



The grapes are looking awfully juicy and sweet in the second half of 2016, if you get my reference!



EDIT: Here are the commands needed to vote out Public Awareness

mnbudget vote-many cbafad18687045bb72fae611078fac09c3ec09c8379e357c36901ce84891f189 no

OR

./dash-cli mnbudget vote-many cbafad18687045bb72fae611078fac09c3ec09c8379e357c36901ce84891f189 no