Reading Krel's recent essay, Exploring Nouns for Subcultures, and seeing his shoutout re: Nouns as a charity, (thank you Krel,) I thought it might be helpful to write a brief on essay on Nouns as a Charity

Krel is correct is assessing both the allure and downfall of Nouns in it's broad purpose, and current state of stagnation. Some of this is inevtiable, it's the holidays and we're in the midst of a corporate restructuring. The US is awaiting a new government which seems to be much more open to allowing crypto innovation after a decade of relative hostility. Some is the hang over of difficult choices from the last bull market, and a period of introspection since.

There's much reason for hope. The brand is striking, instantly recognizable. Our core community is relatively small, yet Nouns is well known in high & low places globally. As we look to the future, I agree that empowering "individual community members to define, package, and make the strongest case possible for the version of Nouns they believe in," is the best purpose Nouns could serve.

He is correct to identify two key problem areas: revenue generation, and metrics for success. His idea of a 10:1 subculture:main dao crowd funding idea is directionally accurate, and the idea of NounsMain as a parent organization to subculture specific offshoots. The Flows team has created tooling that unlocks a broad space for new, low-risk experimentation to identify what works and scale up into full governance proposals.

I think we should wait until we have regulatory clarity around ERC20s, which I expect will happen fairly quickly in the new US Government, before pursuing tokens any further officially. I would advocate for a $⌐◨-◨-style token that affords some ownership & ability to participate in governance. Regardless, since $nouns cannot be deleted, the vault contract should be blacklisted from the governance quorum. I would encourage robust, albeit cost-effective, experimentation inline with Krel's Product Thoughts in the meantime.

In my view, Nouns has 4 core operational pillars that have it work:

• Governance, ie civic engagement by resource allocation through fairly open, cryptographically-secured democratic processes

• Public Goods, both in the technical sense and in the spirit of doing well by & for the world, digital & physical

• Creative & Fine Arts, we're exceptional at generating interest in Nouns among exceptional artists

• Subcultures, ie grass-roots impact, shaped by individuals by and for their community, generating opportunities for people and communities to create agency

A fifth could be the brand.

It's a platform, a vehicle.

I'm not advocating that Nouns only do Glasses for Kids, Wells in Africa, Renovating Skateparks, etc. etc. that a bunch of charities are already doing. I'm not advocating every project be slapped with the "non-profit/charity" label and all of our media becomes pictures of starving kids wearing Noggles getting food or whatever other cringe picture is in your mind when you hear the word "charity."

501c3 charitable designation simply makes the blank canvas of the DUNA more finetuned to facilitate Nouns supporting positive impact in subcultures. Charities like the MacArthur Foundation & Sundance Festival paint a model for hows Nouns can leverage the revenue & reporting model of 501c3 status for broad, hyper-local subculture impact that scales.

To Krel's analogy of NounsSurfing, 501c3s can spin up programs and pay contractors to run those progrms for them, (ie Esports.) We can expand on the Flows model to encourage more subcultural experiments, and scale up what works to the proposal process. We already see the potential for this with nouns-draws & nouns-animators being top of the funnel for activities culminating in NounsFest.

The key is reporting impact. Video & board games, surfing, aren't inherently charitable, but as a vehicle for healthy social dynamics and amateur competition among young peoplg, if the program includes regular community meetups to - as an example - clean up trash, is designed to include individuals with special needs, offers educational opportunities for new learners, etc, they are charitable. You can imagine similar framing for your subculture of interest.

• How many people were there or impacted by the activities?

• What was the measurable, positive change in your subculture from start of funding after 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?

• What is the level of broad public benefit vs small group or individual private benfit?

Metrics are specific based on the activity; these questions offer a top line to consider.

And not everything has to be purely public impact focused! Annual events like NounsTown are awesome to gather and coordinate the Nouns community. NounsFest is our Sundance and imo, we could be bigger.

In theory, Nouns could make startups investments, I don't see this making sense unless/ until we have $1B+ in the treasury. We will certainly need to spend money on our critical digital infrastructure & admins.

When it comes to revenue, 501c3 status does not stop Nouns from doing business and generating some revenue through the auction or selling products.

Krel's 10:1 subscription idea is 100% compatible. In my ideal world, this comes with some ability, even fractional, to partcipate in the subculture's, Nouns, or both's governance.

It also opens up an incentive through tax write-offs for the institutions and crypto-rich that Krel mentioned. Corporations regularly work with 501c3s for marketing and other reasons; I think there's some fun interpretations of the Nouns brand that could happen as a result of 501c3, and organizations who would be proud to patron Nouns and the subcultures we in turn patron with hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, if we prove out our ability to be measurably strong capital allocators and collaborators for impact.

While I agree that a consisent, small-dollar campaign of grassroots supporters puts Nouns in a strong position and has the ability to scale to massive numbers, I'm also of the opinion that Nouns has the reputation, history, & network of people for 501c3 to be the reason for some crypto-aligned companies and individuals to add runway to Nouns in the near term, strengthening our ability to actualize the vision being layed out

If we go this direction, we will need to comply with the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act for treasury and staking risk management. It's not that crazy but there is some legal ($$) lift to get us there.

There's first the question of CAN Nouns become an independent 501c3 charity. It's legally possible with the DUNA, however, the IRS will review ALL of Nouns activity from Day 1. While there's some bright spots, there's some dark spots too. It's iffy, frankly, though I'm not a lawyer.

That doesn't preclude FIscal Sponsorship. Endaoment has offered to sponsor Nouns for <5% of Nouns revenue. They previously sponsored the ConstitutionDAO, and are well qualified and experience to sponsor Nouns. This would effectively give us 501c3 status under the umbrella of Endaoment. There's no reason this relationship couldn't exist in perpetuity, or long term enough to prove to the IRS that both the brand new DUNA and fairly young Nouns are qualified to be independent 501c3s.

It's not an insignificant decision, and one I would encourage Nouners to research thoroughly. 501c3 may be the strongest vehicle to facilitate Nouns accomplishing its mission of proliferating the meme through public goods. And if not, could be a good experiment.

Reading Krel's recent essay, Exploring Nouns for Subcultures, and seeing his shoutout re: Nouns as a charity, (thank you Krel,) I thought it might be helpful to write a brief on essay on Nouns as a Charity

Krel is correct is assessing both the allure and downfall of Nouns in it's broad purpose, and current state of stagnation. Some of this is inevtiable, it's the holidays and we're in the midst of a corporate restructuring. The US is awaiting a new government which seems to be much more open to allowing crypto innovation after a decade of relative hostility. Some is the hang over of difficult choices from the last bull market, and a period of introspection since.

There's much reason for hope. The brand is striking, instantly recognizable. Our core community is relatively small, yet Nouns is well known in high & low places globally. As we look to the future, I agree that empowering "individual community members to define, package, and make the strongest case possible for the version of Nouns they believe in," is the best purpose Nouns could serve.

He is correct to identify two key problem areas: revenue generation, and metrics for success. His idea of a 10:1 subculture:main dao crowd funding idea is directionally accurate, and the idea of NounsMain as a parent organization to subculture specific offshoots. The Flows team has created tooling that unlocks a broad space for new, low-risk experimentation to identify what works and scale up into full governance proposals.

I think we should wait until we have regulatory clarity around ERC20s, which I expect will happen fairly quickly in the new US Government, before pursuing tokens any further officially. I would advocate for a $⌐◨-◨-style token that affords some ownership & ability to participate in governance. Regardless, since $nouns cannot be deleted, the vault contract should be blacklisted from the governance quorum. I would encourage robust, albeit cost-effective, experimentation inline with Krel's Product Thoughts in the meantime.

In my view, Nouns has 4 core operational pillars that have it work:

• Governance, ie civic engagement by resource allocation through fairly open, cryptographically-secured democratic processes

• Public Goods, both in the technical sense and in the spirit of doing well by & for the world, digital & physical

• Creative & Fine Arts, we're exceptional at generating interest in Nouns among exceptional artists

• Subcultures, ie grass-roots impact, shaped by individuals by and for their community, generating opportunities for people and communities to create agency

A fifth could be the brand.

It's a platform, a vehicle.

I'm not advocating that Nouns only do Glasses for Kids, Wells in Africa, Renovating Skateparks, etc. etc. that a bunch of charities are already doing. I'm not advocating every project be slapped with the "non-profit/charity" label and all of our media becomes pictures of starving kids wearing Noggles getting food or whatever other cringe picture is in your mind when you hear the word "charity."

501c3 charitable designation simply makes the blank canvas of the DUNA more finetuned to facilitate Nouns supporting positive impact in subcultures. Charities like the MacArthur Foundation & Sundance Festival paint a model for hows Nouns can leverage the revenue & reporting model of 501c3 status for broad, hyper-local subculture impact that scales.

To Krel's analogy of NounsSurfing, 501c3s can spin up programs and pay contractors to run those progrms for them, (ie Esports.) We can expand on the Flows model to encourage more subcultural experiments, and scale up what works to the proposal process. We already see the potential for this with nouns-draws & nouns-animators being top of the funnel for activities culminating in NounsFest.

The key is reporting impact. Video & board games, surfing, aren't inherently charitable, but as a vehicle for healthy social dynamics and amateur competition among young peoplg, if the program includes regular community meetups to - as an example - clean up trash, is designed to include individuals with special needs, offers educational opportunities for new learners, etc, they are charitable. You can imagine similar framing for your subculture of interest.

• How many people were there or impacted by the activities?

• What was the measurable, positive change in your subculture from start of funding after 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?

• What is the level of broad public benefit vs small group or individual private benfit?

Metrics are specific based on the activity; these questions offer a top line to consider.

And not everything has to be purely public impact focused! Annual events like NounsTown are awesome to gather and coordinate the Nouns community. NounsFest is our Sundance and imo, we could be bigger.

In theory, Nouns could make startups investments, I don't see this making sense unless/ until we have $1B+ in the treasury. We will certainly need to spend money on our critical digital infrastructure & admins.

When it comes to revenue, 501c3 status does not stop Nouns from doing business and generating some revenue through the auction or selling products.

Krel's 10:1 subscription idea is 100% compatible. In my ideal world, this comes with some ability, even fractional, to partcipate in the subculture's, Nouns, or both's governance.

It also opens up an incentive through tax write-offs for the institutions and crypto-rich that Krel mentioned. Corporations regularly work with 501c3s for marketing and other reasons; I think there's some fun interpretations of the Nouns brand that could happen as a result of 501c3, and organizations who would be proud to patron Nouns and the subcultures we in turn patron with hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, if we prove out our ability to be measurably strong capital allocators and collaborators for impact.

While I agree that a consisent, small-dollar campaign of grassroots supporters puts Nouns in a strong position and has the ability to scale to massive numbers, I'm also of the opinion that Nouns has the reputation, history, & network of people for 501c3 to be the reason for some crypto-aligned companies and individuals to add runway to Nouns in the near term, strengthening our ability to actualize the vision being layed out

If we go this direction, we will need to comply with the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act for treasury and staking risk management. It's not that crazy but there is some legal ($$) lift to get us there.

There's first the question of CAN Nouns become an independent 501c3 charity. It's legally possible with the DUNA, however, the IRS will review ALL of Nouns activity from Day 1. While there's some bright spots, there's some dark spots too. It's iffy, frankly, though I'm not a lawyer.

That doesn't preclude FIscal Sponsorship. Endaoment has offered to sponsor Nouns for <5% of Nouns revenue. They previously sponsored the ConstitutionDAO, and are well qualified and experience to sponsor Nouns. This would effectively give us 501c3 status under the umbrella of Endaoment. There's no reason this relationship couldn't exist in perpetuity, or long term enough to prove to the IRS that both the brand new DUNA and fairly young Nouns are qualified to be independent 501c3s.

It's not an insignificant decision, and one I would encourage Nouners to research thoroughly. 501c3 may be the strongest vehicle to facilitate Nouns accomplishing its mission of proliferating the meme through public goods. And if not, could be a good experiment.