Pre-Budget Proposal: The Liberate Your Mind 56 City U.S. Tour

[Derrick Broze]

Hello all! I am new to this forum (but not to dash!) so please forgive any newb mistakes. Allow me to briefly introduce myself and my proposal.

My name is Derrick Broze. I am a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, and public speaker based in Houston, Texas. I am the founder of The Houston Free Thinkers activist community, The Conscious Resistance Network media platform, and co-host of Free Thinker Radio on 90.1 KPFT in Houston. I am also the co-author of The Conscious Resistance trilogy focused on the intersection of anarchism, decentralization, and self governance, and spirituality. My journalism can be found on The Conscious Resistance, Ben Swann's Truth In Media, The Anti Media, Activist Post, Mint Press News, RT, and has also been featured on countless independent media and mainstream publications. I have a sizeable support base that sponsors my work via Patreon, crypto donations, and sharing of my content.

In 2017, I launched my first national speaking/community building tour of the U.S. called The Decentralize Your Life Tour. The tour was a huge success and now I am preparing to launch my second tour, The Liberate Your Mind Tour. I would love to partner with the Dash community on this year's tour.

Proposal: Dash sponsors the 56-city Liberate Your Mind Tour for 45 Dash

Background: In May 2018 I will launch The “Liberate Your Mind” Tour, my second nationwide tour focused on promoting a decentralized life via alternative currencies, community gardening & farming, and physical and spiritual health. I will once again travel from Houston, Texas through the Rocky Mountains up to the Pacific Northwest , the MidWest and to the East Coast to visit the New England states The tour will include a few days in Forest Lakes, Arizona where the crew will participate in the crypto-friendly decentralized event, Jackalope Freedom Festival , as well as the MidWest Peace and Liberty Fest in Michigan.

Totals for Liberate Your Life Tour 2018:
56 meetups/cities, 85 days, 17,400 miles (full schedule here: theconsciousresistance dot com slash liberate)

Description of Meetups: Every stop includes the following two events -

1. Community Action Day - community volunteering opportunity in the afternoon/early evening. The Action Day will include park clean ups, homeless outreach, community gardening, and whatever our volunteers
can dream up! This would be exclusively sponsored by DASH.

2.Meditation/Discussion/Music event - The evening events will include a guided meditation This will be followed by an in-depth presentation from Derrick covering his message of anarchism, agorism, decentralization, crypto, personal development, and much more.. Finally, the night will
end with a performance from psychedelic-reggae band So/Below.

Details of Proposal: Dash sponsors the Liberate Your Mind Tour for 45 DASH. The tour is also partially funded by Bitcoin.com and I would like to offer Dash a similar opportunity for branding the RV we will travel in, swag at events, mentions in live videos, encouraging people to sign up for DASH wallets, promotional videos, and making DASH the exclusive sponsor of our Community Action Days

Budget:

Volunteer Support - 16.6 DASH (currently about 5600 USD) This will allow us to give our volunteers in each city $100 USD for promotion of events and /or venue costs.
Music Support - 13.5 DASH (currently around 4550 USD) This money will go towards supporting our musical support for the tour. Our goal is to make each event fully interactive and immersive in education, meditation, music, and cutting edge ideas like DASH. So/Below compliments our message perfectly.
Promotional Costs - 2.96 DASH (around 1000 USD) This will include the costs of printing out shirts for our crew as well as some to give away at each stop. This will also cover the cost of printing out any promotional materials.
Community Action Day Investment - 5.9 DASH (around 2000 USD) This will cover costs for improving our community action days. This will likely mean purchasing fruit trees for planting in every city we visit, sponsored by DASH. or a similar idea proposal from the DASH community.
Crew - 5.9 DASH (around 2000 USD) this will go towards paying a tour driver, assistant, and myself
Total: 44.86

What's in it for the Dash Community?

- Fliers and swag at meetups (cost covered by proposal)
- Verbal endorsement at meetups
- DASH mentioned on every daily FB live video, DLive, Steemit, etc. FB Live videos are shared on Derrick’s personal page(10,300 followers), The Conscious Resistance (38,800 likes, 42,000 followers), Activist Post (551,000 likes), and The Mind Unleashed (8.7 million likes)
- 4 videos breaking down the benefits of DASH (1 per tour segment)
- 6 tour blogs sponsored by DASH
- banner/decal on the RV’s doors
- DASH would be the exclusive sponsor for our Community Action day volunteering events. Our crew will wear DASH hats or shirts (cost covered by proposal) and mention DASH to our volunteers and on live videos.
- We will encourage people to sign up for DASH wallets

Past Numbers:

In 2017, The Decentralize Your Life Tour, sponsored by Bitcoin.com, visited 48 cities over 9 weeks. We completed more than 70 videos for daily live updates, mentioning our sponsors in every video.These daily live video updates garnered a total of 5,000 plus views on YouTube and over 1.3 million views via Facebook . We also volunteered in community gardens and urban farms, fed the homeless, and cleaned up parks and beaches as part of our Community Action Day volunteering effort.

With the Dash community's help we can make this year's tour bigger and better!

 

[Arthyron]

@Derrick Broze - Thank you for your pre-proposal. It sounds like you've already completed a similar project previously through other organizations, so I have no doubt in your ability to make good on your word. I suppose my initial questions are:

1. Why are you seeking funding from the Dash DAO this time around instead of other options? What is it about Dash that stands out to you compared to other possibilities?

2. What did you learn from your first go-around, what changes have you made to the process and approach you're taking based on challenges you faced last time?

Over all, I think your budget is fairly reasonable, though be prepared to pare down some segments of it as some MNOs can be penny-penching in these market downturns. The other thing I'd mention is that some MNOs have problems with funding what are largely philanthropic efforts--not me, I'm all for using Dash to make the world a better place, and not just for those that can afford to participate--but I also think your proposal at the very least brings enough value and publicity to Dash *as well* that hopefully they'll not mind so much.

 

[Orion]

The Mind Unleashed (8.7 million likes)

Are the videos daily? So we are talking about 85 videos shared by a Facebook site with 8,7 Million likes for just 45 Dash? That sounds very reasonable.

What mobile phone do you use for your videos? Maybe it would be good to invest in a mobile phone with the best possible camera and faster mobile internet speed. And I would also like it if you could turn your phone by 90 degrees.

Off-topic: I saw that you have videos with Antony Sammeroff and Tim Brochu on your channel. If you could convince them to get into Dash and install a Wallet I would dash you $50 each.

 

[Derrick Broze]

@Derrick Broze - Thank you for your pre-proposal. It sounds like you've already completed a similar project previously through other organizations, so I have no doubt in your ability to make good on your word. I suppose my initial questions are:

1. Why are you seeking funding from the Dash DAO this time around instead of other options? What is it about Dash that stands out to you compared to other possibilities?

2. What did you learn from your first go-around, what changes have you made to the process and approach you're taking based on challenges you faced last time?

Over all, I think your budget is fairly reasonable, though be prepared to pare down some segments of it as some MNOs can be penny-penching in these market downturns. The other thing I'd mention is that some MNOs have problems with funding what are largely philanthropic efforts--not me, I'm all for using Dash to make the world a better place, and not just for those that can afford to participate--but I also think your proposal at the very least brings enough value and publicity to Dash *as well* that hopefully they'll not mind so much.

Thank you for the questions. I appreciate you taking the time.

1. I am seeking funding from DASH because I believe DASH (and DAO's) to be a more decentralized crypto than others. I appreciate the community aspect of the treasury proposals. Generally, I think DASH is a better product and I have been holding DASH more frequently. Not to mention, as I write for Ben Swann's Truth In Media, I am paid in DASH.

2. I learned a whole lot, more than I can put here. Last year was my first national tour and my first time planning such a venture. To be honest, I underestimated the costs last year and we barely made it through without spending money out of pocket. So I have increased my funding requests as well as expanded the number of cities. I removed certain cities from the schedule because there was low attendance or not a strong community yet. I added new cities which have more of a community or where I have a bigger following.

I am willing to work with the MNOs on perfecting the proposal. Thanks for the questions. Look forward to any future comments.

 

[Derrick Broze]

Are the videos daily? So we are talking about 85 videos shared by a Facebook site with 8,7 Million likes for just 45 Dash? That sounds very reasonable.

What mobile phone do you use for your videos? Maybe it would be good to invest in a mobile phone with the best possible camera and faster mobile internet speed. And I would also like it if you could turn your phone by 90 degrees.

Off-topic: I saw that you have videos with Antony Sammeroff and Tim Brochu on your channel. If you could convince them to get into Dash and install a Wallet I would dash you $50 each.

Yes the videos are daily. So it will actually be a total of about 87 videos shared across the Mind Unleashed, The Conscious Resistance, and Activist Post. Last year we generated 1.3 million views by the end of the tour and that number has gone up since.

I have a crappy samsung phone for live video. It does the job, but we could plan for a better camera. When we toured last year we did daily videos and did not have any problems with the camera or internet speed.

As to your last comment, I will see what I can do! ha that was one of our contributors interviewing Sammeroff and Brochu ha

 

[Derrick Broze]

any other questions? If not I will submit next week!

 

[jesccs]

Your proposal is very interesting and at a very reasonable cost.

Maybe you would be risking a lot to launch your proposal next week to vote, you are leaving very few days for your pre-proposal to be discussed and the MNOs can evaluate it. Especially when budget available is so tight in this cycle

 

[Derrick Broze]

Yes I know it's close to the.end of the month but on the other hand this post has been in the pre proposal forum for nearly two weeks. Is that not enough time for discussion? I am unaware of typical protocol

 

[jesccs]

Yes I know it's close to the.end of the month but on the other hand this post has been in the pre proposal forum for nearly two weeks. Is that not enough time for discussion? I am unaware of typical protocol

I suggest follow this article
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/8-steps-to-a-successful-proposal.18377/
There are no rules about how much time your pre-proposal should be posted before goes to proposal. It's about how confidence do you feel with your project vs your humility to wait for feedback from the community.

Good luck friend

 

[Carlos Spaggiari]

You seem pretty confident on what you're doing and I love those names. The “Liberate Your Mind” Tour.

Actually, two weeks is a reasonable time for a pre-proposal. Nevertheless, If you decide to put your proposal on this cycle, I'd recommend you to do it asap, since the budget for May is really tight and there are many proposal already posted (I think a lot more than the monthly average).

 

[Derrick Broze]

Thank you so much for the tip and support!

You seem pretty confident on what you're doing and I love those names. The “Liberate Your Mind” Tour.

Actually, two weeks is a reasonable time for a pre-proposal. Nevertheless, If you decide to put your proposal on this cycle, I'd recommend you to do it asap, since the budget for May is really tight and there are many proposal already posted (I think a lot more than the monthly average).