DoinGud — 0 → 20K+ community. 17K → 5K on the Manifesto. Two years, three roles, one durable Web3 platform ecosystem.

The brief.

DoinGud launched in 2021 as a Web3 platform for impact-driven creators — an NFT ecosystem where art, community, and social good were structured to reinforce each other rather than compete. The premise: Web3 could be a home for meaningful creative work, not just speculation.

Mel Vera (Vera Natural) was on the founding team from March 2021. Over two years she was promoted twice — from Head of Education to Ecosystem Director to Director of Ecosystem & Communications — building the community from zero, launching the ambassador program across six countries, running the ecosystem partnership engine (see the partner carousel in Section 05), and leading the DoinGud Manifesto rollout that would become the platform's most concentrated conversion event.

The founder's voice.

Before the numbers, a word from one of DoinGud's founders:

The team culture Andrew described.

Team retreats, all-hands Zoom calls, a global distributed community across time zones — the operating infrastructure behind the growth numbers, and the environment Andrew's testimonial named.

The Manifesto: 17K → 5K.

The DoinGud Manifesto was a values document meant to rally the DoinGud audience around what the platform stood for. Mel led the communications and community strategy for the launch — and it became the most concentrated conversion event of her tenure:

A 29% conversion from a values-signature to a paid membership action isn't just a marketing win — it's proof of the operating premise Mel had built across her three roles: an audience that opts into shared values first will convert to platform participation at rates that outperform cold audience benchmarks by an order of magnitude.

The Manifesto is the case study inside the case study: it's what all the community, ambassador, and ecosystem work made possible.

Live receipts.

The Manifesto launch (Sep 22, 2022) → Gud Souls Memberships open to signatories (Nov 22) → a Twitter Space with 1K tuned in (Nov 24). Two months of coordinated activation from Manifesto to paid membership.

Community & Ambassadors: 0 → 20K+, six countries, 200+ events per year.

DoinGud launched into a crowded 2021 NFT market where every new platform was fighting for the same crypto-native audience. Mel's community strategy rejected that fight — instead of chasing the speculator, DoinGud built for the impact-curious creator and the audiences that already cared about that work.

The three-tier ambassador program.

Instead of a flat ambassador tier, Mel designed a three-tier structure so community members could contribute at whatever depth matched their capacity — which is what unlocked 200+ events per year from a team of just 8 direct community leaders:

• Impact Leaders — top tier: partners running dedicated impact initiatives in their region, coordinated with DoinGud's platform mission
• Local Leaders — hosted weekly IRL events in their cities (50–200 attendees), bringing DoinGud into local creative and impact communities
• Online Leaders — grew reach and engagement on distributed channels without an in-person commitment, lowering the barrier to contribution

Six country hubs.

Community hubs and partnerships expanded strategically into six countries across three continents:

The programming cadence — 200+ events per year.

• 50+ IRL events per year — 50 to 200 attendees each, across the six country hubs
• 150+ virtual spaces per year — Twitter Spaces, discord workshops, community calls, and product-launch programming that kept the community engaged between IRL moments (~3 virtual spaces per week)
• +300% engagement through educational content — user guides, interactive workshops, discord workshops, creator-highlight blogs, all aligned to community growth goals rather than raw acquisition
• Community-leader content pipeline — Mel led content made by community leaders for and from events, so the community produced its own stories rather than just receiving them

The community in action.

Selected moments from the programming cadence — ETHDenver activation, launch events, community dinners, team meetups. Just a slice of the 200+ events per year across the six country hubs and the ambassador network.

Multi-partner Twitter Spaces.

The multi-partner Twitter Space format Mel led — 4–6 partner accounts co-hosting a Space with DoinGud, so the launch compounded across every partner's audience simultaneously. The Bankless / Cult DAO / vEmpire and DefiNft / Cortex / Pillar / HER DAO Spaces both ran in the run-up to the membership sale.

Values-forward community rituals.

The DoinGud community wasn't built on speculation — it was built on rituals. Guided meditations, live mandala painting during drops, collaborative art sessions with partner DAOs, IRL meetups at ImpactHubBCN Barcelona, and partner-hosted parties. This is what made the Manifesto convert at 29% — the audience had already opted into the values before they were asked to opt into the sale.

Ecosystem & Grants: 60+ partners, $150K+ to community leaders.

A Web3 platform lives or dies on the ecosystem it plugs into. Mel led business development at DoinGud, securing partnerships that gave the platform reach into audiences it couldn't have acquired cold — and rebuilt the community-leader grants program into an actual growth engine.

Selected partner ecosystem.

Chain infrastructure, DeFi, grants, social, NFT, video, and social-impact partners across two years — every logo below is clickable and opens the partner's site in a new tab.

The DoinGud Partner & Collaborator Ecosystem · 60+ partners

Polygon LUKSO Gitcoin Lens Protocol Aave Mask Network POAP Rarible ShapeShift Livepeer Giveth The Giving Block Agora Images ETHDenver NFT Now Pillar Developer DAO DuckDAO dOrg Ceramic Black Sustainability H+H+ Creative Commons Stack Ukraine DAO HER DAO The DAOist GoodDollar Happy DAO Plastiks Cryptonikas DAO Crypto Tech Women EthicHub Journo DAO Republic DAO ONBD Art Dream DAO Agroforest DAO Blockchain Education Network Lobby3 DAO 40 Acres DAO Trusted Seed impactMarket The Eden DAO Social Stack BrightID Cortex Radar Bankless DAO API3 DAO Wonderverse NOW DAO DefiNft Etherspot Hats Finance Spork DAO GGotham Labs Optimistic Autonomy vEmpire DAO Bond with Mochi Cult DAO DAO Duck Admit Polygon LUKSO Gitcoin Lens Protocol Aave Mask Network POAP Rarible ShapeShift Livepeer Giveth The Giving Block Agora Images ETHDenver NFT Now Pillar Developer DAO DuckDAO dOrg Ceramic Black Sustainability H+H+ Creative Commons Stack Ukraine DAO HER DAO The DAOist GoodDollar Happy DAO Plastiks Cryptonikas DAO Crypto Tech Women EthicHub Journo DAO Republic DAO ONBD Art Dream DAO Agroforest DAO Blockchain Education Network Lobby3 DAO 40 Acres DAO Trusted Seed impactMarket The Eden DAO Social Stack BrightID Cortex Radar Bankless DAO API3 DAO Wonderverse NOW DAO DefiNft Etherspot Hats Finance Spork DAO GGotham Labs Optimistic Autonomy vEmpire DAO Bond with Mochi Cult DAO DAO Duck Admit

Hover to pause the carousel · click any logo to visit the partner's site. 60+ named partners across chain infrastructure (Polygon, LUKSO), DeFi (Aave), grants & funding (Gitcoin, Commons Stack), social & identity (Lens Protocol, Mask Network, Ceramic), NFT ecosystem (Rarible, POAP, NFT Now, ETHDenver, Developer DAO, DuckDAO, Pillar), video/tools (Livepeer, ShapeShift), technical/DAO infrastructure (dOrg), and impact / social-good partners (Giveth, The Giving Block, Agora Images, Black Sustainability, H+ Creative).

Impact partners in action — Giving Tuesday, 2022.

A Giving Tuesday activation with Plastiks, Coral Tribe NFT, Homelesspreneur, and Attack Plastic — beach cleanup, guided meditation, group celebration. Partner ecosystem work that lived in the real world, not just in press announcements. The exact opposite of "co-marketing campaigns" that stay online.

• Led the BD team — optimized deal flow and coordinated on-time technical integrations across dozens of protocols, ensuring partnerships translated to live user growth rather than press announcements
• 60+ co-marketing campaigns — cross-audience activations that compounded reach across the DoinGud ecosystem instead of scattering across it
• 15+ partnerships during the Ecosystem Director phase alone (over 1.5 years) — a repeatable partnership development process, not one-off deals

$150K+ in community-leader grants.

The grants program was rebuilt from the ground up and specifically pointed at community leaders — the ambassadors and organizers running events, content, and local activations. That focus is what took the program from give-away spend to a real growth channel:

• 20–30 monthly grants deployed to community leaders — a steady cadence rather than one-time drops
• 97% success rate on grant deliverables — restructured the incentive model, submission process, talent selection, and community resourcing to make the program actually work
• Grants as ecosystem infrastructure — funded the leaders who produced the 200+ events per year, so the money compounded through the community rather than dissipating

The approach — across three roles.

Across two years and three progressive roles, one operating pattern held: build for a specific audience, plug into an ecosystem that already cared, and treat community + partnerships + product as one system. The specifics scaled with each promotion.

The operating pattern across all three roles:

• Community-first, not platform-first — audience built around DoinGud's values, not around speculation. That's what made the 29% Manifesto conversion possible
• Data-driven growth loops — every activation had a KPI and a feedback mechanism; the +190% MAU, +220% engagement, and +137% marketing lifts came from iterating on what worked, not launching louder
• Contribution at any depth — the three-tier ambassador program let people show up at Impact, Local, or Online scale, unlocking 200+ events per year from 8 direct leaders
• Grants as growth infrastructure — $150K+ deployed to community leaders at 97% success, so the money funded the people producing the events, content, and local activations
• Communications as an editorial system — a 14-person team coordinated around a shared calendar and mission-aligned KPIs, which is how Twitter grew organically in four months
• Compassion built into the operating model — as the founder testimonial names it, care was treated as operational infrastructure, not a soft add-on. That's what kept the team, community, and investor confidence intact through the 2022–23 downturn

The results, in one place.

Two years, three roles, one durable ecosystem — built from zero through platform launch, the DoinGud Manifesto rollout, and the 2022–23 market downturn without losing the community or the mission.

And the intangibles the founder named: adaptive leadership under pressure, strategic thinking, creative ideas that moved the organization forward, and a compassionate operating style that kept everyone showing up — through zero-to-launch and through the hardest year the crypto market has ever had.