Many proposals are improvements of steemit.com or related. The work needed to make steemit saver, less vulnerable for hackers and look more modern or make it easier to use.

Taking out bugs and imorovements take time and these teams need to be paid. If their proposals do not receive enough votes they will not be funded. The result is:

1. No changes
2. No payment
3. Taking in dubious people saying they will do it for free and not being sure what is done and what is implented.

Openess and honesty is not what most have in mind if they offer help on Steemit.
I doubt those free offered helped is free. There's always a price to pay.