By "spin-off protocol" do you mean something akin to coingen, where you just input your specifications (or the code of the protocol you want to spin-off) and it produces the resulting protocol including initial coin distribution according to a specified BTC block? So that like it is easy to start your own coin right now, it would become easy to do a spin-off?
"Protocol" was a bad word choice. We
1 are (slowly) working towards establishing best practices for launching spin-offs, and we hope to develop some software tools for making this easier for developers. I've received a handful of generous donation offers in comments and by PM, but so far I have not accepted any, mostly because I don't want to be the "central point of failure." Perhaps we could create a 2-of-3 wallet that people could donate to, where the three keys are held by three trustees. These funds could be used to pay out bounties to encourage work to get done. I would match Andrian-X's offer and contribute 1,000,000 bits (1 BTC).
(The technology may not be advanced enough yet, but it might be useful if donators received colored coins [e.g., using the new coinprism wallet] in proportion to their donations, that would allow them to vote on how the funds are spent.)
1By "we" I mean interested people in the community. Hopefully we can include "you" as part it!