🏇Eligibility Process
Introduction
This guide is designed to assist round operators in establishing an effective and efficient eligibility process for grant rounds and it focuses on best practices, decision-making criteria, and operational steps, ensuring a fair and transparent selection process.
Eligibility Criteria
Determine Your Goals: After considering these questions, you'll be equipped to establish the eligibility criteria for your round. A few things to keep in mind :
Consult Resources: Once you've figured out your eligibility criteria, get your community's thoughts on it. Drop a brief in the gov forum or discord, wherever your community hangs out. This step is all about getting to know what the community thinks, unless you're sure the call's just for the team to make. Check out the Gitcoin posts at the bottom for a taste of how they've done it.
Balance Subjectivity: Strive for a balance between subjective and objective criteria, understanding that more subjective approaches may lead to less consensus.
Application Process
Application Questions: Develop detailed questions to ask from grantees and determine the information that will be valuable to you and your team.
These questions are aimed at extracting the necessary information and responses from the grantees. Go through the flow here before setting up the round on Grants Stack. (Note: Gitcoin's round details will be visible - please duplicate and complete for your specific round).
Security Measures while reviewing
Run Malware Checks: Make it a habit to use Malwarebytes throughout the review process. By setting up Malwarebytes premium, you will be passively protected, as it automatically blocks malicious links without requiring active intervention.
Avoid Rushing: Allocate sufficient time to conduct a comprehensive review of each application.
Create a New Wallet: For reasons of transparency and security, it's important to set up a new wallet dedicated solely to the round.
Involving Stakeholders
Team Decision-Making: Involve more than one person in the decision-making process to ensure diverse perspectives.
It's advisable to involve multiple reviewers. This approach also safeguards against potential misinterpretations or oversights, such as missing spam, that might occur with a single reviewer.
Support and Communication
Provide Support Channels: Clearly indicate where applicants can get support, include the details of it both in the round setup and in promotional materials.
Question and Appeal Process: Offer channels for applicants to ask questions and request a second review if necessary.
Verification and Validation
Some of the ways you can review the projects
Project Verification: For open-source projects, verify data on repositories and check for verified GitHub accounts.
Social Media Verification: While reviewing, you can check if the applicant's Twitter is verified and ensure they are followed by trusted individuals.
Website Age Check: Verify the age of the applicant's website to assess credibility.
Time Management
Review Time: Allocate sufficient time for reviewing applications. The time required will depend on the number of applicants and the complexity of your process.
Flexibility in Deadlines: Keep application rounds open until halfway through to accommodate late discoverers. Communicate these deadlines clearly.
Conclusion
Establishing a robust eligibility process requires careful planning, clear communication, and an understanding of the goals and values of the funding round. By following these guidelines, round operators can create a fair, transparent, and efficient process that aligns with their objectives and ensures the selection of suitable grantees.
As a reference for your round, below are the links you can refer to see how Gitcoin has constantly taken community inputs and keep refining its eligibility process.
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