If you haven’t yet, read up on the first blog of this 4-part series, Define - Laying the Foundation for Your Grants Program.

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What is the Design Stage?

The Design stage involves creating the detailed framework and processes for your grants program. This includes defining funding mechanisms, setting eligibility criteria, designing the application process, and establishing the methods for evaluating and selecting grantees.

What is it For?

The Design stage ensures that your grants program is structured and efficient. It helps you create a transparent and fair process for applicants and ensures that your program is capable of achieving its objectives. This stage is about translating your mission and objectives into actionable plans and procedures.

How to Use the Design Stage

Funding Mechanisms: 

Choose Appropriate Mechanisms: The funding mechanism will determine how funds are allocated to grants recipients. There are two main elements that compose a funding mechanism – the voting mechanism and the distribution mechanism.

• Voting Mechanism: you’ll decide on how funding will be allocated by the amount of money contributed or through voting rights. some text
  • When deciding on crowdfunding, the allocation amounts are decided by the monetary contribution of voters. This is best when projects impact a broad audience. 
  • When using voting power the allocation amounts are decided on by votes of those holding decision-making rights. This could mean having a panel of experts decide on what to fund, vs a broader community.

• Distribution Mechanism: The final decision point for your funding mechanism is whether you want funding to be distributed in a simple linear way or quadratically. some text
  • The Simple Linear distribution mechanism is best for small group decision-making and programs with limited administrative resources. 
  • The Quadratic distribution mechanism is best for incentivizing high-risk/high- reward projects with community backing and for consensus-based decision making. 

Then, you can select the funding mechanisms that best fit your program’s goals. Common mechanisms include Quadratic Funding, Direct Grants, and Retroactive Public Goods Funding. Each has its strengths and should be chosen based on your specific needs and objectives, which are outlined in our Grants Program Design book.

Eligibility Criteria: 

When developing evaluation criteria there are two broad categories or criteria you might use:
 

• Conditional, or binary criteria: the grantee either meets/ agrees to the criteria, or not.
 Conditional criteria ensures grantees commit to follow a code of conduct, follow program rules, and follow-through on deliverables.
• Evaluative criteria: This type of eligibility criteria helps to further hone in your ideal applicants by moving beyond simple “agreements” and getting into the factors that will point to a project’s likelihood of success (in proactive grants) or a project’s impact (in retroactive grants). The first decision to make when crafting your evaluative criteria is whether you want to stress subjective or objective measures. Equally important to decide is whether to evaluate by qualitative versus quantitative criteria. some text
  • Subjective: For subjective measures, it’s important to decide and communicate in advance who will be making those judgment calls, and what the process is for determining application rejections.
  • Objective:  These measures tend to be quantitative, leveraging the power of onchain activity to verify the accuracy of claims.
  • Qualitative: These measures are a bit trickier to evaluate.  It’s hard to measure every aspect of quality, so it’s often inevitable that some qualitative criteria will end up being highly subjective.
  • Quantitative: For example, the number of commits that someone has on Github 

To go through the 4 - Step Eligibility Criteria Worksheet, download the Grants Program Design Playbook. 

Application + Timelines: 

Establish Timelines: Define key dates for application submission, review periods, and decision announcements. Clear timelines help manage expectations and keep the process on track.

• There are 3 key phases within the timeline establishment: some text
  • Intake: When you accept applications to your grants program. Be sure to communicate application opening and closing dates.
  • Processing: When applications are reviewed. Be sure to be clear on the selection deadline (for selecting/rejecting grants) and the communication deadline (when grants applications can expect to hear back). 
  • Payouts: It is helpful to select a deadline in advance and communicate to grantees when they can expect to receive their first (and sometimes only) payment.

Other dates worth considering include the Nomination periods, Appeals Process, and Grantee Reporting. To learn more about these and dive into timeline best practices download the Playbook.

Application Questions & Structure: It is worth considering whether your questions are measurable and scalable. 

• Measurable: Questions with answers that are easily quantified are measurable. 
• Scalable: For scalability, consider if the questions that you’re asking are easy for your organization to verify regardless of whether you have 20 applicants or 2,000. 
• Scoping & Eligibility: The scope of your grants program is directly linked with both eligibility criteria and your application design. For a narrowly scoped program, typically the application scope is more narrow, selective and rigorous. On the flip side, if you’ve defined a broader scope, then you need to be mindful about how you’re going to attract the quantity and the types of applicants you’re hoping for.

Application Review:  the biggest lift in terms of workload tends to be the application review process.

• Streamline the Process: there are a few best practices for streamlining the application review process.some text
  • Scalable & Measurable Questions
  • Dedicated Reviewers
  • Application Review Tooling
• Ensure Fairness: It is recommended to have at least three (or a larger odd-number) individuals reviewing each round of applications. This increases credible neutrality and can help tie-break disagreements.

Appeals: Your program might not always get decisions right the first time. It’s usually worth building in some sort of appeals process for applications that have been rejected. The benefits of an appeal process include protecting yourself against some level of human error and increasing the perception of fairness and objectivity. 

Expected Outcomes

By the end of the Design stage, you should have:

• Defined Funding Mechanisms: A clear understanding of how funds will be allocated and distributed.
• Clear Eligibility Criteria: Well-defined criteria that ensure the right applicants are attracted and selected.
• Structured Application Process: An efficient and user-friendly application process that gathers all necessary information. And a transparent and consistent method for evaluating and selecting grantees.

With these design elements in place, your grants program will be well-equipped to move into the Execution phase. 

Read our next blog post, where we cover how to execute your grants program effectively!

And if you haven’t gotten your hands on the Grants Program Canvas yet, get it now and use the downloadable templates, worksheets and step-by-step walk-thrus that it contains.