Execute - Bringing Your Grants Program to Life

To read up on the first two stages of creating a successful grants program, dive into:

• Define - Laying the Foundation for Your Grants Program
• Design - Crafting an Effective Grants Program

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What is the Execute Stage?

The Execute stage involves creating the detailed framework and processes for your grants program. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, creating a grantee engagement plan, and establishing the methods for disbursing funds.

What is it For?

The Execute stage is designed to ensure that your grants program runs smoothly and efficiently. It’s about implementing the processes you’ve designed, engaging with your community, and making sure that funds are distributed effectively and on time. This stage is crucial for maintaining transparency, building trust, and achieving your program’s objectives.

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How to Use the Execute Stage

Establish clear Roles & Responsibilities: 

Identifying the key roles within your team, such as Program Manager, Community Engagement Lead, and Support Staff is part of establishing a strong team. It is essential to assign clear responsibilities to each role to ensure smooth operation.

A common approach within grants programs is to appoint one lead who can oversee the program, and a minimum of three team members in total (including the lead). This ensures the possibility of a best two-out-of-three vote when conducting things like eligibility reviews and assessing code of conduct violations. 

It is important to have clear role descriptions. Role descriptions can benefit from the following sections: 

• Purpose: What is this role providing?
• Decision rights: What decisions are reserved for this role?

• Evaluation criteria: What measures or outcomes can be used to evaluate this role?

• Responsibilities: What ongoing activities is the role responsible for?
• Qualifications: What skills or experience are needed to perform this role effectively?
• Staffing: How is this role filled?

For sample role descriptions and a roles and responsibilities template,  download the Grants Program Design Playbook. 

A useful tool within the process of establishing your team is the DACI Framework: The DACI (Driver, Approver, Consulted, Informed) framework helps clarify who is responsible for each decision. This reduces confusion and ensures accountability.

• Driver: The project manager. The driver keeps things moving: scheduling and overseeing meetings, assigning tasks, and making sure the team is progressing according to schedule.
• Approver: The final say. It’s up to the approver to sign off on any decisions.
• Consulted: Helping hands. These people have necessary opinions or expertise that will help decisions get made. It’s up to the Driver to decide how they should be integrated into the team and what level of involvement in the day-to-day operations will maximize their value.
• Informed: The need-to-knows. These people aren’t directly working on the grants program, but they’re members of the organization running it who have a stake in how it plays out. The Driver will determine how best to keep them dealt in.

Do you need a Grant Council?

A grant council is composed of community members, typically voted in by the community, who can represent the group’s interests — that way, the organization as a voting body is included in the process, but without needing to have everyone vote throughout. Depending on the scope you decide on, its roles can range from approvals and multisig management (more narrow) to collaborating with the grants-program team on setting eligibility criteria and reviewing applications (more broad).

Create Engagement: 

There are 4 key phases to grantee engagement: 

• Attract Potential Grantees: Ask yourself who your audience is, where they are spending their time, what they care about, and what your call to action is and how you can amplify your reach. 
• Onboard Potential Grantees: Give your grantees a place to go for all of the information they need: the application, the process, the updates. Think of it as a one-stop shop for your grants program. The best way to look at this onboarding process is through the prism of user experience. What kind of UX are the grantees having? 
• Provide Ongoing Support: There should be codified, easy methods for grantees of reaching out to have questions answered. The channels you are using should be outlined in the onboarding process.
• Post-Program Communications: Your grantees have been selected – now what? Grantees should be kept informed about the most important information and next steps like payout schedules, payout transaction completion and future funding opportunities. Gathering valuable feedback from your grantees about your program with surveys or user interviews will help you gain insights needed to improve user experience.

To go through the 4 phases of grantee engagement in detail, find extra tips to create a successful engagement plan, and for a non-exhaustive checklist of ideas to create an amazing grantee experience download the Grants Program Design Playbook. 

Find Methods for Disbursement: 

Plan Payouts: Establish a clear plan for disbursing funds to grantees. This includes setting payment schedules and ensuring that funds are distributed efficiently and securely.

Monitor Progress: Keep track of grantee progress and ensure that they meet the milestones and reporting requirements set out in your program.

Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures are common for web3 grants programs. There are plenty of tools your program can leverage to make this process simple and straightforward. 

When creating a disbursement plan, you will want to get clear on: 

• Payout Currency: Is this in your native token, a stablecoin or something else?

• Payout Schedule: Are you doing milestone-based payouts? Are you streaming the funds over time or paying out in large chunks?
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• Lock-Up Periods: If paying out in a native token, are tokens locked-up for a period of time, or liquid upon receipt?

Expected Outcomes

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

• Defined Roles: A structured team with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, ensuring efficient operation and accountability.
• Engaged Applicants: A diverse pool of applicants who are informed and excited about your program.
• Timely Fund Disbursement: A clear and efficient system for distributing funds to grantees.
• Ongoing Grantee Support: A supportive environment that helps grantees succeed and fosters community growth.

With these execution strategies in place, your grants program will be well-positioned to achieve its goals and make a meaningful impact. 

Stay tuned for our final blog post of this 4-part series, where we’ll explore the Learn stage and how to continuously improve your grants program!

If you haven’t received the Grants Program Canvas yet, get it now and use the downloadable templates, worksheets and step-by-step walk-thrus that it contains.