8 Tips for Seamless DAO Onboarding

Congratulations! People have found your DAO. They’re dripping into Discord, lurking around, and asking questions about contributing.

What do you do?

Onboarding contributors can make it or break it for DAOs.

It is one of the most underestimated success factors for DAOs. It is also one of the hardest things to get right because people's attention spans are short and if they don’t have a clear path to follow, DAOs risk losing contributors.

DAOs can be overwhelming for newcomers especially for those who’re trying to transition from Web2 to Web3 worlds. Most people are used to being spoon fed structured roles with clear guidelines. In DAOs, contributors have to be both acute observers and self-starters in order to contribute effectively.

The knowledge on DAO onboarding is fragmented and constantly evolving, so we have managed to compile six tips for DAOs and two tips for Contributors to make the onboarding process seamless. Ultimately it takes both DAOs and Contributors to work together for a fruitful long-term collaboration.

Welcome mat

Nowadays Discord ends up being the gateway to most DAOs. Having a “Welcome” or “Intro” channel setup on Discord is critical to act as a stepping stone for contributors to get started.

The “Welcome” channel will typically breakdown the following for contributors:

  • Mission and goals of the DAO
  • Highlight any rules in the community
  • Point to critical documentation for the project
  • Link to other channels for contributors to proceed
  • List out the typical FAQs contributors may have

The image below is an example of a “Welcome Mat” setup in the Discord of DAO Masters. It outlines at a high level the steps involved for contributors to get involved.

Document, document, document

A strong indication of the long term scalability and success of a DAO lies in its documentation. As the membership grows you’re going to need a structured way to onboard contributors more efficiently.

Documentation is where the DAO has the opportunity to expound on its mission, goals and values. This is where contributors can gauge if they’re a good fit for the DAO or not. This is where they can envision if they want to commit their valuable time to the efforts of the DAO.

The documentation also enables understanding of governance, voting and delegation of the native tokens of the DAO which helps contributors understand how they could impact the growth of the DAO in addition to their contributions.

Index Coop is often referred to as the gold standard for contributor onboarding documentation. The documentation clearly outlines the key steps contributors can walk through in order to familiarize themselves with the DAO and how the DAO prefers to onboard newcomers. Keep in mind that these preferences are subjective and it’s therefore critical to document them.

Having documentation can also act as a qualifying filter to ensure you’re getting high quality contributors. Only those who are most interested and willing to put in some effort will get onboarded.

Communicate regularly & individually

Scheduling regular calls for new joiners will help contributors get on the right track, find areas they want to contribute in and just make the overall process more efficient over the long term.

At Index Coop (image below) there’s a proposal to hold a Weekly New Joiners call where existing DAO members or Admins can gauge the interest and experience of new joiners and immediately add them to relevant channels, drives and meetings.

During the calls there’s even the functionality of matching the new joiners with mentors or buddies so that they can always rely on someone specific to reach out to for questions or more information. Matching buddies after the new joiners call is useful because you would have already assessed where to slot the new joiners in and who are the most relevant buddies to pair them up with.

Another useful aspect of these new joiner calls is to help assess what contributors are good at and what they enjoy working on and it also allows contributors to assess the kind of teams they might end up getting embedded with during the course of their DAO journey.

As the contributions increase and become more central to the DAO, the communications should also be ramped up. Core contributors definitely deserve more regular one-on-one calls as opposed to less frequent contributors.

Low hanging fruit

Sometimes the biggest barrier to contributions is just getting over the hump of getting started in some shape or form. This is why the most successful onboarding journeys are structured as low hanging fruit i.e. a simple yet concrete set of tasks for contributors to accomplish while familiarizing themselves with the DAO and their working peers or other members.

Index Coop does a really good job for newcomers by structuring the onboarding journey as a quest that is broken down into clear steps for contributors to find an area in which they can start contributing all the way to understanding how to vote and delegate their DAO tokens. The image below shows how the journey is structured under the New Owl Quest which is aimed at new contributors.

Reputation

As you onboard new contributors sometimes you’re just not sure what the reputation of these contributors are. The most straightforward type of reputation would be something like on-chain resumes, Github contributions or blog posts from specific contributors.

Tools like DeepResearch allow you take things one step further to assess contributors within the context of your community. DeepResearch allows you to analyze total engagement, messages per hour, or examining a specific user's relationships and activity ranking within that community.

Rankings

Another aspect you should consider making transparent during the onboarding process is if you’re implementing some kind of ranking system within the DAO. It’s important for contributors to know this before they start working or otherwise they would get demotivated later on.

Having some kind of ranking or points system can actually help gamify the experience and motivate contributors over time. You can actually design your ranking system to be in synergy with helping contributors level up their contributions over time too. As contributors level up they get access to more channels, challenging work and other forms of benefits.

You may not want to place too much weight on the ranking system because it may skew incentives amongst members, but at the same time it’s a good indicator for knowing which contributor to call upon for different tasks or challenges within the DAO.

Wayfinding

Now let's consider if you’re on the other side of the board game. What if you’re a contributor yourself? One of the first things you need to do is what is often referred to as wayfinding or in other words context building.

When wayfinding you have to take yourself out of the employer-employee mindset and imagine as if you’ve joined some sort of cooperative or group game. Instead of just waiting for instructions from a manager, you’re actively observing and determining your position in the group so that you can sketch out a path of progress for yourself within the DAO.

Adopt an owner mindset

As part of the evolution in mindset, another key shift is adopting an owner mindset with DAOs. As a contributor you literally have the opportunity to earn native tokens of the DAO. It is not about waiting for instructions from managers to perform tasks but instead, it involves you being a more collaborative player that is focused on outcomes and the long term success of the DAO.

One example of contributors adopting an owner mindset is to volunteer with the creation of documentation, especially when joining new DAOs that lack the appropriate documentation for newcomers. Contributors don’t have to always wait for the perfect onboarding journey. Instead, they can help shape it.

Conclusion

DAO onboarding journeys are still evolving because the space is still very new. While some may consider it challenging, DAO practitioners find the challenges an opportunity to shape an onboarding journey that helps them harness the talent their DAO is attracting. The growth in DAOs has shown that DAOs are here to stay and it represents the future of work.

Onboarding journeys will certainly be varied for different DAOs because each DAO will design a path that is best for them and their members. However the fundamentals of ensuring there’s transparency on the journey, clear documentation and regular communications for contributors will certainly go a long way.

At tr3butor we’re obsessed about making talent matching frictionless for DAOs and other Web3 organizations. We’re developing a wholly native solution geared for contributors to join Web3 organizations while showcasing their skills and experience on-chain.

Are you looking to recruit Web3 talent?

tr3butor can help. Click here to tell us more.

About tr3butor

Subscribe to intropia
Receive the latest updates directly to your inbox.
Verification
This entry has been permanently stored onchain and signed by its creator.