DAO Essentials: 6 Key Onboarding Practices

Establish a clear mission & vision for the DAO

Communicating a shared purpose helps to set expectations for participation and fosters organizational health. As opposed to being everything to everyone, a DAO needs to understand what drives its community and serve that community well in accordance with its mission. This first step lays the foundation for a strong community ethos, which facilitate... See more

Joining a DAO can be overwhelming; a constant struggle for DAOs bringing on new members is providing context around who is doing what. A direct 1:1 conversation with a current team member provides a space for new members to ask questions, share their interests, and discuss what it would mean to get involved. This tailored onboarding is especially h... See more

Facilitate 1:1 connections, especially early onInvest in education and resourcesAccommodate for different levels of knowledge and experiencePreempt scalability challenges, especially pertaining to quality of work and “offboarding” 

Adequate documentation of knowledge and processes can help new members orient themselves in the community, understand how to get involved, and stay involved. These resources are very useful when provided in tandem with new member programming.

Regardless of the exact structure, many agree that:

Structure is especially important in instances when members don’t follow community guidelines or aren’t aligned with the DAO’s mission and operations. Core contributors rely on guardrails to “offboard” members in these instances, and they’ve shared that it’s easier to do when guardrails are created and implemented early on. Without them, offboardin... See more

Each person who onboards to a DAO will have different levels of web3 knowledge, contributing experience, and comfort levels. A clear mission and vision can help to attract people at similar levels, but ultimately, onboarding processes should accommodate for differences among these new members (to the extent of the DAO’s intended target audience).

Members should stay educated and updated on important and relevant information. However, it’s up to the DAO to make sure that this process is as frictionless as possible. Depending on the DAO’s structure, the DAO can facilitate this by identifying the right cadence of information-sharing, both synchronously (recurring calls) and asynchronously (mes... See more

Task checklists: Each new member must complete a small list of tasks (eg. introducing themselves, joining a community call, completing a bounty, and/or messaging a core contributor)