Discord Partnership Applications: Screening Partner Servers

First, the thing everybody searches for by mistake: this is not about the Discord Partner Program. That program is run by Discord, and no bot or form gets you into it.

This is about server partnerships. Another community asks to swap ads, share events or cross-promote, and someone on your team decides whether that server is one you want your members to see. Done in DMs, it turns into a mess of screenshots and "did anyone reply to that guy?". Done as an application, it is a queue.

Why treat partnerships as applications?

Because the questions are the same every time, and the decision should not depend on which moderator happened to open the DM.

A request in DMs has no record. Two weeks later, nobody remembers who agreed, what ad was promised or whether the other server ever posted yours. An application keeps the answers, the decision, who made it and when.

It also takes the requests out of your staff's inboxes. Your apply channel says "Partner requests: press Apply" and nobody has to answer cold DMs again.

What should you ask a partner server?

Keep it short. A server owner filling in your form is deciding whether you are worth the trouble, too.

Mark the invite link, the member count and the contact as identifier questions. They are facts, not answers to judge, and identifier questions are not scored.

For the others, use the expected answer note. It is a note for the AI that applicants never see, such as "We partner with gaming servers only, no NSFW, at least a few hundred members." The scoring checks answers against it, and when a requirement you wrote there is clearly not met, the score is capped at 50. That pushes off-topic requests to the bottom without denying them for you.

Ad texts are long. Check the characters allowed per answer on your plan on the pricing page, and set that question's maximum to fit.

Who should apply, and who should review?

Two sides to this.

Who can apply. On paid plans you can require a role. Some servers hand out a "Server Owner" role on request and only let members with it apply, so random members do not submit partnerships for servers that are not theirs. A minimum number of days in your server also helps: someone who joined five minutes ago to drop an ad is not a partner. A cooldown of a few weeks stops the same server asking again after a no. The guide to stopping spam applications has the details.

Who reviews. Give the panel its own reviewer role, for example Partnership Manager. Members with that role see and decide partner requests and nothing else. Anyone with Manage Server can still review every panel. Reviewing applications as a team covers the review side in full.

How do you keep partner requests out of the staff queue?

One panel per kind of application. Each panel has:

• its own Apply button, posted where you want it, for example in #partnerships
• its own questions
• its own review channel
• its own reviewer roles

So your staff round and your partnership requests never share a channel. If you only take partners at certain times, pause the panel between rounds; the Apply button is disabled until you resume it. On paid plans you can also set daily opening hours, or a cap on how many requests are accepted, if you only want a fixed number of partners.

What should happen when you accept?

Accepting does three useful things, and you set them up once:

1. A role. Add a Partner role on accept. That role can unlock a channel where partners talk to your team, or simply mark them in the member list.
2. A message. On Premium and Pro you write your own accept message for the panel. Use it to say exactly what happens next: "Post our ad in your #partners channel within 48 hours and send the link to your thread with us."
3. A thread. The Talk to them button on the review message opens a private thread with the applicant. It is the right place to agree on the ad, the date and who posts first.

On paid plans a panel can also send each decision to a webhook, for example into a channel where you keep a list of active partners.

What Mico does not do is post their ad. That stays with your team, which is how it should be: you read the final text before your members see it.

When should you deny, and how?

Deny when the server does not fit, when the invite does not work, when the ad breaks your rules, or when they will not post yours. Say which, briefly. A server owner who is told "We only partner with servers over a few hundred members, try again when you grow" might come back. One who hears nothing will not.

The reason you type is shown to the applicant in Mico's message. How to write a denied message has templates you can adapt.

Where does Mico stop?

Most of the value of a partnership process is the habit: every request goes through the same door, gets the same questions, and gets an answer. The bot only makes the habit cheap.