Product: Ensure eligibility notes are ready to be public facing

[kuusinc]

Overview

Eligibility notes will now be made public, and as such need to be reviewed so only public facing notes are made public and non-public facing notes are moved to the correct admin-only field or deleted when necessary.

Details

Background: As a new admin it is currently unclear which field entries in the admin view are visible to the public or not, which can lead to critical information to a food seeker being listed in field that is not visible to the food seeker. As discovered in #2448: There are more field entries available in the admin side of the organization's profile than are visible to food seekers, however as a new admin I do not have awareness of which fields are visible to food seekers, so I may list critical information for food seekers in a field that is not visible to them (e.g. Eligibility Notes, and Donation tab information is not available to food seekers on public facing site). Eligibility notes are being made a publicly facing field in a separate task, but first this task must be completed to ensure the notes are indeed ready to be public facing notes.

Action Items

Review all the content in Eligibility Notes and remove anything that should not visible to the public

• make a new spreadsheet out of foodoasis_2026.05.26 - eligibility notes, has eligibility notes to use with GPT
• make sure gpt is tuned to not share data (see your settings)
• ask it to review the sheet for each of the problem mentioned and their IDs and then review each example separately.
  • e.g., tell me all the record IDs that have X in the eligibility notes field
    • X = phone numbers
    • X = peoples names
• remove any notes that should not visible to the public by either moving the note to the correct admin-only field or deleting when necessary

Resources/Instructions

Admin view: https://www.foodoasis.la/admin
Food seeker view: https://www.foodoasis.la

ChatGPT review to see if there was data in the database that should not be public, and there is data that needs to be private.

Details

I have a database of food pantry and hot meal locations we're doing a little cleanup we have a field called eligibility notes I want to pay you all the contents from the entire database and I just want to know if there's any thing that somebody who's been doing our validation has put into the eligibility notes that probably shouldn't be on the public display

[pasted just the eligibility notes, not the whole db

Repsonse

Yes. Looking through the examples you provided, I see several categories of content that I would consider questionable for a public-facing Eligibility Notes field. Some are merely outdated, while others create maintenance, privacy, legal, or user-experience problems. The examples below come from the file you provided.

1. Internal validator comments that don't belong on a public website

These appear to be notes to validators rather than information for food seekers:

• "whatever is provided from foodbank"

• "contact ADHC, HMO approval, face-to-face for screening"

• "They are restricted by the food distributors."

• "If homeless, will be tough to gain eligibility for food pantry services"

• "Vaccine/Covid is only occasionally, so check the Instagram or call ahead SENIRO AND sign up to our builing and wait list"

• "For those specifically in wrap around program."

• "Please find the service that best suits your needs/eligibility"

These are either unclear, incomplete, typo-ridden, or written from the validator's perspective rather than the client's.

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2. COVID-era operational notes that are probably obsolete

I would flag these for verification and likely removal unless recently confirmed:

• Mask requirements

• Social distancing requirements

• Vaccine card requirements

• Temperature checks

• COVID screening portals

• "No Mask No Service"

• "There are no more COVID restrictions"

• Detailed COVID sanitation statements

Examples:

• "Must wear a mask and practice social distancing."

• "Everyone needs a mask."

• "Face masks required, temperature will be checked."

• "Valid COVID vaccination card must be uploaded..."

• "Please wear a mask and stand 6ft apart..."

These are some of the highest-risk stale records in the file.

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3. Contact information that should live elsewhere

Eligibility Notes should usually not contain:

• Direct staff names

• Direct extensions

• Individual email addresses

• Individual phone contacts

Examples:

• "Please call Carol Ewing at (937) 382-5667..."

• "Ask for Ismael"

• "Amber Dofner emailed to say..."

Staff turnover creates maintenance issues.

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4. Full URLs embedded in eligibility notes

You have many examples such as:

• WIC assistance URL

• Angelus Plaza URL

• SOVA eligibility URL

• CPP registration URL

• Clothing voucher URL

• Montebello registration URL

These would generally be better stored in dedicated fields:

• Website

• Registration URL

• Application URL

rather than mixed into eligibility notes.

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5. Potentially problematic wording

These may not be wrong, but deserve review:

"Specified that it serves Men, Women, & Transgender"

This wording may not accurately reflect the organization's current policy and could become sensitive if copied incorrectly.

"Must be an adult male and a senior-aged woman"

This is especially suspicious because it reads like a validator paraphrase and may be inaccurate.

"Chronically Homeless, Families, People Living with HIV/AIDS..."

This may belong in a target population field rather than eligibility notes.

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6. Detailed housing-program information mixed into food eligibility

Examples:

• Coordinated Entry System (CES) explanation

• Permanent supportive housing waitlists

• Housing eligibility workflows

These are useful, but probably belong under Housing Services, not Food Eligibility.

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7. Notes describing the validator's conversation

Several entries read like call notes rather than public information:

Examples:

• "Amber Dofner emailed to say..."

• "indicated on Instagram posts"

• "they they must bring baby's birth certificate..."

• "although what qualifies as senior is vague"

• "they will adjust what they give out depending on whether you are homed/homeless/have car, etc."

These should probably be rewritten before publication.

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8. Information that may unintentionally discourage users

Examples:

• "If homeless, will be tough to gain eligibility..."

• "This resource is limited each week to the first 200 students..."

• "only open to clients..."

• "membership required..."

These may be accurate, but should be carefully reviewed to ensure they are current and presented clearly.

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9. Formatting / data quality problems

I see many entries that suggest raw intake notes were pasted directly:

Examples:

• Triple quotes

• Random capitalization

• Typos:

  • "requirments"

  • "SENIRO"

  • "builing"

• Excessive punctuation

• Internal explanatory comments in parentheses

These don't necessarily need removal but should be normalized.

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What I would recommend

For a public directory, I'd create three review buckets:

Safe to publish

• Residency requirements

• Income requirements

• ID requirements

• Age requirements

• Service area restrictions

• Frequency limits (once per week, once per month)

Review before publishing

• COVID-related notes

• URLs

• Staff names

• Email excerpts

• Housing-program details

• Population descriptions

Remove from public display

• Validator observations

• Internal comments

• Unclear shorthand

• Notes quoting private conversations

• References to specific staff communications

From a data-quality perspective, I'd estimate roughly 15–25% of the entries in this field should be reviewed or moved elsewhere, and 5–10% look like they should not be displayed publicly at all.

If you'd like, I can go line-by-line and produce a table with:

Note | Keep | Rewrite | Remove | Reason -- | -- | -- | -- | --

for every questionable entry in the dataset.