One thing I thought of would be to change the direction of the process
to be an invitation rather than an application.
If you see someone helping, instead of pushing him to apply you could
fill in the form describing his contributions (and possibly the name
of someone else who can support it) and if accepted he would get an
invitation to join the foundation.
"Any contributor to GNOME shall be eligible for member-ship.A “contributor” shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to anon-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project, such as code, documentation, trans-lations, maintenance of project-wide resources, or other non-trivial activities whichbenefit the GNOME Project. Large amounts of advocacy or bug reporting may qual-ify one as a contributor, provided that such contributions are significantly above thelevel expected of an ordinary user. Contributions made in the course of employmentwill be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruingto all employees of a “contributing” corporation."