For nonprofit organizations, it was an opportunity not to be missed: a chance to receive part of $5.1 million in new grants from the City and County of Honolulu.

Of course, there’s a good argument to be made that the city should not be giving away any more taxpayer money these days, when it has so many other bills to pay. But voters in 2012 thought otherwise, and approved an amendment to the Honolulu City Charter that requires one half of 1 percent of city revenues be distributed to nonprofit groups.

Fortunately, the amendment also included a requirement that this program be properly vetted, and on Tuesday, the first results were in.

So far, the results appear promising.

The newly formed Grants-in-Aid Advisory Commission considered more 134 applicants, and recommended that 41 receive a share of that 1 percent, or $5.1 million.

The City Council will review the list, moving money around if it chooses, and make the final decisions. The only restriction: Each of the nine Council districts must receive at least $250,000.

The commission’s vetting process is rightly designed to give every applicant, large or small, a fair chance. It requires each commissioner to score each applicant based on numerous criteria, including whether its plan meets a community need, has the capacity to achieve its goals, and has financial support from other sources. The scores are averaged, and the top-scoring applicants get the grants.

Of course, no system is entirely fair. There’s enough complexity built into the applications — to ensure that grants go to legimitate, worthy nonprofits — that small organizations without exper- ienced grant writers could find the process daunting.

It’s reasonable to anticipate that as the annual program evolves, more organizations will take part, and certain savvy organizations will master the neutral scoring process and dominate the grants.

To guard against this, smaller organizations will need training, and should take advantage of the city’s programs to provide assistance with filling out the application forms.

They also should participate in making the system better. The commission plans to schedule an open forum sometime at the end of the month to evaluate the process and to suggest recommendations.

One good one: Expand the 30-day evaluation period to give the commissioners more time to handle more applicants.

Finally, the City Council should weigh in, but only if necessary, and with a light hand. If the evaluation system has produced reasonable results, the Council should let those results stand.

For better or worse, voters have chosen this process. Elected officials should make every effort to see that it succeeds.