Editing Community Organizing (section)

=== Design and Implement Community Engagement and Onboarding Strategies ===

Building bridges to other communities is essential for growing the project’s contributor base. While we may start with a small core group, sustainable growth requires actively reaching out to adjacent communities and creating clear pathways for new contributors to get involved.

First, identify communities that have natural overlaps with your project - these could be users of similar tools, developers working in related domains, or groups interested in the problems. Identify where these communities gather, whether that’s social platforms like Mastodon, X.com, Lemmy, Reddit, Farcaster &amp; Nostr. The goal is not to aggressively recruit, but rather to become a genuine participant in these spaces, sharing knowledge and building relationships.

Once you’ve established connections with other communities, create explicit onboarding paths tailored to different types of potential contributors. Document exactly how someone can go from being interested to making their first contribution, whether that’s fixing a bug, improving documentation, or helping with translations. Break down the process into clear, manageable steps - from setting up a development environment to submitting their first pull request. The more specific and welcoming these instructions are, the more likely newcomers are to successfully make the transition from observer to contributor.

Different communities have different norms and expectations. What works for attracting contributors from one community may not work for another. Be prepared to adapt your outreach and onboarding approaches based on the specific community you’re connecting with, while staying true to your project’s own values and standards. The goal is to create bridges that benefit both communities through meaningful collaboration.

Onboarding Strategies MUST have a clear purpose, be as frictionless as possible (see Barriers) and reduce the hacktivation energy and have a clear understanding of how it increases motivations to contribute.

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