Establishing an incentivised partners programme in an open source project

Photo by Ian Cylkowski on Unsplash IMPLEMENTING AN INCENTIVISED PARTNERS PROGRAM IN MAUTIC @RCheesley

MAUTIC PROJECT LEAD RUTH CHEESLEY (she/her) 18+ years using and contributing to open source projects Located in Ipswich, UK Working full time for Acquia as Mautic Project Lead noti.st/rcheesley for slides, resources & notes @RCheesley

E S TA B L I S H I N G A N I N C E N T I V I S E D PA R T N E R S P R O G R A M WHAT WE’RE GOING TO COVER CONTRIBUTIONS FINANCES PROGRAM How do we determine what a How do we make the financial What does the partners program contribution is, and track them over aspect equitable around the world to offer? How has it worked? What time? all potential partners? have we learned? Image by Pexels from Pixabay Photo by Ibrahim Boran on Unsplash Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash @RCheesley

ABOUT MAUTIC A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY ✴ Open source marketing automation platform launched in 2015 (mautic.org / github.com/ mautic/mautic) ✴ Founder’s SaaS company Mautic Inc was acquired by Acquia in 2019 ✴ Community now has its own governance model and is operating as a self-sufficient open source project @RCheesley

W H Y D I D W E N E E D A PA R T N E R S PROGRAM? WE WANTED TO: ✴ Encourage practical contribution and financial support from businesses who depend on Mautic ✴ Help people find the ‘makers’ who are actively supporting the community ✴ Promote organisations who are contributing both financially and in practical terms ✴ Give organisations something they can be proud of and which helps demonstrate their commitment to the project and community @RCheesley

GETTING THE BASICS IN PLACE CONTRIBUTIONS ✴ What is defined as a contribution? ✴ Where do contributions happen? ✴ How do we track out-of-channel contributions? ✴ How do we associate contributions with organisations? @RCheesley

OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY CRM SAVANNAH CRM ✴ Bring together all our community channels in one central dashboard ✴ Determine what is a contribution, and track this over time ✴ Identify organisations who are contributing https://github.com/SavannahHQ/Savannah

MONITORING CONTRIBUTIONS WHAT DO WE TRACK? 01 02 GITHUB DISCOURSE Pull Request opened Replies marked as solutions 03 04 SLACK MEETUP Help given in a chat Hosted a meetup @RCheesley

MONITORING CONTRIBUTIONS WHAT DO WE TRACK? 05 06 REDDIT S TA C K E X C H A N G E Help given in a thread Accepted answer to question 07 08 PODCASTS BLOGS Community podcasts Articles on mautic.org @RCheesley

OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS GIVING CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE MANUAL OR API ASSIGNMENT Team Leads can manually assign credits to a contributor for anything outside of existing tracked channels (e.g. leading a sprint, speaking at a conference, proof-reading an article). The API can be used to track other activities - for example Jira issues being closed, GitHub release being made. @RCheesley Photo by Caleb Chen on Unsplash

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS WHAT DO WE REPORT ON? ✴ Top contributors ✴ Most active members Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

O R G A N I S AT I O N C O N T R I B U T I O N S WHAT DO WE REPORT ON? ✴ Top contributing organisations ✴ Most active organisations Photo by airfocus on Unsplash

R E C O G N I S I N G O R G A N I S AT I O N S MONTHLY SHOUT-OUT

RECOGNISING CONTRIBUTORS MONTHLY SHOUT-OUT @RCheesley

GETTING THE BASICS IN PLACE FINANCES ✴ How do we accept financial contributions? ✴ How much is ‘enough’ and over how long? ✴ How do we make that amount equitable worldwide? @RCheesley

A C C E P T I N G D O N AT I O N S FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY IS KEY ✴ Established Open Collective, hosted by Open Source Collective, to hold and manage our funds ✴ Applied for GitHub Sponsors which passes funds directly to Open Collective @RCheesley

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? HOW TO MAKE THRESHOLDS EQUITABLE @RCheesley ✴ Implemented the ‘Big Mac Index’ to determine how much would be the minimum contribution by country ✴ 3 months minimum term for consistent contributions (financial and practical contributions) https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index

B U I L D I N G A PA R T N E R S P R O G R A M HOW DOES IT WORK? ✴ How do organisations apply to join? ✴ What do they get as a Community Partner? ✴ How are they incentivised? @RCheesley

B E C O M I N G A PA R T N E R APPLY WHEN CRITERIA IS MET M U S T M E E T M A N D AT O R Y R E Q U I R E M E N T S ✴ At least 3 months contributing to the project (evidenced in activity in Savannah CRM) ✴ At least 3 months contributing financially at the minimum level or above for the country of their head office or primary location ✴ No Code of Conduct breaches against organisation or team members over the past 12 months (tracked in Savannah CRM) @RCheesley

PA R T N E R D I R E C T O R Y L I S T I N G PROMINENT LISTINGS ✴ Each partner has a page in the 1 directory including backlink ✴ Top 3 partners featured on mautic.org homepage ✴ Partners ranked by activity and contributions in the previous month ✴ Partners mentioned in all official conferences @RCheesley

O R G A N I S AT I O N L I S T I N G SHOWCASE S E RV I C E S A N D CONTRIBUTIONS ✴ Company overview ✴ Highlight contributions ✴ List active contributors ✴ Quarterly activity graph ✴ Relevant case studies ✴ Promote partnership opportunities ✴ Lead generation form @RCheesley 2

R O A D M A P P R I O R I T I S AT I O N FEATURE REQUESTS 3 ✴ Partners may submit up to three features to the Project Lead per calendar year (funded or unfunded) for consideration to include in the roadmap, without going through the community voting and prioritisation process @RCheesley

NEWSLETTER MENTIONS PROMOTION ACROSS CHANNELS ✴ Social media and email promotion on joining ✴ Featured on every community newsletter with links to their partners page ✴ Re-sharing relevant news and content @RCheesley 4

HOW HAS IT WORKED? WE HAVE: ✴ Seen significant uptake in sponsorships from organisations ✴ Enrolled six partners with one in review ✴ Seen sustained contributions from partners ✴ Gained new contributors from new partners ✴ Enabled community members to build partnerships with ‘makers’ in the community, driving mutually beneficial growth of the ecosystem @RCheesley

W H AT D I D W E L E A R N ? TRANSPARENCY MATTERS ✴ Have clear policies and workflows to cover the whole process ✴ Be clear on expectations with promotion of partners ✴ Set clear content guidelines for their listing pages Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

W H AT W O U L D / W I L L W E C H A N G E SOME THOUGHTS: ✴ Automate / embed as much as possible on the portal (currently fully manual process) ✴ Improve search/filter capabilities to include location, language, services offered ✴ Automated follow up if partners are declining in their activity ✴ Considering possibility of having a tiered program ✴ Sponsored content

MAUTIC PROJECT LEAD RUTH CHEESLEY (she/her) What questions can I answer? ruth.cheesley@mautic.org noti.st/rcheesley for slides, recording, links and resources. @RCheesley