Community managers in action: Leading a developer community for good

Jumpstarting your career as a community manager

Managing communities has always been something I wanted to explore. This year, I finally decided to take on every opportunity to do so. And it has been an incredible journey filled with challenges that have pushed me to develop new skills and learn in unexpected ways. One of the most impactful experiences has been joining Social Income as a community manager through the GitHub DPG Open Source Community Manager Program.1

Damilola Oladele is one of 55 community managers that completed GitHub’s Digital Public Goods (DPG) Open Source Community Manager Program this year, giving him the training and experience needed to start off his career. And this is exactly how this program is intended to work. Its dual purpose is to support DPGs by building their communities of contributors to help achieve their missions, while growing the experience and network of aspiring community managers.

What’s a DPG?

Before joining the program, I knew nothing about DPGs. So, if like me you’re unfamiliar with DPGs, they are open source solutions—including software, data, and AI models that adhere to the DPG Standard. This standard ensures alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while complying with privacy laws and harm prevention practices. DPGs play a vital role in creating equitable systems by reducing vendor lock-in and fostering local innovation.

Damilola, along with his fellow community managers, were all connected with a specific DPG that needed support engaging external contributors. They learned the in’s and out’s of that specific organization, as well as the best way they could help contribute to their mission.

What’s the program like for community managers?

For two months, I’ve been leading efforts to highlight the Social Income community volunteers and contributors. One of my tasks was developing a webpage using the GitHub REST API to display the public repository insights of Social Income. This includes showing a list of contributors and a table of open issues. This effort makes the community more visible and welcoming to new collaborators.

Moving forward, I’ll be working on developing and implementing strategies for the long-term growth and sustained engagement of Social Income’s open source community. Additionally, I will continue contributing code and assisting with onboarding new developers.

After the first few months of workshop sessions, Damilola was paired with Social Income and applied the skills learned in the program’s training course to actual projects outlined by this DPG. Being passionate about this work, Damilola has continued supporting their mission even after the completion of the program.

Building on the pilot program, Damilola and his fellow community managers benefitted from an even stronger curriculum and structure this year, ensuring success for both participants and DPGs. Some highlights include:

• Acceptance of six times more community managers into the cohort compared to last year
• GitHub-hosted workshops including “Community growth and sustainability,” “Effective communication strategies with GitHub Actions,” and “Documentation and non-code contributions”
• Worked on 27 projects with open source organizations like OpenFn and OpenSSP.

How can I get involved?

If you’re looking to gain skills as a community manager and are passionate about using open source for good, we’d love for you to join us! Keep an eye on our website for more information about the next cohort.

In the meantime, we have plenty of open source projects that need your support. Check out For Good First Issue to contribute to a project that’s having a positive impact in the world.

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1All quotes are from Damilola Oladele’s blog and used with permission.