Tech for Social Good // Hacktoberfest 2022

Digital Public Goods Maintainer's Hacktoberfest Guidance

Amplify your volunteer asks

The GitHub Social Impact, Tech for Social Good and the DigitalOcean Social Impact teams are working together to amplify Hacktoberfest 2022 volunteer opportunities related to DPGs. Some or most DPGs do not have items in the community standards checklist on their GitHub repositories that most software developers seek when deciding where to volunteer their time. We therefore recommend DPG maintainers offer Hacktoberfest volunteers two ways to get involved:

1. Ask volunteers to create items in the community standards checklist

2. Ask volunteers to work on new or existing issues, if the DPG already has all items in the community standards checklist

To include your DPG Hacktoberfest issue(s) in our blog post

Click here

Want to volunteer on a DPG?

Check out our blog post for volunteer opportunities.

Watch the social sector guidance video!

Getting your project ready for Hacktoberfest volunteers can feel overwhelming and intimidating. In this video, Sean Marcia, the Founder of Ruby for Good, goes through tips to help participating DPG maintainers. The video also covers tips for beginner social sector maintainers.

Prepare your repository

Hacktoberfest Guidance

On your DPG repository, add the topic `hacktoberfest`. This opts you into Hacktoberfest and indicates that you are looking for contributions.
Add the label `hacktoberfest` to any existing issues OR create new issues on which you want volunteers. Refer to this page for issue ideas.
Etiquette - try to be responsive to volunteers by regularly reviewing pull requests, responding to issue comments, and hosting office hours during the month of October.
Read more on the Hacktoberfest website.

Community Standards Checklist

Go to the Insights → Community Standards tab on your public repo and ensure your project has everything in the checklist.
A Code of Conduct helps volunteers feel safe contributing. A README.md, issue templates and pull request templates helps volunteers make valuable contributions.
Here is an example pull request template and issue template to help you get started.
DPGs can use README.md files to describe why the project is important to society, which can entice volunteers.
Your issue can ask volunteers to create items in the community standards checklist. Think of this as asking for volunteers to help you get more volunteers.

Contribution Guidelines

Your `Contributing.md` file should tell volunteers how to contribute to your project. For example, do you want forks or branches?
Include how volunteers should assign themselves or contribute to an issue, and how to submit a pull request.
For contributions that involve code, indicate relevant dependencies and technical information, such as required software packages or operating systems.

Issues

Use issues to explain the problem and how resolving the problem will help the project. Explain what is required of the volunteer to complete the issue.
Assume those reading the issue are not familiar with your project. Write out or link to the necessary background information.
Refer to our Skills-Based Volunteering scoping deck and public repo for ideas on how to scope out volunteer asks.
In addition to the `Hacktoberfest` label, add others that help describe the nature of the issue. Common examples are `Help wanted` or `Good first issue`.
GitHub Actions can be used to automatically add or remove labels to issues according to the project board in which they are listed or if they have been inactive for a certain period of time. Here are useful example actions: Remove label from cards, unassign issues, add labels to cards

About Hacktoberfest

Hacktoberfest is an annual, public open source volunteering event run by DigitalOcean on GitHub and GitLab. The 2022 focus is on low or non-code contributions. Check out the Hacktoberfest website to learn how to volunteer, receive your swag, or for general maintainer guidance.