Volunteer Attraction and Retention in Open Source Communities

Abstract

The importance of volunteers in open source has led to the position of community manager becoming more common in foundations and projects. Yet the advice for volunteer management and retention is fragmented, incomplete, contradictory, and has not been empirically examined. Our aim is to fill this gap by creating a comprehensive guidebook of best practices drawing from open source practitioner guides and general literature on volunteering, and to subject a subset of practices to empirical study. A method for evaluating volunteer attrition in terms of value to the organization will also be developed.