Community Management as an On-Ramp to Open Source Careers

Community management is rarely the first career path developers consider, but for those looking to break into the open source ecosystem, it can be a surprisingly effective entry point. GitHub’s Digital Public Goods (DPG) Open Source Community Manager Program is designed to turn that interest into practical experience, pairing aspiring community managers with open source projects that need help growing their contributor bases.

The program’s dual mission is straightforward: support DPGs by strengthening the communities around them, while giving participants the hands-on training and professional network they need to launch their careers. This year, 55 community managers completed the program—a sixfold increase over the pilot cohort—working across 27 projects with organizations including OpenFn and OpenSSP.

Damilola Oladele, one of this year’s graduates, had long wanted to explore community management but had no prior exposure to DPGs. As he describes it, DPGs are open source solutions—spanning software, data, and AI models—that meet the DPG Standard. That standard requires alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as compliance with privacy regulations and harm prevention practices. For Oladele, the appeal of DPGs lies in their ability to reduce vendor lock-in and encourage local innovation, making them a key piece of more equitable technology ecosystems.

From Training to Real-World Projects

Participants spend the early weeks of the program in workshop sessions, then get paired with a specific DPG. From there, their work shifts from theory to practice as they dig into the organization’s needs—learning its inner workings, its contributor dynamics, and where community support can have the most impact.

For Oladele, that meant stepping into a two-month engagement with Social Income. His responsibilities included building a webpage that uses the GitHub REST API to surface the project’s public repository insights, such as contributor lists and open issue trackers. The goal was to make the community more visible and approachable for prospective collaborators. Looking ahead, his focus is on developing long-term growth strategies and sustaining engagement for Social Income’s open source community, alongside contributing code and helping onboard new developers.

Notably, Oladele has continued supporting Social Income even after the program’s official end—a sign that the work can create lasting connections between community managers and the projects they support.

What the Program Offers

This year’s iteration of the program built on the pilot with a stronger curriculum and more structured support. Key elements include:

  • Acceptance of six times more community managers into the cohort compared to the previous year
  • GitHub-hosted workshops covering topics like community growth and sustainability, effective communication strategies with GitHub Actions, and documentation and non-code contributions
  • Work across 27 projects with open source organizations such as OpenFn and OpenSSP

For developers interested in community management who want to apply their skills toward social good, the program’s website is the place to watch for announcements about the next cohort. In the meantime, those looking for hands-on experience can explore open source projects seeking help through For Good First Issue, which curates contribution opportunities for projects with a positive social impact.