This is a proposal to have a company wide volunteer day where folks from all over the world participate in some sort of volunteer activity.
It would also be great to have repeating volunteer events - maybe once a quarter. This will not only help the community, but allow folks to participate in something they might not have done otherwise. It will likely help build camaraderie between GitLabbers in the same city.
Here are some notes/ideas taken during the volunteer workshop at the NOLA Contribute:
Consider having a global volunteer day
Post pictures of folks volunteering around the world
Maybe #gitlabvolunteers
Blog post?
Consider having more frequent volunteer events in local cities
Even half day once a quarter
Volunteer while at contribute?
Legal issues?
Help other small businesses with IT, finance, etc
Provide volunteer services for specific talents (e.g. coding, accounting, writing resumes)
Blood drive only works if you can give blood that week By which I mean, I know some people can't give blood anyway, but I give blood regularly, and it's unlikely my donation window will line up here as I can only give once every 12 weeks.
@smcgivern@crollison Perhaps the blood drive one is just an ongoing google spreadsheet to show how many Ml have been donated? Then we could celebrate the total at the end of the year?
I don't think that should be a concern here as long as it is opt-in only and no pressure is applied to people to join, but I wanted to call it out early as I really don't want people to feel like they have to explain themselves here. It is, after all, a donation, not an obligation
@smcgivern agreed - I think we should make sure the name field is optional, and that no one can see edits or whatever so it can be completely anonymous for those folks.
not sure who to ask for help with this - if it is not you, can you please point me in the right direction?
@crollison I'm not 100% sure what it is you are requesting assistance with so I can't make a recommendation on how or who to direct you to. Can you provide a little bit more context on what specifically you are needing?
Who do we need to speak with to set this type of thing up? I figure we need someone to review/approve it before we make it a "GitLab" thing and not just an individual thing.
@crollison This would be a PeopleOPS / Culture officer decision and initiative to own and run. I would start with Carol Teskey - Director, Global People Operations (@cteskey) or Candace Williams - Diversity & Inclusion (@cwilliams3). They would be in the best position to advise you further on how to set something like this up or to whom you need to work with on their teams.
More than happy to help from a tooling/system set up if that is needed but def PeopleOPS is in the driver seat on this one. Awesome idea!
@crollison@jjcordz this is an awesome idea. It appears there are volunteer days I see showing up on calendars. I received one for the RDU/RTP/Raleigh, NC area. Where are you all in the process?
Hey Candace! I haven't personally done anything in the Seattle area, but will try to work on it later this week if I catch up on stuff from when I was OOO. We are having a small co-working on Friday so I thought about mentioning it there as well.
Great point on the anonymous nature - I had put in the optional for name thinking the same way - but had not thought about google tracking who had entered the info! Please fix if you know how!!
And I have absolutely no idea how to operationalize this! Do we want to work out the bug @smcgivern mentioned first around anonymizing before we share more broadly? Guess we could ask how in the #question channel. Were you hoping that JJ could somehow help with that? I wasn't sure why she was pulled in (she reports to me and still trying to get a handle on ALL that she does for GL!)
I can have a look at the spreadsheet in a minute to see if we can make it anonymous.
I don't know how to operationalize it either! I pulled in JJ because I thought we'd need someone from Marketing to review/approve it. Please let me know if you think of someone else who could help us!
The only way I can find how to make it completely anonymous is to make a google form that saves responses in a spreadsheet. What do you think about that?
Oh that could work. Do we want to "release" our MVC and see if there is pushback on the anonymous issue before spending extra time on it? I'll add a note on the doc itself.
And if so, we are back to the question of where!
@cteskey - happy to let you run with this and/or pull us in as needed.
We have not broadly shared the #giveback or the blood donation spreadsheet and we will defer to your expertise!
@crollison@cwilliams3@mwilkins Totally supportive and love the enthusiasm and ideas! Could you please work with the group to help support the initiatives? Thanks cc @brittanyr
Re: Blood drive - in some countries the exclusion reasons can be offensive so I wonder is it better to pick a volunteering day as the first initiative to allow for maximum inclusion?
I absolutely love this idea! One way I was thinking we can make this really impactful is in areas where we have a few GitLabbers, we can have someone volunteer to be a local community ambassador (open to name suggestions) who would choose a local organization and make sure everything is logistically set up for the volunteer day (I've done a ton of volunteering with children and that has a lot of paperwork). For example, I'm in Denver where there is a significant number of us so if I were the ambassador, I could set up a trail cleanup.
For people who can't attend, are more isolated in their location, or just really love volunteering, we can keep a list of volunteer projects that we can keep metrics on, as stated above, such as giving blood and picking up litter.
Yes! I was thinking the same thing about some sort of ambassador. I wonder if we can make a company announcement asking for ambassador volunteers or something? Maybe another issue?
I think @cteskey's idea about starting this with a "volunteering day" is great! That would probably be best as an announcement in the company-announcement channel. I think it would be awesome if everyone took a picture of them volunteering, or maybe just the name of the organization they're helping.
Anyway, @cteskey can we just pick a random day for "volunteering day" and make the announcement include some of the other details we have discussed (like the local volunteer ambassador)?
We'll want to identify locations where it would make sense to have an ambassador and how to pull this metric. We could do it based on what location people are considered for the location factor for comp which would help discern people who are located within a commutable distance as others in a city. I can pull this information or am also open for suggestions on a better way to capture something like this.
Another issue may be beneficial for tracking who volunteers and locations who still need someone.
In the (optimal) event that there's a lot of interest, we should also discuss how to proceed if more than one person in a location volunteers. Is it better to have one person lead the charge and make the decisions or, if more than one person volunteers, could it be beneficial to have a little committee who would make decisions and coordinate for their location together? Keeping in mind the value of collaboration, I lean towards the second option.
I definitely like the idea of pulling some data to see who can get together and volunteer in a particular city!
If there end up being many people in certain areas, then yeah, I think a committee is a great idea! It will also help take the pressure off of one person.
I am going to send out a message to the loc_pnw channel about a volunteer opportunity in Seattle. I'll be sure to link this issue and encourage folks in Vancouver, BC, and Portland to get together!
@jdavidson124 ^^ this seems like a similar initiative as the issue you opened a few months ago so could you connect with @crollison on this. cc @mwilkins
Happy to support as needed - I know @lblanchard has already begun volunteering here in Raleigh NC so we may already have one ambassador?
@cteskey Totally understand on the blood drive - just thinking it could motivate people to give that have just lost sight of it - it did that for me!
While I realize that world wide it may not resonate, but in Raleigh we are going to participate in the 9/11 day of service. I am waiting on details from the organizers, but will add them to this issue as soon as I have them.
That is awesome! I'm currently working with the Seattle Humane society to try to set up a regular volunteer schedule, but it would be neat if we could volunteer on that day as well.