Community Manager Volunteer

HELPFUL ENGINEERING Community Manager Volunteer role | Fully remote, Slack based neering Helpful Engineering is a registered United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit that organizes an open, global community of engineers, scientists, designers, clinicians, and operators around open source solutions to systemic problems. Work spans healthcare, supply chain and manufacturing, agriculture, water, energy, and infrastructure, aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The organization has no offices and no headquarters culture. It is a fully virtual community that lives on Slack, supported by a project board, a contributor onboarding flow, and a code of conduct. Thousands of people have passed through the workspace since 2020. Everyone, including senior leadership, participates on a volunteer basis. That model is the organization’s greatest strength and its most fragile point. A Slack community only compounds if someone is tending it. That is what this role does. What You Will DoThis is one role with five focus areas. Members of the cohort share coverage across all five and may lean into one or two by strength. 1. Channel activation and content programming Own a defined set of Slack channels and keep them in motion with a planned content calendar rather than improvised posting. Publish a recurring rhythm the community can anticipate: a weekly roundup of project activity, a project or contributor spotlight, an open question that invites real answers, a "what shipped" note, and a monthly look ahead. Surface work that is already happening inside project channels and translate it into something a non specialist member can understand and respond to. Retire or merge channels that have gone dormant, and propose new ones only when there is a person willing to tend them. Maintain channel descriptions, pinned posts, and canvases so a member who arrives cold can orient without asking. 2. Response, welcome, and routingRespond to posts, questions, and direct messages within one working day on weekdays. Speed of first response is the single strongest predictor of whether a new member stays. Greet every new member in the introductions channel by name, with a specific next step rather than a generic welcome. Route people to the right project, working group, or person on the project board, and follow up to confirm the connection actually landed. Close the loop on unanswered threads, including chasing the subject matter expert who owes an answer. Track where newcomers get stuck and feed those patterns back into onboarding. 3. Community calls and announcement programmingBuild and host recurring community calls, including agenda, speaker outreach, run of show, hosting, recording, and follow up notes. Program the announcement channels so members learn what is happening across Helpful Engineering and the wider ecosystem without having to hunt for it. Publish announcements with enough lead time to be useful, in a consistent format, with a clear action. Convert each call into durable artifacts: a recording, a short written summary, and a set of follow up threads that keep the conversation going after the call ends. Run the call in a way that makes participants comfortable speaking, including people joining from a phone on a patchy connection. 4. Ecosystem and partner event coverageTrack what is happening at partner organizations, open source communities, universities, accelerators, and industry bodies that overlap with Helpful Engineering’s sectors. Bring that calendar into the community, flag the handful of events worth members’ time, and organize watch parties, delegations, or follow up discussions around them. Represent Helpful Engineering in partner Slack workspaces, forums, and virtual events where appropriate. Identify and introduce potential contributors, project leads, and partners encountered through that ecosystem work. 5. Stewardship, moderation, and signal reporting Uphold the code of conduct consistently and calmly, including with senior or long tenured members. De-escalate friction early and privately. Escalate to leadership when the situation requires it, without delay and without editorializing. Keep a light record of what is working: channel activity, response times, call attendance, new member conversion into projects, and recurring themes worth leadership attention. Report monthly to Community and Programs leadership in a short written update. Who We Are Looking ForWe are less interested in a title you have held than in evidence that you enjoy making a room work. Essential Clear, warm, unfussy written English. Most of this role is writing, in public, at short length, under mild time pressure. Genuine reliability. Showing up at a predictable cadence matters far more here than showing up brilliantly and then going quiet for three weeks. Comfort hosting a video call with people more senior and more technical than you, including the discipline to keep it to time. Working fluency with Slack, or the obvious capacity to reach it quickly. Threads, channels, pins, canvases, workflows, and reminders. Enough technical literacy to follow an engineering conversation and summarize it faithfully. You do not need to be an engineer. You do need to be able to ask a good clarifying question without embarrassment. Judgment and steadiness in public conversation, especially when someone is frustrated. A stable internet connection and a quiet enough environment to host a call for an hour. Strong signalsYou have run a student chapter, a club, a developer community, a Discord or Telegram group, a meetup, a college fest, or an alumni network, and it stayed alive because of you. You have organized events in a volunteer capacity and know what it costs to get twenty people to show up on a Tuesday. You write publicly already, in any form: a newsletter, a blog, long form posts, documentation, or a well maintained wiki. You have worked across time zones and cultures and are unbothered by asynchronous ambiguity. You have a background or a sincere interest in one of Helpful Engineering’s sectors, particularly healthcare, manufacturing, water, energy, or agriculture. Not requiredAn engineering degree. Prior nonprofit experience. A formal community management job title. Seniority. Early career candidates who are organized and dependable often outperform experienced candidates who are busy. What You GetEveryone at Helpful Engineering is a volunteer, including leadership. There is no compensation of any kind. What we can offer is substantial and we take the obligation seriously. Standing and access What it means concretely A real mandate You own a function, not a task list. You set the content calendar, you decide the programming, you host the calls under your own name. Global network Direct working contact with engineers, clinicians, founders, and operators across dozens of countries, plus partner organizations in the open innovation ecosystem. Visible portfolio Published community programming, hosted calls with named speakers, and written work you can point to. Unlike most volunteer work, this leaves a public trail. Formal documentation A signed certificate of contribution and a detailed letter covering role, dates, hours, and outcomes, suitable for employers, universities, and graduate school applications. References A personal reference and a public recommendation from Helpful Engineering leadership for volunteers who complete a term in good standing. Skills that transfer Community strategy, content programming, event production, moderation and conflict handling, stakeholder communication, and working in a distributed organization across time zones. Mentorship A monthly one to one with Community and Programs leadership, and an open door into project teams working on problems you care about. A path forward Volunteers who excel are invited into project leadership, working group roles, and organizational governance. Several of Helpful Engineering’s current leaders arrived exactly this way. Purpose The work connects to open source engineering aimed at health, water, energy, food, and infrastructure problems that matter. Ready to Apply? If you are excited to leverage your human resources expertise to create meaningful global impact, we want to hear from you! Even if you don’t meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply—your perspective and passion may be exactly what we need. This is an unpaid volunteer position at a nonprofit organization. Join us in engineering the future of sustainability. Apply now or learn more about us at: helpfulengineering.org