MAC Tech Volunteer Program Charter

Overview

Welcome to the technical volunteering program at Midwest Access Coalition! This charter is a living document where the goals, values, and operations of the team are outlined. As you consider your involvement in the Piggybank Cashbox project, please read through this charter to confirm this is a good fit for you. If you’d like to come aboard and contribute to this project, we ask that you join the Techies for Reproductive Justice coalition as well as complete a confidentiality agreement. Once signed, you will be granted access to the Cashbox repo.

Purpose

Why do we have a tech volunteering program? We want to...

• Build community - bring techies together on a values-aligned project
• Build movement capacity - bringing volunteers into learning opportunities for reproductive justice and broadening support for RJ orgs
• Create opportunities to contribute - everyone has a role in the movement; tech volunteering is a way to donate time, effort, and skills in place of financial contribution.
• Create redundancy to promote longevity - creating this community of support for the project promotes its sustainability and avoids reliance on just one person

Values

This project combines the values of Midwest Access Coalition and those of Techies for Reproductive Justice.

• Midwest Access Coalitions organizational values are: autonomy, growth, justice, solidarity, and courage
• Techies for Reproductive Justice values are autonomy, consent, and liberation.
  • We are unapologetically pro-abortion, pro-trans rights, pro-human rights and upholding bodily autonomy. Disabled people are not disposable. Immigrants are not illegal. Living beings are more precious than borders, power, and profit.
  • We are committed to centering the Reproductive Justice framework, anti-racism and decolonization, and to decentering whiteness, knowing that we, as works in progress, might have to interrupt our own internalized behaviors.
  • We will seek to bust cycles of shame and stigma wherever we can. We are sex-positive, abortion-positive, drug-user-positive. What is legal is not necessarily what’s just.
  • We believe the true innovation would be full liberation for all. We adhere to movement over brand, solidarity over charity, liberation over legalization (divest from policing), and care over punishment (abolish carceral systems).

Guiding principles

These principles should guide the work we choose to do and how we do it. When we are in doubt about next steps to take, we can always return to these guiding principles.

• Center the end user, in particular their security, privacy, and autonomy
• Collaboration over competition
• Practicality over perfection
• Resist false urgency - this is not a "move fast break things" project
• Resist tech solutionism (not every problem can or should be solved with technology)
• All learning backgrounds are welcome - formal education is not the only path to be a technologist
• Test test test!

Logistics

Communication channels

In general, most communication for the project will happen in the T4RJ Slack workspace in the #projects-piggybank-cashbox channel. We also encourage the use of the Discussions feature in Github for product, technical, and architectural questions.

Meeting cadence

• Synchronous: T4RJ holds meetings on the third Thursday of every month from 6:30-8:30pm Central Time. The first hour is typically a presentation, panel, or other learning opportunity, followed by an hour for project-specific breakout rooms to co-work and connect within project teams. If there is interest, we may add an additional Piggybank Cashbox project co-working session at another point in the month.

• Asynchronous: Every Thursday, an automated Standup reminder will ping the #projects-piggybank-cashbox channel. This is a chance to share what you are working on, any questions or blockers you have, or to let us know you have capacity to take on a task and are wondering what to work on next.

Tools

You will need Slack and Github to participate in this project. On an ad hoc basis, you may need access to Figma files or Google Drive files.

Software Development Lifecycle

1. Discovery: Right now, MAC's internal tech team is responsible for the discovery, user research, roadmapping, and spec-writing phases of the software development lifecycle.
2. Development: When Github issues are ready for devs to take on, they will be moved into the Ready to Work status of the project board with a volunteer label. Each ticket should have a size (smol, medium, large) and clear acceptance criteria to help you decide if it's a good fit to take on. To grab a ticket, assign yourself to it and move it to In Progress status.
3. Open a branch, develop on the branch, then open a pull request (PR).
4. Code Review: When you are ready for a code review on your PR, move the issue to Code Review/QA and tag Nicole.
5. Staging: Once passed Code Review and QA, merge to main to deploy to Staging and move the issue to Staging status.
6. Production: MAC tech team will deploy to Production, typically once a week. User-facing changes will be summarized in Release Notes and on the Help Center.
7. User support: MAC's internal tech team handles user support issues and feedback, and funnels this back into the discovery process.

In the future, we would love to involve volunteers in all aspects of the Software Development Lifecyle as interest arises.

Resources

• User-facing product documentation can be found on the Piggybank Cashbox Help Center site
• Nicole Lopez, Directory of Technology at MAC and co-organizer of T4RJ, is the point person for:
  • Technical questions
  • Code reviews
• Sarah Robinson, Technical Project Manager at MAC, is the point person for:
  • Priority questions
  • Product specs
  • Logistics