[Initiative]: Community growth playbook for CNCF projects

### Name

Community growth playbook for CNCF projects

### Short description

Practical guidance for CNCF projects on contributor recruitment, onboarding, and retention to build sustainable communities.

### Responsible group

TOC

### Does the initiative belong to a subproject?

Yes

### Subproject name

Project Reviews

### Primary contact

TBD

### Additional contacts

@angellk (TOC Chair, DD finding source)

### Origin

DD finding (automated)

### Initiative description

**This initiative is a request from the TOC.** During due diligence reviews, the TOC evaluates projects against incubation and graduation criteria. When the same finding appears across multiple projects, it signals an ecosystem-wide gap that would be better addressed through standardized guidance than repeated per-project recommendations.

This finding has appeared in **22 of 42 DD reports** (52%) scanned over the last 5 years, including cncf/toc#2198 (HAMi), cncf/toc#2050 (Tekton), cncf/toc#1468 (wasmCloud), cncf/toc#1924 (Dragonfly), cncf/toc#1862 (KServe), cncf/toc#1513 (Kubescape), and others. The most recent DD to surface this was [HAMi incubation DD](https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/2198) (merged 2026-07-02).

DDs routinely recommend improving contributor ladder documentation, demonstrating contributor recruitment beyond the founding organization, documenting onboarding processes, and showing evidence of the contributor lifecycle in practice (promotions via public PRs, LFX mentorship, etc.). The CNCF Contributor Strategy was archived; no active body owns community growth guidance for projects.

**Scope:** Create a practical playbook covering contributor recruitment strategies, onboarding documentation patterns, contributor ladder best practices, retention mechanisms, and evidence expectations for DD reviewers. Address the gap left by the Contributor Strategy archival.

**Timeline:** TBD

### Deliverable(s) or exit criteria

- [ ] Community growth playbook (recruitment, onboarding, retention, ladder best practices)
- [ ] Evidence template: how to document contributor lifecycle in practice (promotion PRs, mentorship, diversity metrics)
- [ ] DD checklist item update — PR to incubation and graduation application templates
- [ ] Identify long-term ownership (TAG, subproject, or TOC-owned)

### Tracking document for meeting and progress

TBD

Start with the cited due diligence reports and the archived CNCF Contributor Strategy to understand the recurring findings and the gap this initiative addresses. Done means producing the playbook and evidence template, updating the incubation and graduation application checklists, and identifying long-term ownership as listed in the exit criteria.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.