
[[upleveling]]
== Upleveling Community Members

There is a continuum of participation in an InnerSource community. 
There are people who are not aware of the community. _Newcomers_ might be interested in the community and its product, but have not yet used it. _Consumers_ use the software but may not have made a contribution. Then there are the https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] who have made at least one contribution, and finally the _Trusted Committers_, who are taking responsibility for both the software and the community.
As a Trusted Committer, you are responsible for moving individuals along this continuum
and upleveling their ability to make contributions. In this sense, Trusted Committers
act as force multipliers in their community.

It is important for Trusted Committers to market their
product and communities to increase the number of
newcomers and consumers. They should also communicate opportunities to
make contributions to consumers and try to elicit and align the
interests of potential https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] with that of the community. What
often works well is if https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] are able to work on something that
benefits their department or role in the company. Development tools and automation are good examples.

Finally, it is the Trusted Committer's responsibility to identify and support https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] with the potential to grow 
by encouraging them to tackle challenging tasks and mentor them towards completion. This is, in our opinion, a Trusted Committer's
noblest responsibility, and it is rewarding for both Trusted Committer and
contributor. We've heard Trusted Committers say that mentoring and
seeing people level up their abilities more than makes up for the fact
that they have less time to actually spend writing software.

As mentioned in the https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/trusted-committer/03/[previous section], learning and personal growth are
reasons people join and stick around in an InnerSource community.
Upleveling their https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] is one of the most powerful tools Trusted Committers have
at their disposal to increase the speed, output and longevity of their
communities. It is also one of the key arguments with which to convince
management to allow their employees to participate in an InnerSource
community, as that will make their employees more valuable to 
the company overall and help them retain top talent.

In summary, Trusted Committers need to attract new https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/contributor[_Contributors_] and level up their
ability to make contributions. This activity ultimately levels up the
community’s ability to create better software faster. They do so by
communicating opportunities to make contributions and by helping and
mentoring Contributors enabling them to grow.
