Collaboration

Endeavors: how volunteer networks turn ideas into projects

Collaboration · By the Working Commons editorial team · Published 2026-11-04

Online volunteer networks generate far more ideas than they can carry out. Some communities give a name to the ones they decide to pursue: projects, initiatives, working groups or, in some wikis, "endeavors". Whatever the label, the challenge is the same: turning a conversation among people who have never met into work that gets done. This article draws on research about volunteer and open-source collaboration to describe what tends to work.

What makes something an endeavor

A useful distinction separates a topic of discussion from an endeavor. A topic is open-ended; an endeavor has a purpose that can be achieved or abandoned. In practice, a proposal is ready to become an endeavor when someone can answer four questions in a few lines:

  1. What will exist at the end that does not exist now? A guide, a piece of software, a fund, a meeting, a set of contacts.
  2. Who is it for? Name the people who will use it, and ideally include some of them.
  3. Who will do the work in the next month, by name?
  4. How will we know whether it worked?

Many promising ideas fail at the third question. Networks that require a named person before an endeavor is listed tend to have fewer projects, but more of them finish.

Small working groups

Research on teams, from software engineering to citizen science, consistently finds that small groups coordinate better than large ones. In open-source projects most of the code is written by a small core, surrounded by a larger circle of occasional contributors. The same structure appears in volunteer networks: three to seven active people, a wider group who follow and comment, and an even wider audience. Designing for this shape, rather than hoping everyone will participate equally, avoids disappointment.

Roles that matter

Even informal endeavors benefit from a few explicit roles:

The roles can rotate. What matters is that each one is held by somebody at any given time.

Structure without bureaucracy

In her 1970s essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", Jo Freeman argued that groups claiming to have no structure develop hidden, informal hierarchies that are harder to challenge than open ones. Volunteer networks often rediscover the point. A short written statement of how decisions are made, who can speak for the group and how disagreements are settled protects newcomers and quiet members. It does not need to be long; a page is usually enough.

Elinor Ostrom's work on communities that manage shared resources offers similar guidance: clear boundaries of who is a member, rules adapted to local conditions, participation of those affected in changing the rules, monitoring, graduated responses to problems and accessible ways to resolve conflicts.

Working in the open

Online endeavors have an advantage traditional projects lack: the work can be visible as it happens. Public task lists, meeting notes and drafts let others see where help is needed and join without asking permission. Open-source communities sometimes call this a "do-ocracy": influence goes to those who do the work. The risk is that people with more free time dominate, so it helps to keep some decisions for discussion among everyone involved.

Money

Small grants, donations and crowdfunding can transform an endeavor, and can also break it. Common safeguards:

Ending well

Endeavors end in three ways: they succeed, they are absorbed by another organisation, or they fade. The third is the most common and the least acknowledged. A short closing note, saying what was done, what was learned and where materials are kept, turns a faded project into a resource for the next one. Networks that archive their endeavors, including the failures, accumulate practical knowledge that no single participant holds (see archiving a community's conversations).

Values underneath

Endeavors last longer when participants understand why each of them cares. Exercises in which members state what they value, discussed on putting shared values into words, help groups choose projects that fit and spot conflicts before they erupt.

A one-page charter

Some networks ask each endeavor to keep a one-page charter at the top of its wiki page or shared folder. It contains the purpose in one sentence; the people involved and their roles; what the group will deliver and by when; how decisions are made; where money, if any, comes from; and a review date. Writing the charter takes an hour and saves many arguments, because it gives everyone the same reference point.

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