I want to start this discussion because I am finishing my second turn inside the Reps Council (there are the new elections ongoing right now without me) so I am feeling free to discuss this issue.

Yes it is an issue, because the gratification is one of the most important part of the volunteer life, because we are doing what we do in our free time for a lot of different reasons.

I shared few days ago a photo when I received the “Thank you letter” from the TechSpeakers program:

instagram.com Daniele Mte90 Scasciafratte 17 Likes, 0 Comments - Daniele Mte90 Scasciafratte (@mte90) on Instagram: “In 6 years as volunteer in #mozilla I got only 2 letters to say thank you for what I did. Mozilla…”

Now it is in my wall near the one I got from reps program in 2015 (the first and last one) but during the time I got a lot of other recognitions from Mozilla:

https://daniele.tech/2014/10/september-mozilla-marketplace-contributor-of-the-month-daniele-scasciafratte/ (the original post by mozilla not exist anymore because they removed the blog)

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/06/01/junes-featured-extensions/ (one of my extension got featured)

https://daniele.tech/en/?s=all+hands&submit=Search (Joined 6 different all hands, 4 as Reps council member)

https://blog.mozilla.org/mozillareps/2016/06/07/rep-of-the-month-april-2016/

And a lot of swag received during the years and probably other mentions that I cannot remember right now.

The issue is that I am an exception, because I invested in the past years like a lot of hours weekly in Mozilla but not everything I did was so important like other volunteers do since years like localize Firefox or do support as example. There are area of volunteers activities that are not scratched from the swag shipment recognition as example.

One of the point of discussion in Mission Driven Mozillian was the recognition that still today after years wasn’t put in planning with a real proposal.

Right now every Mozilla team has a different workflow for recognition, sometimes is a specific swag sent for a specific reason, a letter from a program, an invite to join an event/meeting in live because of the personal involvement in that topic and so on.

The real point right that there isn’t a clear guide about the minimum to get a recognition from all the various kind of activities that a volunteer can do.

Also, the various kind of recognition shows a different level of appreciation for something that in another team maybe is more valuable.

On my own I always tried to do the most to show recognition to volunteers in my community, like getting more swag to share also with them like the plush or other kind of stuff, when mozilla is not doing that.

The Mozillian of the month initiative is a perfect example of how the volunteers are trying to move on these things compared from what Mozilla is doing (I mean the idea started from a volunteer inside the council). There is a very low participation of nominating volunteers, but we are at the second month and we can improve it (as reps program) this part.

We have to consider also that the Reps of the month recently is not working a lot because mentors are not nominating people https://reps.mozilla.org/featured/ and this experiment is a way to evolve it.

From Mozilla itself outside specific team I can remember only when there was the shipment of Firefox OS t-shirt because people was vouched on mozillians (2013 I think).

Basically I started this discussion for the comments I got privately after the photo share from other volunteers (that want not to be disclosed) that think the same like me. The recognition for volunteers in mozilla is not balanced and not valued as should be.

What means “should be”?

This is something that every team in Mozilla should reply and explain what for them is valuable compared to the minimum that every volunteer can do for them.

In this way it is possible to see similar stuff and start to wrap up and do like many other open source communities that send to you swag only because you contributed to the project as global (and not to a team).

The floor is yours now Mozillians, to move on this discussion!

PS: Another point of discussion is how someone is chosen to go to All Hands because during the years I got a lot of request of clarification for it (check the wiki https://wiki.mozilla.org/All_Hands).

PSS: Another again point of discussion is to join Mozilla as employee because this depends on a lot of commercial/political (with political I mean the yearly focus on topics) needs and this is not the right place for this discussion.

PSSS: I am not doing this thread because I want more recognition, I want more recognition to other volunteers for a matter of inclusivety and fairness like our https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ affirm.

PSSS: if someone doesn’t want to write publicly can reach me privately and I will write for them.