At the GitLab Foundation, we believe that what we do is important - but how we do it is at least as important. We aim to always show up with integrity, to be “rigorous but reasonable,” and to center our work around our values.

As such, we are committed to acting in alignment with our core values of Collaboration, Results, Efficiency, Diversity & Inclusion, Iteration, and Transparency (CREDIT).

We believe that living our values means articulating what behaviors are expected, as well as those that are proscribed. Thus, we have spent time as a team collectively defining our values and identifying these behaviors in a series of working sessions, in which we responded to the following prompts:

What do we mean by this value?
What do we NOT mean by this value?
What behaviors exemplify this value? Be specific, with examples if possible.
What behaviors go against what we mean by this value? Be specific, with examples if possible.

Collaboration

Valuing Collaboration means

Working together and and building an environment where everyone can contribute
Partnering with others to share, build, and learn together
Seeking common interests and articulating shared goals
Co-designing, co-creating, and strategizing with our grantees and fellow funders
Building platforms, tools and shared resources that enable others; developing public goods
Intentionally spending time on building our ecosystem of partners
Respecting others’ time and resources
Elevating the work of others and building on established work, research, learnings
Sharing data with grantees and other funders
Seeking out unusual bedfellows to broaden our perspective and potential for impact
Encouraging grantees to default to more transparency and knowledge sharing as a way of inviting participation
Supporting other funders’ ideas and collaborations, not just inviting others to those initiated by our team
Being transparent with external stakeholders (grantees and funders) around project challenges and opportunities for collaboration; demonstrating vulnerability
Co-funding where possible
Collecting feedback from grantees and acting on it
Avoiding recreating the wheel - asking before we attempt to develop something we think is new
Taking credit for successes collectively - as a team - while still calling out and celebrating individuals that supported a certain outcome
Listening actively, building trust, and demonstrating that others' opinions are valued and acknowledged - trust begets trust
Pursuing collective impact work
Working together internally; not operating in silos; asking each other for help and input
Being humble and recognizing we don’t have all the answers

Valuing Collaboration does NOT mean

That everyone must give input on everything
DRIs must partner when making decisions; they have authority to make decisions independently
Meetings for meetings sake - every meeting should have a clear objective if we are asking for someone’s time
Guarding our policies, practices, models, and pipeline so that others don’t take our ideas - “we’re not competing to save the world”
Trying to get input from a grantee’s clients without getting buy-in and trust with the grantee first

Behaviors that exemplify what we mean by Collaboration

Taking time to brainstorm, provide advice, and be a sounding board for our grantees and others in philanthropy; we learn a lot from others and should return the favor; collaboration goes both ways
Inviting feedback from external partners to shape our grantmaking and partnerships strategies
Exploring funder collaboratives, where we can learn, share, and co-fund, literally co-laboring toward shared outcomes
Investing in or organizing shared resources for funders or grantees (shared tools, staffing, technical resources, etc.)
Exploring shared outcome frameworks
Exploring cohort-based grantmaking, where grantees can bring experience and value to each other
Partnering on measurement & evaluation design that accommodates a grantee’s ability to execute, or expands their capacity, while meeting our minimum data needs
Pulling in team members early if we know that they will need to be involved
Using ClickUp, Google Docs, shared calendars, etc. - a culture of transparency supports a culture of collaboration
Anticipating team needs: sharing information and contacts, reaching out to people on behalf of the Foundation, etc.
Being curious about colleagues’ perspectives - “I’d love to hear you expand more on that”; “Help me understand…” - which will lead to more successful collaboration
Holding full team discussions for critical or difficult topics that impact everyone on the team
Sharing credit and giving credit where it’s due

Behaviors that go against what we mean by Collaboration

Not being open to help from others
Not sharing our learnings and resources with others
Not giving team members a venue for input on decisions that affect them
Having long toes (not being open to or dismissing feedback and input) - “No ego, amigo”

Results

Valuing Results means

Being outcomes-focused; an outcome is defined as a change experienced by a person after receiving services
Having a plan - articulating the objectives we need to focus on in order to get the results we want
Communicating expectations around outcomes to grantees early, and partnering with them on how to measure results
Developing feedback loops with grantees and partners so that our collective results can improve over time
Building user-friendly, valuable systems for sharing results and learnings
Supporting the growth and development of our nonprofit partners
Communicating clearly with grantees - early and often - including about what results we intend to share publicly
Vetting potential grant investments by the potential results that the investment would create
Holding true to the underlying intent of our North Star about the impact we hope to have in transforming peoples’ lives, and challenging ourselves to focus on the right outcomes (e.g., examining our stance on absolute vs. relative income gains)
Ensuring our team has the tools they need to accomplish the work
Taking ownership of work and hitting the quarterly OKRs that we agree to as a team
Achievement, not just ideals and measurement; holding ourselves and others accountable to our goals
Taking [a page](https://hbr.org/2023/03/gitlabs-ceo-on-building-one-of-the-worlds-largest-all-remote-companies#:~:text=Success isn't measured in,want to meet those goals.) from Sid Sijbrandij, our board chair: “Success isn’t measured in input such as hours spent at an office. It’s about output—what you achieve.”
Increasing the lifetime earnings of those below a living wage

Valuing Results does NOT mean

Tracking inputs or activity and representing them as outcomes (meetings, dollars invested, media engagements, etc.)
Forcing grantees to appear like they have it all figured out and can’t change course based on learnings
Putting effort into items that aren’t in furtherance of our North Star goal; getting distracted
“Juicing” our North Star model in order to fund work we like
Ignoring our grantees’ perspectives on how they define results
Creating a top-down dynamic that defines success for grantees
Inflexibility when it comes to the realities of running a business or a nonprofit; that things change and goals may have to change or pivot
Changing our path or our goals on a grantee without warning - surprise!
Collecting every possible data point that could demonstrate results; rather, we should focus on the most important ones
Measuring success by how many dollars we push out the door; our measure of success is our North Star ROI and our impact on those living below a living wage
Expecting our grantees to know how their work impacts their participants’ outcomes compared to a control group (the counterfactual)
Increasing incomes for just a small percentage of participants of a program while hiding negative outcomes for others
Making excuses if we don’t achieve results; rather, we should note the learnings and move forward

Behaviors that exemplify what we mean by Results

Acting with a sense of urgency to accomplish work and achieve our mission
Setting and tracking annual goals and quarterly OKRs
Aligning on specific outcomes or milestones to outcomes with grantees
Measuring the results of grantees (through annual reporting, or through a data collection / research partnership)
Trust but verify, in order to reduce moral hazard (trust grantees’ reported results but ask clarifying questions to validate claims)
Building incentives that encourage grantees to report actual results, even if they’re not what they had hoped (valuing truth; protecting & rewarding honesty)
Sharing where we get things wrong and what we don’t know, as well as what we’re learning
Estimating the counterfactual outcomes for a grantee’s participants, not just using the pre- and post-intervention income change data
Tracking increased earnings for as long as possible (longitudinally) with our grantees
Supporting our grantees in tracking the results we care about
Delving into the nuance in results (via grant meetings, trip report outs, etc.)
Investing in systems/platforms/tools that allow us to track lifetime earnings and impact on living wage over time
Taking a rigorous approach in estimating results, using available data to check and verify outcomes
Recognizing that activities move on different and varied timelines - and so do results
Holding ourselves and teammates accountable by following up to see if they achieved the goals they set each quarter
Holding our vendors to the same standards of accountability that we hold each other
Recognizing that certain activities increase our success rate for achieving results (networking, travel, meetings with funders/partners, media engagement)
Setting mini goals and objectives, e.g., for conferences we attend, trips we plan, or meetings we hold
Sharing our journey via our Handbook (an embodiment of our results)
Conducting retrospectives / after-action-reviews
Investing in professional development to help our team get its expected results

Behaviors that go against what we mean by Results

Avoiding risk
Requiring Inordinately high levels of evidence or friction causing friction with grantees to prove results
Not following committed guidelines and processes already established
Not honoring DRIs
Demonstrating an unwillingness to accept uncertainty
Forgetting our iterative / testing culture - letting perfection be the enemy of the good!

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Efficiency

Valuing Efficiency means

We trust each others’ judgment and direction and come to help out
Embracing imperfect forward progress (don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good!)
Respecting the decisions of DRIs; committing to executing those decisions unless they are revisited and changed
Keeping operating costs low; remaining lean; adopting a ‘right-fit’ approach to cost, taking into account the relative risk of not having a more expensive solution
Relentlessly prioritizing work but remaining flexible; adapting and re-prioritizing when necessary
Challenging ourselves to continuously improve our ways of working to enhance our efficiency (e.g., minimizing work in progress; being comfortable with MVPs)
Finding partners and co-funders to maximize the leverage of our dollars
Preparing for meetings in advance, setting agendas, managing time, and respecting coworkers’ and partners’ time