diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+## Contributing to Nourish.Party
+There are four main ways to contribute to Nourish.Party, and we are grateful for each and every contribution you choose to make. 
+
+1. Promoting and improving adoption of Nourish.Party.
+1. Setting up or supporting a Nourish.Party instance.
+1. Extending the Nourish.Party ecosystem by building add-ons and extensions.
+1. Improving the core Nourish.Party application.
+
+
+To attempt a shared level of clarity the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt).
+
+### Promoting and Improving Adoption of Nourish.Party
+At this time, we are unclear on how to best promote adoption of Nourish.Party. If you happen to have expertise in marketing open-source products, we'd love to hear from you! Drop us a line at [hello@nourish.party](mailto: hello@nourish.party).
+
+### Setting up or Supporting a Nourish.Party instance
+We intend to make setting up a Nourish.Party instance as painless as possible, however we are planning to do that by prioritizing a Heroku button type experience. If you have experience making one-click installs of applications on hosting control panels or work with cloud service providers, we'd love your help! Drop a line to [hello@nourish.party](mailto: hello@nourish.party).
+
+### Extending the Nourish.Party ecosystem
+Our goal is for Nourish.Party to plug directly into your existing distribution channels, from amazon stores to etsy to Discord to Slack. As you can imagine, that's quite a feat! If you'd like to get involved building an extension, we'd love for you to start building on our OAuth, REST, GraphQL, and Webhook APIs. (Which aren't designed, docuemnted, or built yet... BUT SOON).
+
+### Improving the core Nourish.Party application
+Right now, there are four ways to contribute 
+
+#### Providing Feedback to Nourish.Party Maintainers
+Nourish.Party is open-source, community built software. While we intend to place the user first, we sometimes fail to do so. One of the most valuable thing you can do to improve the Nourish.Party is to provide us with specific, actionable and detailed feedback. We're especially interested in hearing about:
+
+* How Nourish.Party is (or is not!) helping you achieve your goals for financial independence as an independent creative or a small group of creatives. 
+* Wins or bugs you experienced using Nourish as a supporter.
+* Gaps in our documentation, either as a Nourish.Party site host, add-on developer, or contributor to the core nourish.party platform.
+* Vulnerabilities or risks. Please report these to [security@nourish.party](mailto: security@nourish.party).
+
+To provide feedback you *should* either create a ticket in our [issue tracker](https://github.com/wecohere/nourish.party/issues) or email [hello@nourish.party](mailto: hello@nourish.party).
+
+#### Contributing Patches
+Patches are very much welcome! From documentation improvements to bug fixes to features, we're grateful for any contributions you send our way. We strongly err on the side of merging patches, so long as the patch meets the following requirements:
+
+* The patch *must* pass the automated tests, as that ensures there are not unexpected regressions in behavior.
+* The patch *should* pass our automated style-guide checker, as that helps make the application easier to work with for all contributors.
+* The patch *should* include inline documentation for non-private methods, as that helps new contributors learn why a given class or method exists.
+* The patch *should* rely on i18n for user-facing content, as this makes customization and collaboration with non-programmer copy-editors much easier.
+* The patch *should* be small, as that makes it easier to review and merge quickly.
+* The patch *must not* reduce test coverage significantly, as that helps future contributors not break your amazing patch.
+* The patch *must* be approved by a core maintainer, as we are the ones on the hook for maintaining it far into the future.
+
+We strive to provide both automated feedback and human-written specific, actionable and kind feedback to contributors. That said, we are an all volunteer organization, which means we may not be as responsive or available as you would like. We ask that you are patient with us.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index a370572..5e85788 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@ Cohere (wecohere.com) is Betsy, Zee, and Jennifer.  They have an annual end-of-y
 * Dash for making it possible to offer subscription-based digital access
 
 ## Can I help?
-Aww, thanks so much!  We're glad you've been enjoying the party and want to add even more to it.
-(open source project, how to contribute)
+Aww, thanks so much!  We're glad you've been enjoying the party and want to add even more to it. Please read our [contributing guidelines](./CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidance on how you can best contribute.
 
 (We have a Nourish for Nourish, here's how to chip in)