diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..3f9a22f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+# How to contribute
+
+**First:** if you're unsure or afraid of _anything_, ask for help! You can
+submit a work in progress (WIP) pull request, or file an issue with the parts
+you know. We'll do our best to guide you in the right direction, and let you
+know if there are guidelines we will need to follow. We want people to be able
+to participate without fear of doing the wrong thing.
+
+Below are our expectations for contributors. Following these guidelines gives us
+the best opportunity to work with you, by making sure we have the things we need
+in order to make it happen. Doing your best to follow it will speed up our
+ability to merge PRs and respond to issues.
+
+## Testing
+
+The project has a handful of test cases which must pass for a contribution to be
+accepted. We also expect that you either create new test cases or modify
+existing ones in order to target your changes.
+
+You can run all the test cases by invoking `make test`.
+
+## Submitting changes
+
+Please create a new PR against the `master` which must be based on the project's
+[pull request template](.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md).
+
+## Coding conventions
+
+We expect that all code contributions have been formatted using `gofmt`.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b0b8eeef..f5fd40f4 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -451,11 +451,7 @@ $ $GOPATH/bin/terraform-provider-proxmox
 ...
 ```
 
-If you wish to contribute to the provider, the following requirements must be met,
-
-* All tests must pass using `make test`
-* The Go code must be formatted using Gofmt
-* Dependencies are installed by `make init`
+If you wish to contribute to the provider, please see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)
 
 ## Testing the Provider
 In order to test the provider, you can simply run `make test`.