diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 862a9019cce..1241f9162ac 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 # How to contribute
 
-We definitely welcome your patches and contributions to gRPC!
+We definitely welcome your patches and contributions to gRPC! Please read the gRPC
+organization's [governance rules](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-community/blob/master/governance.md)
+and [contribution guidelines](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-community/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) before proceeding.
 
 If you are new to github, please start by reading [Pull Request
 howto](https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-requests/)