update on 501c3 operations!
Sarah Allen
TLDR: We have a new operations guide for a new 501c3 org. The website still has some usability issues and I would love help improving it. We’ve described volunteer leader roles which we think are really the same, just a bit more structured, which we think makes things simpler, actually. We have lots more to do!
Quick links:
I posted in July that we were working to become our own independent 501c3, and we have made huge progress -- we made a shiny new US Corp this summer, got our letter from the IRS in Sept, and have been working on establishing policies that will support this huge group of people doing amazing work!
This work has felt incredibly slow at times, so slow that it has been hard to communicate what we are doing, since everything was in flux. Then after getting the determination letter from the IRS, we had to move very fast to make sure that volunteers who were organizing workshops in the fall would have access to funds, while still complying with all the legal stuff. We prioritized communications with the most active volunteers who were raising funds and needed to spend money on workshops. We have so much more to do, yet I wanted to share with you our progress.
I recruited a small board of directors (now posted on our about page), which includes:
- Isa Herico, who is also our Secretary, is a long-time volunteer who previously served on the RailsBridge board and the Bridge Foundry program board
- Karen Herreid, who is also Treasurer, is a new volunteer who brings deep experience in finance
I'm serving as CEO (aka Executive Director) as well as Chair of the Board. I’m doing this as part-time volunteer work, in parallel with a full-time job that I love making technology. In the long-term we need a full-time CEO, and there are lots of other roles to fill before that, including a larger board.
We hired Diana Luepke on contract over the summer to help us with the logistics of finance, legal and all the paperwork required to make this kind of thing happen. I had worked with her for a long time at School Factory, where she joined initially to help with some of the back office stuff and eventually became Executive Director there. To facilitate setting up accounts, we made her an "officer" and she is serving as COO.
Most of you know Mary Jenn, who has long been our only part-time staff as Operations Manager and has played a key role in connecting volunteer leaders to resources and to each other. This organization is made up of its people, YOU, who do the transformational change work of giving back and teaching others. Mary continued to keep this core work going over the summer, so we didn't disrupt the important work you all do, running workshops and creating open source materials, and reporting on that to our all volunteer program board which represents the Bridges to each other. We haven't yet set up the employee paperwork for the new org, and we still need to figure out what this role will become in this next phase of our organization.
Throughout the summer and fall, a small "transition" team has fueled this organizational development work with a few hours per week of discussion and writing the words that describe what we do. Each volunteered to spend a few hours per week helping create this new corporate entity, and we ended up meeting weekly on Monday evenings, often joined by Karen, and sometimes by Diana.
- Chris Koehnen, from the Clojure Bridge board, brought a deep knowledge of how volunteers in remote communities see this work
- Asheesh Laroia, who made a Scala workshop in 2011 inspired by the RailsBridge model, and founder of OpenHatch and the Boston Python Workshops, brought 501c3 experience and the perspective of someone a bit outside our org but who is part of our wider community
In October, we re-created our "operations guide" from scratch and last weekend Asheesh and I turned it into a website. Note: these operations focused on US-only operations. We have a bunch of conversations in progress with international communities and we’re still sorting out the formal roles for our awesome volunteer program board and the Bridge boards, which support communities all over the world, when the new entity currently only has policy to support US-based chapters. We have lots of ideas, and everything is a work-in-progress.
If you have questions about how to get things done, email opera...@bridgefoundry.org
If you have ideas, suggestions or are willing to help, email he...@bridgfoundry.org
Thanks everyone for being part of this inspiring movement to transform the tech industry into a community that includes everyone.
Sarah Allen
Bridge Foundry CEO
Rachel Ober
| Rachel Ober |
 | Phone: (724) 256-3955 Email: rache...@gmail.com Website: https://www.rachelober.com Schedule: https://bookme.name/rachelober
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