Photo: Lets Grow Together by Kulveer Virk

Hi blog readers! We try to keep you folks briefed on the latest news with OpenHatch.

This time, Mike, Deb, Jessica, Karen, and I are doing something special: asking you to donate to the OpenHatch Foundation.

Karen has designed our new T-shirt, a special gift for donors who give $100 or more before the year’s end.

And I wanted to give you a summary of what we’ve accomplished so far in 2012.

(If you already know you want to donate, you can jump straight to it!)

• 2,358 people have entered at least one valid answer into our training missions, learning at their own pace how to get involved in free, open source software. That’s more than 1,000 new people in the past 10 months.
• About 120 students attended our 4 workshops and 1 lecture at colleges, as part of Open Source Comes to Campus, learning the basics of open source contribution and trying it hands-on. We plan to double that next year, including a special focus on women in CS groups.
• 2,199 bitesize bugs are listed in our volunteer opportunity finder.
• Over 80 people signed in with our newcomers corner at the Wikimania Hackathon and at the Pandas sprint we co-organized.
• 41 unique people have made commits to our web app code this year.
• 4 awesome fellow board members hired our first full-time executive director in July. (That’s me!)
• 1 year is how old the non-profit is (our formal birthday is December 5).

Our funding so far comes from donations from companies that support our events, paid opportunities like the Wikimania Hackathon, a very small number of individuals and companies that believe in our broader mission.

There’s where you come in. If you, too, believe in our mission of helping free software projects grow in size and diversity, would you donate to help us continue that work?

Think of the cute baby penguin T-shirt! But also, think of the work we’ve done that you’re a part of: organizing effective outreach events, working with communities to bring more contributors and diversity, and teaching people online.

You can donate here.

In 2013, we’re focusing on gender diversity in our community. That means honing our Open Source Comes to Campus series and working with women in CS groups to create workshop and project nights to change the gender ratio with our practical, tested outreach. These in-person events bring bitesize bugs together with training missions and in-person mentorship.

To make that possible, we’re in the process of raising money from corporate event sponsors. Here, we can use your help. If your company might be interested in sponsoring the workshop series, let us know.

Moreover, if you personally can do so, we will very much appreciate it.

Our track record of understanding free software projects, providing hands-on teaching, and integrating with existing communities puts us in a position to really make a difference. So if you can, please help out by donating here.

Thank you tremendously from all of us board members,

— Asheesh Laroia, Mike Linksvayer, Jessica McKellar, Deborah Nicholson, and Karen Rustad.