Last August Asheesh announced that OpenHatch would become a non-profit organization. Asheesh planned to be self-funded for 12 months. With the new OpenHatch board he set a goal to raise US$20,000 in 2012 in order to begin paying Asheesh a very modest amount to continue working full-time on OpenHatch. We’re very pleased that we’ve met this goal, thanks to Google’s Open Source Programs Office, Wikimedia Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

We’re really proud of and excited about all three. The best and most healthy donations come from organizations and individuals with a deep understanding of and commitment to a non-profit’s mission. As our home page says at the top, OpenHatch is “dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education.” Google’s Summer of Code is probably the most well-known initiative aligned with this mission. Cat Allman of the Open Source Programs Office at Google had this to say:

Google applauds the valuable work OpenHatch has done to help make it easier for people to get started contributing to open source software, and we’re pleased to be able to help them transition to their new format.

More people contribute to free knowledge via Wikipedia than any other project, and Wikimedia is working to increase the number and diversity of the already huge community around MediaWiki and other technical infrastructure; OpenHatch is thrilled to have helped run the pre-conference hackathon at Wikimania last month. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manger, wrote:

I’m excited that we’re working with OpenHatch on this. I’ve borrowed lessons from OpenHatch in structuring our events and educational materials. They are leaders in teaching new contributors, and in building open source communities’ capacity to nurture.

Our anonymous individual donor has this to say about why he supports OpenHatch:

Open source has opened doors for me continuously for more than a decade. With open source, I have touched the lives of millions. I believe and hope that helping OpenHatch will help to open similar doors for many others.

In the time since last August, we’ve been able to be very active. For example, OpenHatch has deployed new features to the web app and organized three Open Source Comes to Campus events and is organizing more for the fall, incorporated and applied for non-profit status, and inspired and helped tech groups to become more newcomer-friendly and gender diverse. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

Won’t you join these pioneering supporters?