I’m Asheesh Laroia, OpenHatch’s founder, and a current board of directors members. We need a new board member, and I hope you (dear reader) might apply!

Why you would be a good board member

We are looking for someone who cares about making open source software an ever-more inclusive, diverse, powerful community, and is willing to spend time working on that goal in a very abstract way, through making sure our board has regular meetings, manages staff well, remains organized, sets and achieves fundraising targets, and stays in touch with our lawyer & accountant.

It is a combination of dry work with deadlines imposed by governments and a whole world of possibility opening up from the fundraising we do, to the volunteers we inspire, to the open source projects that benefit from this work. That’s the basics.

We’re hopeful you see yourself as organized, which is a trait that can help us all work together better.

We are especially hopeful you are willing to spend one or two hours a week working with our staff member, if/when we find a new one, as their manager, finding out how their projects are going, helping them set goals, and helping them achieve them. This isn’t essential, but it is a plus — please let us know if you find this interesting!

If you have new ideas about how OpenHatch could help grow the community beyond Open Source Comes to Campus and our current website, we would love to hear it. We’re open to fresh thoughts and ideas.

You don’t have to know anything about non-profit law/organizations when you start, but you have to be willing to learn the very basics.

About OpenHatch and the board

OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education. (Did you know that OpenHatch was originally founded as a for-profit startup in 2009? Being a startup didn’t work out for us, and a new board created the non-profit.)

For the past four years, that has mostly meant working in person with student groups, helping them run Open Source Comes to Campus events — read more at http://campus.openhatch.org/. It has also meant fostering online learning and community-building through our website, https://openhatch.org. You can read more about current + past board members here: https://openhatch.org/wiki/About_OpenHatch

We’re seeking new board members because, after four years, one of our board members have retired. The esteemed Jessica McKellar has retired from the board after more than three years on it, creating a vacancy.

The board of directors (shorthand here: “board”) is responsible for building the organization that achieves this mission. As a whole, that means:

• Managing the budget and allocating funds.
• Raising those funds, from sponsors & individual donors.
• Maintaining OpenHatch’s status as a non-profit corporation (with help; we have a law firm & accounting firm).
• Having periodic meetings.

At OpenHatch’s size (0 to 2 staffers at any given time), one board member typically volunteers to manage the staff, too.

There are 5 seats on our board, with one vacant. Directors are elected annually for a term of one year. Directors need not be residents of the US, and they are not compensated for their work. Ask us for the OpenHatch bylaws for more complete info.

How to apply

Please send an email to:

boardsearch@openhatch.org

with the subject line of “Possibly joining the OpenHatch board” and at least two sentences explaining something you liked about this post.

We’re excited to meet you!

Deadline: Please email us by July 15!