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Walk To WCEU to donate over 8000 euros to DonateWC

In a startling announcement during his lightening talk at WordCamp Europe 2019, Marcel Bootsman revealed that his Walk To WCEU sponsorship walk has raised over eight thousand euros.

Marcel announcing his amazing accomplishment on the big stage at WordCamp Europe

We’re more than thrilled at this donation and will be putting it to good use!

How the money will be used

This donation puts us closer to the 2019 goal of 10.000 euros (which is enough to cover multiple WordCamp sponsorships).

We’ll also be able to get more marketing going, including flyers that can be handed out at WordCamps and t-shirts that our volunteers can wear when representing us.

Missed the fundraiser?

Not to worry! You can always make a donation or get involved as a volunteer!

Contact form trouble

As happens with any website now and again, we ran into a bit of trouble recently – the contact form didn’t actually work! Yikes 🙁

That means you may have sent us an email and never received a reply. That’s not because we wanted to ignore you! We just never received it. We apologise for any trouble this may have caused.

I’m glad to report that the problem has been fixed. Email away!

#WalkToWCEU is collecting donations for DonateWC

Marcel Bootsman, a very active member of the WordPress community, will be walking from his home in The Netherlands to WordCamp Europe 2019, held in Berlin. That’s a whopping 700 km, door to door. It started out as just a fun idea, Bootsman said, but then quickly turned into something bigger.

Collecting donations

Marcel decided to collect donations; not just to cover some of his expenses during the trip itself, but also for DonateWC. Needless to say, we’re mad thankful! His effort will help other community members get to a WordCamp they’d otherwise not be able to attend. If that isn’t community love, we don’t know what is!

You can help!

If you, like us, think this is a crazy awesome thing to do, there are things you can do to help out. First of all, you can make a donation on the WalkToWCEU website. You can donate either to Bootman’s travel expenses or specify that your donation is meant for DonateWC. Either way, you’ll be seen as a rock star!

You can also help by spreading the word. Here are a couple of ready-to-go tweets you can use:

@mbootsman needs places to sleep along his #WalkToWCEU route. Can you help? https://walktowc.eu/route/ Click To Tweet

@mbootsman will be walking from his home in Rotterdam (NL) to WordCamp Europe in Berlin (DE), raising donations for @Donate_WC. That's 700km! Help make #WalkToWCEU a giant success, donate today at: https://walktowc.eu/donate Click To Tweet

@mbootsman will be walking to WordCamp Europe in Berlin. Check out his progress at https://walktowc.eu/ Click To Tweet

Last but not least: Marcel is still in need of places to sleep along his route. Know of a couch he can crash in Germany? Let him know!

Corporate sponsors

As Marcel’s trip will take around 30 days, he will not be able to work during that time. As he is self-employed, you can imagine what effects that have on his finances. Marcel is doing this out of love for the community – it would be great if the community loves him back just the same!

If you are or know of a company that’s interested in non-traditional ways of sponsoring WordPress community efforts, this is the place to be: https://walktowc.eu/sponsoring. There are some pretty spectacular perks available, at any price range!

Thanks Marcel!

We from DonateWC would like to thank Marcel for his amazing initiative. People like you are what make the world a better place!

Community Updates June 2018

Yesterday, the very first meeting of the newly formed DonateWC team took place. A huge thank you to Luminus, Kim, Topher, and Arno for putting in time and effort!

I’d like to take a moment to discuss the most important decisions that have been made, what the nearby future is going to look like for us, and how you can help out.

We have a bank account!

It took more time and effort than anticipated to get a bank account opened up for the foundation. While the foundation itself has been a legal entity since 2017, it turned out to be quite difficult to get the bank account going. Some thought the foundation’s aim was to traffic people from one country to the other – a ridiculous notion, but one that gave us a lot of trouble nonetheless.

Luckily, Bunq saw things differently and set us up with a shiny new bank account within about 30 minutes of signing up.

Application stop for 2018

We decided to pause applications for 2018. No bank account meant that collecting donations has been nigh on impossible for the past 6 months, even with a working PayPal account. That means the foundation has virtually no funds right now to offer any kind of sponsorship.

We’ve decided to instead spend the next 6 months focussing on talking to potential corporate sponsors and collecting donations for our 2019 goal of €10.000,-.

If you would like to know more about becoming a corporate sponsor,  we invite you to get in touch for more information.

Refining sponsorship prerequisites

Determining who gets a sponsorship is hard. We can’t apply the same ‘rules’ to each case that comes through the door, so the recipient selection process is undergoing some much-needed scrutiny. Things we have so far decided on are:

Sponsorships will be for local WordCamps

This means that until we have a stable financial situation, the foundation does not facilitate a round-the-world trip. Instead, we’re choosing to help more people to get involved in their local communities. We feel that this is the best use of community funds and will help further the WordPress community most.

Limiting the number of available sponsorships

The foundation functions as a company; we need to take a long, hard look at what we want to achieve, and what money allows us to achieve. Again, this depends very much on the assistance of donators. That’s why we’ve determined that having a specific goal for the number of sponsorships we’re handing out is required; it’ll help us to 1) get the funding we need, and 2) keep a handle on what we can do.

How you can help out

While we’re now a team of 5, more help is still needed. Particularly as we are looking to focus on donator outreach, we can use a few more hands to reach our 2019 goal.

Do you enjoy writing, social media, or generally talking to other people – and are you not shy about asking folks to pitch in on this wonderful cause? We have a couple of volunteer roles open and are looking for your help!

If you are a WordCamp organizer: we would love it if you could let your audience know that we exist. This is a global effort, looking to improve and diversify your visitors as well as those going to other WordCamps. Send out a tweet, email, or Facebook post and we’ll be super grateful 🙂 thanks in advance!

The WordCamp Cape Town Experience

I am excited that I made to the WordCamp Cape Town this year! Thanks to the DonateWC team and those who gave to make this possible. I want to share my experience at the WordCamp. It is so important for the community to help more people like me get these opportunities.

A little background story

I started using WordPress in 2008 during my internship at Bindura University. I have built more than 100 websites using WordPress since then. In August 2016, I was listening to the WordPress Weekly Podcast when I heard an announcement.  There was going to be an incubation WordCamp for Harare and another town in Bangladesh.

I was so excited and Googled for more detailed. I got a link from meetup.com for the first meetup. Thabo Tswana was the meetup organizer. That is how i joined the community and I ended being a speaker at the WordCamp Harare 2016 on SEO (Video Link). I have been active in the community groups on WhatsApp and hosted a monthly meetup.

Wanting more

This year, when I saw the speaker invitation for WordCamp in Cape Town, Nairobi and Harare. I made my applications – I was not expecting all them to accept my application but they all did! I was so excited and began preparing for the Cape Town event since it was the first on the calendar.

Attending the Nairobi WordCamp was not possible for me because the dates are the same with WordCamp Harare.

The challenge

While I was preparing to attend WordCamp Cape Town, which I was going to, travel there by bus (2 500 km + 3 days travelling). Round about the time of buying tickets, the government blocked all international payments. I had to buy cash in US dollars. That change meant that the trip would cost me three times the initial budget.

Thabo Tswana then informed me about DonateWC. We were both speaking at a local artist conference on WordPress and Google tools. I went to make my application straight away.

Application Accepted

I went home that evening and made my application. A few days later, they accepted my application. They were going to pay for my air ticket, accommodation and food while I am there!

Wow, I was so excited.

So, I made it to Cape Town and held a workshop on Content Generation for Business on the first day. To be honest, I was so nervous. This was my first time doing a workshop outside my country and to very mixed audience! My English accent was huge worry! You can get the slides from the Workshop here.

Trust the Pastor - Preaching SEO

My gratitude

I want to thank everyone who donated towards my trip. Thank you DonateWC team, especially Ines, for working extra hours to be helpful! They did not ask me to do anything in return to this huge favour. It was all free.

So why was this worth doing?

One of the benefits I got by attending and speaking at this WordCamp is a confidence boost. My life background does not give me much advantage when it comes to confidence in life. I am still fighting timidity. The workshop had the one of the highest tweets on the first day of the WordCamp. Maybe, that means it was good!

Visiting the aquarium after WordCamp Cape Town

I also got several contacts, which I am hoping will bring business my way in the future. I have tried to have international clients for SEO and digital marketing services. It has not been easy but it seems this WordCamp is going to make this dream a reality.

I was also invited to the Automatic Office for a co-working day. I could not go because I had left the city already. However, that invitation meant a lot to me.

Then something personal! This was my first time at a beach. I made to the sea for the first time! Exciting.

This is a few days after the WordCamp. I am sure months after, there will be more exciting stories to share.

Want to help people like Trust get to WordCamps around the world? Please consider making a donation!

Getting To WordCamp Udaipur

My name is Arvind Singh and I am sixteen years old. I have been using WordPress for the last 4 years and to be honest I did not know about WordCamps before. One day I was surfing Facebook and saw a post from ResellerClub that they were sponsoring WordCamp Udaipur. That made me check out more about WordCamps on the internet. That’s  how I came to know that WordCamps are the official WordPress conferences, and I wanted to attend one of these WordCamps.
Continue reading “Getting To WordCamp Udaipur”