The WordPress community has, once again, proven to be amazingly generous. DonateWC is sending Trust Nhokovedzo to WordCamp Cape Town in October 2017.
Trust was a speaker at the first WordCamp in Zimbabwe and has spoken at other tech conferences as well – including Women In Tech. His contributions to the WordPress community have been exemplary; he is the kind of person DonateWC wants to focus on.
Why this sponsorship is important
The sponsorship for Trust is important for more than one reason. Not only is it the first sponsorship DonateWC is granting to a WordPress contributor, it is also a good indicator of how well the community is responding to this initiative.
Africa has not seen many WordCamps yet; Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Douala, and Harare are the only ones up until now. On an entire continent, that’s not a whole lot – yet. That’s why it is paramount that the community in Africa is supported and that talent is cultivated. Bringing people like Trust to WordCamps like Cape Town makes that happen. You made this happen, by making a donation to his fundraiser.
Another reason this was important is to show how needed a solution like DonateWC is. We can make a difference in people’s lives – and therefore in the WordPress community as a whole – by helping out. Organizing this fundraiser and achieving it also opened up doors to conversations with other parties; not only potential donors, but also platforms such as WP Tavern.
What I’ve learned
Organizing this first sponsorship has taught me that there are many more moving parts to running DonateWC than I had initially anticipated. There are documents to write, a website to maintain, travels to book, funds to raise… Especially the last part is not as easy as it sounds.
Continuously asking you fine folks for money is not what I want this foundation to be all about. That’s why I’m also looking for guest bloggers – people who are willing to share their story about how a WordCamp changed their life, and about how difficult it can be to get there.
Doing this sponsorship also made me realize that there are other ways you can help DonateWC. Airlines, platforms such as AirBnB, and major food chains often run promotions with discount codes. Funding these sponsorships costs a lot of money – discounts would help tremendously. If you have any coupon codes lying around that you do not intend to use, please send them our way.
What’s up next
There are a couple of applications right now waiting for a reply (I’m responding to you in the coming week, promise!). WordCamp US is coming up and the best thing to happen right now would be to sponsor someone to go there.
However, as mentioned previously I do not want to continuously ask for money on the different social media platforms DonateWC is on. That means that next to finalizing the notary work, most work is going to go into reaching out to potential high level sponsors.
We need you!
The appointment with the notary to – hopefully – finalize the legalization of the DonateWC Foundation is going to happen on October 23rd, 2017. That means it’s high time we bring things up to speed.
So here’s an updated goal list for the next two months:
- Finalizing the Foundation and opening a bank account, so other payment gateways for donations can be used
- Reaching out to companies who might be interested in becoming an annual sponsor.
- Marketing, yo!
The latter, Marketing, is something you can help with. Do you have a WordPress related news site, podcast, or newsletter (or know someone who does)? I’d love to get in touch to chat about how you can help to broadcast the news on the foundation. Ping me through the contact page, leave a reply, or tweet!
This is an amazing initiative. I’m absolutely sold on the idea and I would love to contribute.
Hi Tapiwa – that’s awesome! You can either donate to the foundation or apply as a volunteer. Both are extremely welcome! 🙂
How is that going now?