Since August 2012, RailsBridge Boston has been running free workshops to introduce women to programming in Ruby and web development with Ruby on Rails. The long term goal was to increase the number of women in the Ruby community and the software development industry.
This is made possible through a number of great volunteers and sponsors. We have held numerous workshops so far at the Microsoft NERD Center, Harvard Law School, MIT Stata Center, and the Intelligent.ly office, with very positive feedback from participants.
Each workshop needs about 3-5 sponsors, each of whom would contribute towards food and drinks for the entire workshop and the post-workshop celebration.
List of sponsors & contacts: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jb20RGtb_R0M0GQz2pg8cMPCN_ZKyOfVlsVe_kedWfc/edit#gid=0
For more information on sponsorship and the current options, please take a look at the prospectus.
As of December 2013, we've moved to using Bridge Foundry to handle our financials, as well as that of other RailsBridge chapters.
Bridge Foundry is a nonprofit group, started by the RailsBridge San Francisco community, that promotes outreach programs in technology and assists with the financial infrastructure.
As a volunteer organization, we found the process for creating a 501(c)3 to be too long (two years on average). We wanted to make donations tax deductible for our sponsors, as well as ensure our financial processes remain smooth as we grow the group of volunteers organizing workshops.
Sponsor donations are made to Bridge Foundry, and Bridge Foundry makes the funds available to us through a debit card. This is simpler than our old process, which was to have sponsors pay vendors directly.
You can read more about Bridge Foundry's financial process here.
You can keep track of incoming and outgoing funds by checking out this spreadsheet.
Once an organization agrees to sponsor our workshop, make sure that they fill out our form so that we can keep track of them and their contributions.
Using their responses, we'll need to fill out the Bridge Foundry invoice request form. Every week, the Bridge Foundry team will process these requests and send the invoices out. Make sure that you include your email address in this form in case they have any questions. You will be CC'ed on the invoice that will be sent to the sponsor. For bookkeeping, please also include the RBBsponsorships email address when filling out the request form.
To keep track of the invoice status, you can revisit the invoice you were CC'ed on when BF sent it to the sponsor. Once the sponsor has paid, the invoice would be marked as PAID immediately. Feel free to reach out to Bridge Foundry at finance[at]bridgefoundry.org directly if you want something to be double-checked though.
With the help of Bridge Foundry, we now have a debit card to pay vendors with. All catering orders, the after-party tab, and other miscellaneous workshop expenses are paid using this card. Please ask a lead organizer about loading up this card at least 1 week in advance.
Catering orders are generally paid over the phone or online, depending on the vendor.
The after-party tab can be paid in-person at the time of the after-party (recommended) or in advance over the phone. There may be a room reservation fee or minimum drink/appetizer purchase amount depending on the venue.
Because Bridge Foundry is a non-profit organization, it means that we may be able to make purchases or place catering orders with a tax exemption. To do so, you'll need to provide Bridge Foundry's EIN to the vendor. This information can be found here in the BF docs.
If the vendor asks for a document that proves exemption status, check out the "IRS exemption determination letter" link in the docs. There's also a downloaded copy in our Google Drive folder.