[Peers] Supporting OpenHatch as the end of 2012 approaches

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hi Peers,

I wanted to give you folks an update on what we've been up to in 2012 at 
OpenHatch, and ask you if you'd be willing to support us.

(If you already know you want to donate, you can jump straight to it: 
https://openhatch.org/donate/ )

I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in the past year.

* 2,299 people have entered at least one valid answer into our training 
missions, learning at their own pace how to get involved in free, open 
source software. That's more than 1,000 new people in the past 10 months. 
(*)

* About 100 students attended our 4 workshops at colleges, as part of Open 
Source Comes to Campus <http://campus.openhatch.org/>, learning the basics 
of open source contribution and trying it hands-on.

* 2,087 bitesize bugs are listed in our volunteer opportunity finder 
<https://openhatch.org/search/>.

* 65 people signed in with our newcomers corner at the Wikimania 
Hackathon.

* 40 unique people have made commits to our web app code this year.

* 4 awesome fellow board members hired our first full-time executive 
director in July. (That's me!)

* 4 monthly newsletters have gone out to our announce list -- sign up 
here: http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

* 1 year is how old the non-profit will be, as of December 5.

Our funding so far comes from donations from companies that support our 
events, paid opportunities like the Wikimania Hackathon, a very small 
number of individuals and companies that believe in our broader mission.

There's where you come in. If you, too, believe in our mission of helping 
free software projects grow in size and diversity, would you donate to 
help us continue that work?

You can do so here: https://openhatch.org/donate/

In 2013, we want to focus on making an impact in terms of gender 
diversity. We're honing our Open Source Comes to Campus series, and over 
the next year we'll work with women in CS groups to create workshop and 
project nights to change the gender ratio with our practical, tested 
outreach. We've found that in-person events help the training missions and 
the bitesize bugs all fit together.

To make that possible, we're in the process of raising money from 
corporate event sponsors. Here, we can use your help. If your company 
might be interested in sponsoring the workshop series, let us know. 
Moreover, if you personally can do so, we will very much appreciate it.

Many of you are the people whose advice, three and a half years ago, set 
us forth on this journey. Others are more recent arrivals, excited by our 
vision and wanting to become a part of it or just learn more.

Our track record of understanding free software projects, hands-on 
teaching, and integration with existing communities puts us in a position 
to really make a difference. So if you can, please help out by donating 
here:

https://openhatch.org/donate/

Thank you so very much.

-- Asheesh.

*. I often find these training mission numbers surprising, but I can't 
find anything wrong with them. Here's my methodology:

>>> StepCompletion.objects.filter(is_currently_completed=True
).values('person_id').distinct().count()
2299