Outreachy is supported by our generous donors!
Outreachy is a diversity initiative of the 501(c)(3) non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy. Donations are tax deductible.
Former Firefox community coordinator, Larissa Shaprio (middle), with former Outreachy interns Maja Frydrychowicz (left) and Sara Mansouri (right).
After their Outreachy internships, Maja became a Mozilla employee and Sara continued as a volunteer leader in the Firefox community.
Photo CC-BY-SA-NC Sage Sharp
A list of current sponsors can be found on our homepage.
If you're an individual interested in donating to Outreachy, see our personal donation instructions.
Please consider sponsoring the program at one of these game-changing levels:
The sponsorship levels include a sponsor logo placement on the Outreachy website for six months. Outreachy runs internship cohorts every six months. The Outreachy sponsorship is credited on a per-cohort basis.
Your generous donations go to the Outreachy general fund. The Outreachy general fund sponsors internship stipends, staff to help applicants and interns, and resources to promote our program to people from marginalized groups in the technology industry.
Sponsorship includes:
Sponsorship is for half of a year. Sponsors are credited for either the May internship cohort or the December internship cohort.
Important dates for sponsors to the May internship cohort:
Important dates for sponsors to the December internship cohort sponsors:
Outreachy may be able to invoice sponsors earlier or later to align with your budget deadlines. Please contact us to let us know what your invoicing deadlines are.
For details on sponsorship and statistics about the program, please read our sponsor presentation: (sponsorship.pdf / sponsorship.odp)
Urvika Gola, former Outreachy intern, hacks on the open source Android application, Lumicall, with former Google Summer of Code intern, Pranav Jain.
Photo CC-BY Sage Sharp
Women are underrepresented in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development, even as compared with the number of women studying Computer Science in colleges around the world and with the number of women employed in proprietary software development. While the 2017 GitHub survey showed that participation of women in FOSS is still extremely low at 3%, Outreachy has been a major factor in increasing participation of women in communities that participate. For example, the percentage of women Linux kernel authors rose from 5% in 2005 to 9.9% in 2016, with a marked increase in 2013 when the kernel joined Outreachy. Outreachy also encourages women who are students interested in coding projects to apply for Google Summer of Code, and it played a role in increasing participation of women in Google Summer of Code from 7.1% in 2011 to 11.6% in 2018.
The diversity data for the U.S. released by many tech companies shows that many of them only have 1-3% Black and 2-4% Hispanic employees in technical roles, while the population of the U.S. is 13% Black and 17% Hispanic. We don't have any data like this for free software participation, but we can tell there is a lack of racial and ethnic diversity at conferences we attend. Addionally, we are aware of bias and discrimination against other groups not connected to race or gender.
It's important that we reach more people with the information that the FOSS community is (by and large) mature and friendly, and that contributing to FOSS is valuable for both social and professional reasons. In this way, we are growing the community and improving our ability to reach even more people.
We know from the 2017 GitHub survey that "women are also more likely than men to seek out help directly (29% vs 13%) from people they already know well (22% vs 6%), rather than ask for help from strangers in a public forum or channel." It can be intimidating to submit contributions and get feedback on public forums. Outreachy provides a gentle introduction to FOSS by providing mentors who can guide applicants through making their first public contributions during the application period. Then selected interns work remotely with the same mentor during the three month internship.
By participating in the program, applicants and interns develop a good understanding of the power of FOSS and skills necessary to continue contributing to it. Outreachy provides a collaborative environment in which newcomers from underrepresented backgrounds can get help working on their first contributions and a focused opportunity for them to dedicate a full-time effort to learning and contributing to FOSS.
Sponsoring Outreachy directly supports diversity in open source!
Based on our 2019 longitudinal survey, past Outreachy interns are:
Outreachy attracts many motivated and talented applicants. Most of our interns have had their work included in the software releases, with some of them completing major features during their internships. About half of the program participants stay involved with the organization they worked with past their internship. Outreachy organizers know of the following accomplishments among 912 past participants who successfully completed Outreachy:
The outreach efforts like this one also result in the improvements for all newcomers. For example, the mentors list that GNOME started with 9 mentors for the first round of the Outreach Program for Women is now a general resource that contains over 40 mentors. GNOME also improved how it engages Google Summer of Code students with the community based on its Outreach Program for Women experience, by requiring them to work with mentors on an initial contribution during the application period and by incorporating the required blog posts about their work on Planet GNOME. Making the community a friendly place for underrepresented people also makes it such for all newcomers.
Q: Who pays the interns?
A: The Outreachy parent non-profit, the Software Freedom Conservancy, handles payments to interns.
Q: Are Outreachy interns employees or interns of the corporate sponsors?
A: No. Outreachy interns are considered contractors of the Software Freedom Conservancy during their internship.
Q: Are corporate sponsors required to help run the internship program?
A: No. The Outreachy application process, intern selection coordination, communication with mentors, and payments to interns are all handled by Outreachy organizers.
Q: We have a company internship program. Can you place Outreachy applicants into our internship program?
A: No. Outreachy internships are completely separate from any other internship program.
Q. If I'm a corporate sponsor, do I have to provide a mentor for the internship program?
A: No. While employees from many corporate sponsors mentor for Outreachy, it's not required for corporate sponsors to provide either mentors or internship project ideas. FOSS communities generally provide their own mentors and project ideas. If a sponsor does have an internship idea and a mentor, they should review the community guidelines.
Q: How does the Outreachy opportunities mailing list work?
A: Outreachy runs an opt-in mailing list open to all current and past Outreachy interns, coordinators, mentors, and sponsors.
The primary goal of this list is to connect Outreachy sponsors with Outreachy participants. Sponsors are invited to share job, internship, event, and other opportunities that they think might be of interest to the Outreachy community. Additionally, all Outreachy community members are invited to share job and internship opportunities.
We expect sponsors to not send e-mail about the same opportunity more than twice. Sponsors should send information about new opportunities no more than twice a week. If you are representing a sponsoring organization and would like to share opportunities with your member companies, please do so no more than once a month in a form of a digest.
The Outreachy opportunities list reaches participants around the world, so please provide details that can help people decide if any given e-mail is relevant to them in the subject line. For example, if an opportunity requires people to be in a particular location, please include the location in the subject line.
Q: Did Outreachy used to be called something else?
A: Yes. Outreachy was started in 2010 by the GNOME Project as the Outreach Program for Women (OPW). The name was changed in 2015 when the program was moved to Software Freedom Conservancy with a vision to include more people who experience the impact of bias and discrimination in tech. In 2006, the GNOME Project ran a one-time Women's Summer Outreach Program, which was the predecessor of OPW.
Q: Are you still associated with GNOME?
A: Outreachy is no longer run by GNOME, but GNOME still participates as an Outreachy mentoring community.
GNOME has been an Outreachy mentoring community throughout the Outreachy's history. After Outreachy moved under our current non-profit home, Software Freedom Conservancy, GNOME continued to host some Outreachy resources, including our website, wiki, application system, and IRC channel. Outreachy has since migrated its resources to be independently hosted. We thank GNOME for their past support of the program!
