[alumNY news] Giving Tuesday - It's really hard to ask for money
TL;DR: This Giving Tuesday we’re asking you to sign up for a monthly donation to hackNY, and I share my personal feelings around fundraising.
Prove that hackNY matters by donating monthly
I posted about this over in #raves in slackNY, but it’s worth resharing for those of you who don’t look at it; I’m feeling so positive and happy after all the support y’all gave at the reunion. Being a member of hackNY since 2014 has been truly instrumental to my personal and professional career. Every job I’ve gotten has been a result of hackNY, and I feel deeply indebted to our community for my career, and really, the quality of life, friends, and economic standing that I have today.
I’ve been volunteering for a long time and watching as we’ve transitioned from a community organization run by Chris and Evan into a mature and independent operation has been a challenging. Becoming one half of the team steering that ship with Eric has been a scary experience for me. What if we run out of money? What if our programs don’t resonate with y’all? What if we can’t actually make a positive impact?
Being able to present everything we want to do to grow hackNY to y’all at our reunion and then having y’all immediately turn around and showcase your support via recurring donations is truly one of the best feelings I’ve had in my professional career.
Donations have always been an icky subject for me. When I started volunteering again back in 2022 as part of the Advisory Board, one of the first meetings I had with then-board member Amy h’12 was about whether we should help with fundraising, and that triggered an immediate dread for me. I don’t like asking for money at all. It’s documented in literal years of meeting notes that I don’t want to do it. I grew up in a pretty low-income family in the UK and so I’ve always been hesitant to donate, when instead I could just give my time.
My thinking around donations has shifted in the 5-ish months that Eric and I have been working together on this current version of hackNY. Donations aren’t only about the money we’re bringing in, they’re also help prove to larger funders that our community values the stuff that we’re doing. Being able to showcase that our alumni think hackNY is important enough that y’all open your wallets; signals to grants, fundraisers, and wealthy donors that this is a community that is healthy and worth investing in. Community donation percentage is a metric that we regularly get asked about.
This year we’re asking you to sign up for a monthly donation to hackNY. Being able to show that our community cares enough to donate is so valuable. Our goal is to get 25% of alumNY to donate to hackNY this year. That’s 92 of y’all. At the reunion, we had 25 new donors sign up, so we’re already over a quarter of our goal for the year!
I feel obligated to give something for you all that donate, so for folks that sign up I’ll be mailing stickers, and making exclusive swag for the one-year mark of your subscriptions. But really, by donating you’re making it possible for us to continue working towards making hackNY free again for fellows and grow our programs and services for all of you.
If you want this community to grow, create new ways to support emerging tech leaders, and empower our existing alumNY community, please create a recurring donation to show how much hackNY means to you. Your monthly donation is a vote of confidence in hackNY and enables us to go after the funding we need to empower the next generation of tech leaders.
Prove that hackNY matters by donating monthly
Thank you for trusting me to look after our community,
Shy (h’14)