Wow!!! We had to scramble to put together a new stretch goal after our first stretch goal was met in less than 36 hours! Here’s what we came up with for a $200,000 stretch goal:

T-shirts. Specifically, feminist t-shirts. Specifically, feminist t-shirts with the words “Not afraid to say the F-word: Feminism” using the design from our new sticker on a black background, in a wide range of straight and fitted sizes to fit a variety of body types.

If we reach our $200,000 stretch goal by Wednesday midnight Pacific time, we will offer these t-shirts as thank-you gifts for donations on our web site later this year in time for December gift-giving. We’re not sure what level of donation the t-shirt will be a reward for yet (grumble grumble complicated IRS donation rules) but we do know we will offer them retroactively to people who donated $1024 or more in 2014. If that excites you, donate now (and get matching F-word stickers to tide you over):

Happy AdaCampers!
CC BY-SA Jenna Saint Martin Photo

We’re already operating at maximum capacity, so to run enough AdaCamps and training classes for everyone who wants them, we’ll need to hire and train more staff. Raising $200,000 will let the Ada Initiative expand to meet the demand for our programs – and give us the time to design and make the very best feminist propaganda possible (like this t-shirt).

Amelia Greenhall, designer and feminist activist

Help the Ada Initiative expand – and maybe your wardrobe as well! Donate now:

CC BY-SA Jenna Saint Martin Photo

Join over 900 people who donated to the Ada Initiative in the last month and get your feminist stickers before it’s too late (or help spread the word if you’ve already donated):

The Ada Initiative needs your help to scale up our work across the board in 2015. All three 2014 AdaCamps sold out weeks early, we have Ally Skills Workshops booked through to January 2015, and we will open registration for our first standalone Impostor Syndrome training in just a few weeks! The Ada Initiative needs to grow to serve the demand for our work, and this fundraiser is how we’re going to do it!

With just $100,000 raised in 2014, we helped thousands of people in dozens of communities: libraries, skeptics, science fiction and fantasy, open source software, Wikipedia, open street mapping, and much more. And if we hit our next stretch goal of $175,000, we will train 15 Ally Skills Workshop teachers at WisCon 39, the world’s leading feminist science fiction convention, where people from at least 5 different open tech/culture communities converge!

Thank you to the over 900 people who donated to and spread the word about the Ada Initiative over the last month. The donors who gave us permission to publicly list their names are:

We’re amazed – your incredible generosity means we reached our $150,000 fundraising goal 3 days early! So we’ve create an exciting new stretch goal:

If we raise $175,000 by Wednesday night, we will train up to 15 new Ally Skills Workshop leaders at WisCon 39, the world’s leading feminist science fiction convention!

Here’s why this goal is so exciting: At WisCon, we can reach hundreds of people in 5 different open technology and culture communities with one 6 hour workshop! If you are excited too, please donate now or help us spread the word!

Ally Skills Workshop discussion

WisCon is the ideal place to teach a train-the-trainers session. WisCon is a crossroads for feminist activists in all areas of open technology and culture: open source software, libraries, Wikipedia, open data, and of course, fandom. If the Ada Initiative teaches 15 people at WisCon to lead the Ally Skills Workshop, we can spread these skills to five communities rather than just one, as would be the case at most other conferences.

We have another exciting announcement to make! We’ve donated one of Mary Robinette Kowal’s gifts to Con or Bust: a signed manuscript of the fifth novel in her “Glamourist Histories” series, “Of Noble Family,” more than 6 months before it will be released in stores! They’re auctioning it off right now.

If you’re not already familiar with Con or Bust, it’s an organization that raises money to send people of color to science fiction conventions who could not otherwise afford to attend (including WisCon). They do crucial and important work, and Con or Bust’s work means even more people will have a chance to attend the Ally Skills Workshop train-the-trainers at WisCon. Con or Bust is auctioning off the manuscript right now, so go bid on it! (We found that even though lots of people donated enough to get the manuscript, they seemed to feel bad about taking “the last one” – the ten copies of MRK’s fourth novel in the series were snapped up, though!)

We’re this excited about WisCon! CC BY-SA Adam Novak

We’ll leave you with some quotes from Ally Skills Workshop attendees:

“We’ve run the [Ally Skills Workshop] 4 times and the impact has been fantastic. This workshop has been the catalyst for many “a-ha” moments. People who understood bias exists in a very logical way, were able to see, through the conversation with peers about the very relevant scenarios, and connect emotionally with the impact bias has on the colleagues they respect and interact with daily.” – Anonymous train-the-trainers client

“Change is uncomfortable. This workshop helped me be comfortable about being uncomfortable. Once that is addressed it opens a path for improvement, personally and for our industry.” – Kris Amundson

“It gave me some starts towards being comfortable acting in situations of casual sexism—and that would extend to other -isms. I’d like to do it again at some point, to gain even more confidence. I also loved the very explicit focus on consent, the fact that people’s dietary preferences were respected, and generally the nice-ness of the whole workshop!” – Kamal Marhubi

Donate now, and help us spread the Ally Skills Workshop to open tech/culture communities around the world!

You did it! New stretch goal: $175,000 to train Ally Skills Workshop teachers at WisCon! by the Ada Initiative is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Valerie Aurora, Ada Initiative co-founder

Here’s what Lauren Lane of Skepticon has to say on why they support the Ada Initiative:

“The Ada Initiative does so much amazing stuff, like offer anti-harassment policies used by hundreds of conferences, give out out information about ally skills for men so women don’t have to fight sexism alone, host feminist conferences for women to share lessons learned and support each other, and are doing amazing work training women to fight Impostor Syndrome and stay involved in open tech/culture. In short, these people are totally kickass and we need them.” [Emphasis theirs]

Are you excited yet?? We are, we have heard so much about how fun skeptic conferences are, and Valerie can’t wait to meet Stephanie Zvan, PZ Myers, and everyone else we’ve worked with over the years!

If you’d like to help bring the Ally Skills Workshop to Skepticon, here’s what you can do:

Donate now (I know, obvious).

Tweet or share this post on on social media with the #skeptics4ada hashtag.

Blog about the skeptic donation challenge, and include the donation counter and donation button with this HTML:

<a href="https://supportada.org?campaign=skeptics"><img src="https://files.adainitiative.org/counters/2014counter-skeptics.svg"></a>

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Thank you for your help, and hope to see you at Skepticon!