Closing the crowdfunding campaign

Posted on by Laura

Categories: blog and news

Whoohoo! They said the third year will be the hardest – but in the end, we broke all records with our crowdfunding campaign. We still can’t wrap our heads around the fact that we can fund 16 teams this year: that’s 6 more than in the last two years.

As our goal for the summer has been met and all the teams have already been selected, we’ve decided to “close” our crowdfunding campaign for the summer. What this means: you will still be able to donate on our donation page and all the money will go towards next year’s efforts. You can never really start early enough ;)

Thank you so much!

Donations in numbers

We’re glad so many of you, sponsors and private contributors, have donated. We would not make it without your support and the support of our lovely community – and for that, we simply can’t thank you enough. Before we start thinking about the next step (getting ready for the kick-off), here are some fun facts from the campaign.

With 53 sponsors on board this year, we’ve hit the jackpot (and our highest number of sponsors to date). Hooray!
After last year’s Tobias’, Jeremys and Patricks, this year’s most common supporter first name is… *drumroll*… CHRIS! We counted 3 of them, and an additional Christoph, as well as a Christopher. We’ve also had contributions and visitors to our campaign page from all over the world: Berlin to New York, Helsinki to Philly. Now that’s what we call global!

We love emojis

As always, our private contributors were always very creative with their comments – we counted 14 messages with emojis alone! Our favourites: a story, an overload of hearts, a panda and even.. some code! And because we love kittens, someone also posted a nice little kitty face for us. =^.^=

We <3 User Groups

We’ve also received donations from user groups: vietnamrb (thank you Trung!) and Ruby Slovenia, who have set up a donation system for their attendees with beautiful Ruby Slovenia stickers for every donation. How amazing is that? Thank you so much, Miha and the whole of the Slovenia User Group! You rock! And so do your beautiful stickers.

A very special supporter

One of our most recent newcomer sponsors is the James Golick Grant for Women in Computology. We are incredibly touched by their support and most importantly, by Jill’s decision to set up a grant to honour her son’s memory. If you can, please take a minute to read more about the story behind the grant and consider donating, too.

Once again, THANK YOU from the whole RGSoC team – we couldn’t have proved that “third year is the hardest” saying wrong without you. Now let’s get this summer started – so we can prove those other stereotypes wrong.

(Image: Anika Lindtner)

(Image: Katrin Kampfrath)

(Image: Claudia Gehn)

You're all awesome! (Image: Ramón Huidobro)