How can I raise awareness for a project?

Question

I'm running a non-profit project to raise money for young programmers so that they can attend their first big programming language specific conference. The grant would cover travel, accommodation and the conference fee.

The main challenge is raising awareness amongst young programmers (who need funding) and more senior ones (who might want to donate). Blogs and mailing lists are an obviously place to start but there are many people who don't subscribe to these.

• What are the best places and techniques for getting the word out widely other than blogs and mailing lists?

• Does anyone have any experiences doing something similar?

Answer 1

I'd contact your local board of education. For things like this they're always willing to send out notices to high schools, colleges and other educational facilities to encourage the students to sign up. They can also contact alumni to see whose willing to offer support.

Answer 2

In addition to Brandon's answer, I would contact your local university's Computer Science department head.

Answer 3

Jeff has talked about the unreachable before in his topic Real Ultimate Programming Power:

The defining characteristic of the vast majority of these so-called "vocational" programmers is that they are unreachable. It doesn't matter what you, I or anyone else writes here -- they'll never see it.

Basically you're not going to be able to reach them, since they don't care enough to look in the first place.

Answer 4

Have you thought about contacting organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) or the IEEE Computer Society? They take a particular interest in promoting computer science as an occupation amongst students and providing career development opportunities for young programmers. Perhaps they can at least give you some networking ideas.

Best of luck!

Answer 5

Talk to people at the conferences themselves.

I've helped organize a number of conferences and still work with quite a few and although few do "scholarship" programs to cover travel/accommodations, most have some sort of "student pass" or give away a number of free passes. You may have to request it in writing on your official letterhead or something like that, but to save $1000+, it's a trivial cost.

Then, once you have the tickets, reach out to your communities, granting organizations, etc, describe the situation, and see how much of the rest can be covered.

I'm involved with a number of groups and if they came to me and said "It's normally $3k to send someone, we've gotten the conference to give us a free pass and so it will only be $2k", I'd pitch in a bit to close the gap. It shows that you're working hard and not going for the money first... that you're negotiating on all fronts... and says to me (even subconsciously) that my money is likely to be used well.

My 0.02.