The Software Carpentry Foundation charges an administration fee for workshops it helps organize to cover some of its central costs, such as instructor training, curriculum development, and staff salaries. This document describes and explains this fee, which is intended to satisfy the following constraints:
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There is no fee for workshops organized without the SCF's involvement. For example, if a group of graduate students at Euphoric State University wish to organize and run a workshop entirely on their own, they do not owe the SCF any money.
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The administration fee must be low enough to encourage potential hosts to give workshops a try, but high enough to make institutional membership attractive.
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Instructors' travel and accommodation are paid directly by the host organization: the SCF is not involved in making travel arrangements or in fulfilling payment of expenses.
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The people who actually do the organizing are often staff of member organizations, rather than SCF staff.
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The fee is greater for workshops at companies and other for-profit organizations. This extra income is used to underwrite fees for special events (such as workshops for women in science and engineering) and fees for non-profit institutions that might otherwise not be able to host a workshop (such as schools in less affluent or more remote areas).
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Much of the effort in organizing a workshop goes into getting to know the hosts and their institution, so subsequent workshops at any particular site are less expensive.
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The term member organization refers to Partners, Affiliates, and Sponsors as defined in the description of organizational membership.
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A host is an organization which is hosting a workshop, such as a university or company. It may or may not be a member organization.
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An internal workshop is one whose audience is mainly from the host organization (e.g., a workshop run by Euphoric State University for staff and students at ESU).
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An arranged workshop is one that the SCF or its organizational Members have helped arrange.
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A coordinator is a member of staff of the SCF or of a member organization who devotes a significant amount of time to arranging workshops. If the coordinator does not work for the SCF, her employer is referred to as the coordinating organization.
Hosts always pay instructors' travel and accommodation costs. They do this directly, i.e., the SCF does not act as an intermediary.
Anyone who wants to organize and run a workshop using the Software Carpentry name and logo without the support of the SCF is free to do so provided they adhere to our rules about content and certified instructors. There is no charge for self-organized workshops, and we will advertise them on our website so long as they:
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provide the metadata we require (such as the workshop's date and location) in a format we can easily consume, and
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allow us to administer our pre- and post-workshop surveys, or collect equivalent information themselves and share it with us.
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All requests for workshops, no matter who receives them or how, are pooled in a central location that all coordinators can access.
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Once a workshop has been allocated to a coordinator, she can communicate with the host using either an organizational email address or a software-carpentry.org email address, whichever the organization prefers.
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All conversations must be archived in a shared central location approved by the Steering Committee.
There is no administration fee for internal workshops run by member organizations. (This is one of the benefits of becoming a member organization.)
Arranged workshops for not-for-profit organizations such as universities and government institutions are charged:
a. US$1250 for the first workshop in any year;
b. an additional US$750/workshop for the second and subsequent workshops in a year.
We are presently (April 2015) running a short pilot program offering workshops to companies and other for-profit organizations. These are charged:
a. US$5000 for the first workshop in any year;
b. an additional US$3000/workshop for the second and subsequent workshops in a year.
The SCF may use one quarter of administration fee revenue from for-profit organizations for its own purposes. It must use the remaining three quarters of this money to underwrite the costs of workshops for not-for-profit organizations, such as their administration fees and/or instructors' travel and accommodation.
Host may charge learners a small fee for participating in a workshop. (In fact we encourage them to do so, since it significantly reduces the no-show rate.) If they do this, they may use that money to pay part or all of any administration fee owed to the SCF.
The Steering Committee may reduce or waive workshop fees at its discretion. In particular, Software Carpentry strives to be a global project and support a diverse set of organizations; any potential host that wishes to offer a workshop that would aid these goals is urged to contact the SCF to discuss waivers and other arrangements.
These examples of arranged workshops for institutions that are not member organizations are for illustrative purposes only. If there is any disagreement between an example and the wording above, the wording above shall be considered definitive.
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A university hosts one arranged workshop in a year.
- The administration fee is $1250.
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A university hosts three arranged workshops in a year.
- The university pays ($1250 + 2 x $750) = $2750.
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A company hosts one arranged workshop in a year.
- The SCF receives $5000.
- $1250 of this goes into the SCF's general funds.
- The remaining $3750 is used to pay the administration fees for three workshops at not-for-profit institutions.
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A company hosts three arranged workshops in a year.
- The company pays ($5000 + 2 x $3000) = $11,000.
- Of this, $2750 goes into the SCF's general funds.
- The remaining $8250 is used to pay travel and accommodation costs for six instructors for a WiSE workshop.