We have a big announcement for you all today – Techqueria is now officially a 501c3 nonprofit! 🎉

This incorporation is part of a larger push to better serve our growing Latinx in Tech community. That includes increased partnerships with tech companies and various organizational improvements to make us more effective at being able to scale. While this community has come together organically, as it grows, we need to be more intentional about steering it in the right direction to help address the systemic problems facing our community and our workplaces.

This new nonprofit status will address a number of things. First, we want to make sure our community has a formal governance structure in place and increased transparency in how we operate. Second, it allows us to pursue more official partnerships with tech companies while letting us leverage software licenses from various companies to help us operate. Finally, it opens up the door for sponsorship and philanthropic grant opportunities to bring on people dedicated to working on the community.

To get an idea of how active our community has been lately – last week we hit an all-time high of 700+ weekly active users on Slack.

We’ve been building this community for a few years now and we’ve only been able to come this far through the efforts of a small army of volunteers. Everyone on our organizing teams has been contributing to this community while also working full-time jobs. You make this community truly great and we appreciate you!

A final note: Our Latinx generation is one of the most multicultural, intersectional, mobile-first, and powerful as the 2nd largest ethnic community in the United States. Because of this, our actions will dictate the culture of future generations as we become a growing force shaping the economy.

Over the next generation, we believe Latinx talent and leadership will help redefine the tech sector and our workplaces for the better and Techqueria aims to be a part of that change. This is why we’re so excited about how far our Techqueria community has come already and how much further it can go from here.

We will be sending out an email with more detailed organizational changes shortly.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please reach out to us on the #meta channel or you can contact us.