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Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-in-tech-shut-down-adriana-gascoigne.html https://www.bizjourn

Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-in-tech-shut-down-adriana-gascoigne.html https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-... > In an email Monday, founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne said “Girls in Tech will be closing its doors due to a lack of funding in 2023 and 2024.”

glitchc 2y ago
[flagged]
igor47 2y ago
Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.
  - digging 2y ago
    That would be a complete success, since the funding disappeared anyway
  - tardy_one 2y ago
    Except in the real world, where the infrastructure to raise money for a previous problem can out compete new infrastructure.
- csande17 2y ago
  For what it's worth, Girls Who Code -- an organization more directly focused on improving the "pipeline" through training programs aimed at K-12 and college students -- seems to be thriving, with over $20M in donations from a variety of tech organizations in 2023: https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/ https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    Our company actively partners with girls who code for that exact reason. Our rather empty post covid office space gets transformed into summer boot camps for middle and high schoolers every year. It is a very productive way to improve the K-12 pipeline.
  - shmatt 2y ago
    this deserves to be much higher than a sub-sub-sub-sub comment the fact one DEI organization failed doesn't mean DEI failed. They could be mis managed just like any other non profit
    - arduanika 2y ago
      Agreed, I didn't know the difference and at a glance thought it was Girls Who Code that folded. It could be that as the "vibe shifts" away from DEI and the funding gets smaller, we'll see a culling where only some orgs survive, hopefully the best ones. "When the tide goes out..."
  - pedalpete 2y ago
    Thank you. I was confusing these as being the same organization, and I thought Gils Who Code is doing quite well.
- strikelaserclaw 2y ago
  once interests rate went up all DEI initiatives dried up - these companies don't really have integrity or beliefs beyond doing what is politically correct at the current time.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Why would rising interest rates affect what is considered politically correct?
    - micah94 2y ago
      Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs. Unlike Apple or NVIDIA most companies need to borrow money to stay in business.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        > Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs. All the (Big tech) companies - not just Apple and Nvidia - have higher revenues and profits now than they did during the Zero-interest regime. They are not hurting for money to fund outreach programs that meet their strategic goals. What has changed is their hiring outlook. Online services saw unprecedented growth when everyone was cooped up in their homes due to Covid lockdowns, and the tech companies thought the growth would be permanent, rather than a temporary bump, and couldn't hire engineers fast enough to meet the anticipated growth: hence the outreach to non-traditional hiring-pipelines. After the layoffs, they stopped hiring aggressively and the labor market is now a buyers market
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        >Unlike Apple or NVIDIA most companies need to borrow money to stay in business What do you mean by this?
      - krageon 2y ago
        > most companies need to borrow money to stay in business. With respect, this is entirely untrue. Most companies don't need to borrow money. It's the functional cancer of the VC-funded silicon valley meta that needs to borrow money to do anything useful. Most corporations run based on what they earn. This is the only reasonable thing too, or every country would have the egregious debt load that the US has.
- DopplerSmell 2y ago
  Nobody inside the org cares about gender ratios, but they do have to react to people outside of the org who care a whole lot. It's easier to explain reality than to try and change it.
  - resource_waste 2y ago
    Idk, I've read b2b contracts that have demands similar to this. They arent explicit, its softer.
    - DopplerSmell 2y ago
      I have as well, but I'm more of a cynic. Usually you can trace requirements back to either DEI dependent funding or government contract requirements. Less common is an attempt to market or build positive brand association by making a public commitment. With the occasional case where one individual uses their position in a company to sneak their personal agenda in. Mostly the behaviour is determined by tangible external benefits rather than any kind of real belief that gender ratios should be acknowledged.
- falcolas 2y ago
  That would require an monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies. It's a shame, because I've met several developers who benefited from Girls in Tech's work.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies can you please explain that or point to some articles about it?
    - runako 2y ago
      https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-diversity/elon-musk-dei-racist https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity etc. There is a backlash underway against any effort to expand workplace diversity beyond the representative fractions circa 1990.
      - Jensson 2y ago
        Women were a much higher percentage in the field 1990. Women abandoned the field after the IT-bubble and it never recovered.
      - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
        There is a backlash to the heavy handedness of DEI. You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. You need to remove barriers to entry based on sexism and such, but you can’t exclude a whole large class of people because that class had it good in the past. That gets you South Africa.
        runako 2y ago
        > You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. I agree with this. However, I have been working in tech for quite some time now, and I have not seen any place where white males have been frozen out of employment or funding. More typically, in my personal experience, they represent most of the staff and leadership and materially all of institutional funding recipients. Perhaps my experience is atypical, or my definition of "frozen out" is different.
- draw_down 2y ago
  [dead]
neilv 2y ago
Thanks. Following a link from there: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/06/06/girls-tech-financial-nonprofit-closure.html https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/06/06/girls-... > Nashville-based Girls in Tech Inc. may be forced to shut down by the end of summer. [...] needs to raise $100,000 or it faces imminent closure. [...] Girls in Tech has a membership of 130,000 "women and allies" across 50 cities and 38 countries. Was the membership base already tapped out, or the org didn't reach out to the membership on this, or the org had larger near-term funding needs than the immediate $100K? Also, is it possible that funding isn't the only consideration? For example, even if the org could be saved with heroics, there's opportunity cost to leadership (personal, professional)?
- michaelt 2y ago
  Well, they seem to offer a "premium membership" for $9.99/month [1] and presumably that hasn't raised enough. If the aim of the charity is to get career resources in front of as many women as possible, they probably don't want to put their most impactful resources behind a paywall - that would be contrary to their goal. I suppose they could try an appeal to generosity instead? Depends if they've got a network of grateful people they helped 17 years ago who are now making six-figure salaries. [1] https://girlsintech.org/membership/premium/ https://girlsintech.org/membership/premium/
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - neilv 2y ago
    I know almost nothing about non-profit fundraising, but this benefits tier membership model looks very familiar as a tech for-profit service, rather than a charitable non-profit for the benefit of all. (Specifically, in a tech, like a SaaS, the free tier are sales leads and inflated "market share" numbers, and the premium tier are the real customers of the service value you're providing and is your whole reason for existing. In a charity, however, you don't measure out benefits based on how much that person is paying you. Though a charity will have special recognition for exceptional donations, like the donor's name listed on some page, or mentioned as a sponsor of an event.) Given the dire runway situation they were in, I wonder whether they sent out a recent urgent appeal to their free-tier, as more like a charity, asking for donations? (And if so, was the obvious benefits tier model hurting any charitable goodwill they might've otherwise generated?) Or did they try to push their free-tier members an upsell to their premium tier, like a business? Or neither?
specialist 2y ago
Funding for many, many worthy orgs crashed with COVID-19, and has barely recovered. From the outside looking in, it seems the whole administrative capacity (ecology) of the fund raising world just dried up and needs to be rebuilt.
- cudgy 2y ago
  Perhaps the administrative capacity dried up with the lack of free money once interest rates rose?
mattmaroon 2y ago
That’s a bummer I was hoping it was more of a “mission accomplished” kind of closure.

glitchc 2y ago

[flagged]

igor47 2y ago

Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.
- digging 2y ago
  That would be a complete success, since the funding disappeared anyway
- tardy_one 2y ago
  Except in the real world, where the infrastructure to raise money for a previous problem can out compete new infrastructure.
csande17 2y ago
For what it's worth, Girls Who Code -- an organization more directly focused on improving the "pipeline" through training programs aimed at K-12 and college students -- seems to be thriving, with over $20M in donations from a variety of tech organizations in 2023: https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/ https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  Our company actively partners with girls who code for that exact reason. Our rather empty post covid office space gets transformed into summer boot camps for middle and high schoolers every year. It is a very productive way to improve the K-12 pipeline.
- shmatt 2y ago
  this deserves to be much higher than a sub-sub-sub-sub comment the fact one DEI organization failed doesn't mean DEI failed. They could be mis managed just like any other non profit
  - arduanika 2y ago
    Agreed, I didn't know the difference and at a glance thought it was Girls Who Code that folded. It could be that as the "vibe shifts" away from DEI and the funding gets smaller, we'll see a culling where only some orgs survive, hopefully the best ones. "When the tide goes out..."
- pedalpete 2y ago
  Thank you. I was confusing these as being the same organization, and I thought Gils Who Code is doing quite well.
strikelaserclaw 2y ago
once interests rate went up all DEI initiatives dried up - these companies don't really have integrity or beliefs beyond doing what is politically correct at the current time.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Why would rising interest rates affect what is considered politically correct?
  - micah94 2y ago
    Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs. Unlike Apple or NVIDIA most companies need to borrow money to stay in business.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs. All the (Big tech) companies - not just Apple and Nvidia - have higher revenues and profits now than they did during the Zero-interest regime. They are not hurting for money to fund outreach programs that meet their strategic goals. What has changed is their hiring outlook. Online services saw unprecedented growth when everyone was cooped up in their homes due to Covid lockdowns, and the tech companies thought the growth would be permanent, rather than a temporary bump, and couldn't hire engineers fast enough to meet the anticipated growth: hence the outreach to non-traditional hiring-pipelines. After the layoffs, they stopped hiring aggressively and the labor market is now a buyers market
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      >Unlike Apple or NVIDIA most companies need to borrow money to stay in business What do you mean by this?
    - krageon 2y ago
      > most companies need to borrow money to stay in business. With respect, this is entirely untrue. Most companies don't need to borrow money. It's the functional cancer of the VC-funded silicon valley meta that needs to borrow money to do anything useful. Most corporations run based on what they earn. This is the only reasonable thing too, or every country would have the egregious debt load that the US has.
DopplerSmell 2y ago
Nobody inside the org cares about gender ratios, but they do have to react to people outside of the org who care a whole lot. It's easier to explain reality than to try and change it.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Idk, I've read b2b contracts that have demands similar to this. They arent explicit, its softer.
  - DopplerSmell 2y ago
    I have as well, but I'm more of a cynic. Usually you can trace requirements back to either DEI dependent funding or government contract requirements. Less common is an attempt to market or build positive brand association by making a public commitment. With the occasional case where one individual uses their position in a company to sneak their personal agenda in. Mostly the behaviour is determined by tangible external benefits rather than any kind of real belief that gender ratios should be acknowledged.
falcolas 2y ago
That would require an monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies. It's a shame, because I've met several developers who benefited from Girls in Tech's work.
- em-bee 2y ago
  monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies can you please explain that or point to some articles about it?
  - runako 2y ago
    https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-diversity/elon-musk-dei-racist https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity etc. There is a backlash underway against any effort to expand workplace diversity beyond the representative fractions circa 1990.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Women were a much higher percentage in the field 1990. Women abandoned the field after the IT-bubble and it never recovered.
    - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
      There is a backlash to the heavy handedness of DEI. You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. You need to remove barriers to entry based on sexism and such, but you can’t exclude a whole large class of people because that class had it good in the past. That gets you South Africa.
      - runako 2y ago
        > You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. I agree with this. However, I have been working in tech for quite some time now, and I have not seen any place where white males have been frozen out of employment or funding. More typically, in my personal experience, they represent most of the staff and leadership and materially all of institutional funding recipients. Perhaps my experience is atypical, or my definition of "frozen out" is different.
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]

neilv 2y ago

Thanks. Following a link from there: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/06/06/girls-tech-financial-nonprofit-closure.html https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/06/06/girls-... > Nashville-based Girls in Tech Inc. may be forced to shut down by the end of summer. [...] needs to raise $100,000 or it faces imminent closure. [...] Girls in Tech has a membership of 130,000 "women and allies" across 50 cities and 38 countries. Was the membership base already tapped out, or the org didn't reach out to the membership on this, or the org had larger near-term funding needs than the immediate $100K? Also, is it possible that funding isn't the only consideration? For example, even if the org could be saved with heroics, there's opportunity cost to leadership (personal, professional)?

michaelt 2y ago
Well, they seem to offer a "premium membership" for $9.99/month [1] and presumably that hasn't raised enough. If the aim of the charity is to get career resources in front of as many women as possible, they probably don't want to put their most impactful resources behind a paywall - that would be contrary to their goal. I suppose they could try an appeal to generosity instead? Depends if they've got a network of grateful people they helped 17 years ago who are now making six-figure salaries. [1] https://girlsintech.org/membership/premium/ https://girlsintech.org/membership/premium/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- neilv 2y ago
  I know almost nothing about non-profit fundraising, but this benefits tier membership model looks very familiar as a tech for-profit service, rather than a charitable non-profit for the benefit of all. (Specifically, in a tech, like a SaaS, the free tier are sales leads and inflated "market share" numbers, and the premium tier are the real customers of the service value you're providing and is your whole reason for existing. In a charity, however, you don't measure out benefits based on how much that person is paying you. Though a charity will have special recognition for exceptional donations, like the donor's name listed on some page, or mentioned as a sponsor of an event.) Given the dire runway situation they were in, I wonder whether they sent out a recent urgent appeal to their free-tier, as more like a charity, asking for donations? (And if so, was the obvious benefits tier model hurting any charitable goodwill they might've otherwise generated?) Or did they try to push their free-tier members an upsell to their premium tier, like a business? Or neither?

specialist 2y ago

Funding for many, many worthy orgs crashed with COVID-19, and has barely recovered. From the outside looking in, it seems the whole administrative capacity (ecology) of the fund raising world just dried up and needs to be rebuilt.

cudgy 2y ago
Perhaps the administrative capacity dried up with the lack of free money once interest rates rose?

mattmaroon 2y ago

That’s a bummer I was hoping it was more of a “mission accomplished” kind of closure.