Growing a Community

One thing that surprises and impresses many people about ScriptEd is our strong connections with the NYC tech industry. We have over 100 company partners who lend us space, donate money and hire our students as interns over the summer.  Without our industry partners, we would be unable to do the work that we do.

I am constantly asked about how we are able to so successfully make this happen.  When ScriptEd started, Liz and I had basically no connections in the tech industry, so it wasn't just a matter of going through a contact list and calling it a day.  Our approach was and continues to be incredibly grassroots.  

Occasionally we work through company corporate social responsibility departments, but we are far more successful with getting people involved with us through community events and platforms.  The majority of our volunteer recruitment is through meet up group, like BrooklynJS, QueensJS and ManhattanJS, through industry leaders blogging about us, and through word of mouth. Our industry volunteers are the most important part to making our program work -- they have the technical expertise, know what is relevant in the industry, and can be advocates in their workplaces. They are the key to our company partnerships.

This means we spend a lot of time, energy and resources on making sure the volunteer experience is as good as it can be.  We try to strike a balance between providing the right level of support to our volunteers while also allowing them to take ownership over their classrooms.  We make our community more cohesive by holding social events throughout the year.  We even have a line in our budget for volunteer retention -- money that program managers can use to take our volunteers out for coffee and afterwork events for check-in meetings.

All of this helps us grow a community of people and companies who believe in our work and mission.