Tech Fleet

Tech has long been challenging for people to break into from non-traditional backgrounds. Tech jobs have outpaced most other jobs in terms of the salaries and benefits they offer, but most tech companies are far from diverse. Even if you complete a bootcamp or online training program, without real team experience on actual products, it's very hard to successfully get a job in tech. That has led to a tech workforce that is largely comprised of historically advantaged, predominantly male workers and a tech culture that reflects "Silicon Valley" values- win at all costs, downplay safety and empathy, and put growth and profit ahead of human thriving.

We are changing who has access to tech careers by offering training and
skills development to all, focusing on a service-leadership, agile
framework. Our free training places people on cross-functional teams
that do research, design, and development for nonprofits, gaining
real-world experience that has led to over 500 people being hired into
tech jobs. We offer free and low-cost skills development classes to help
people develop project management, product, and UX skills. With over
2,000 people currently active in our community, we are expanding our
offerings to support more community projects as well as career
development and mentorship. We don't just want to expand who can get a job in tech, we want to change what a tech career can be, where technology can emerge from an orientation of mutual support, community, and celebration of our lived experience outside the cloistered tech bubble.

We serve two groups of people. The first is our community, made up of primarily women, BIPOC folks, and others who are historically excluded from tech careers. We are not exclusive and anyone with the drive to learn and contribute along with the humility to practice service leadership is welcome. We have members from across the globe, though we currently index towards North Americans. The key aspect of our programs is that they have come directly from the community and are developed collaboratively. That means that the people we "serve" are also the people with the power to shape our programs.

The other group we serve is our nonprofit clients. These are small organizations who lack the budgets to hire professional designers and product people. Currently, we are less focused on serving this group than we are our community, but over time, we want to expand the ways we collaborate with non-profits to develop more avenues for Tech Fleet grads to find employment.

Morgan Denner, founder and Executive Director, and LX Cast, Chair of the Board, both came into tech through non-traditional paths. We both are passionate practioners of service leadership and collaborative governance, as well as experienced UX and Product professionals. LX is a non-binary, queer, and neurodivergent person who has navigated the tech world for over a decade as a product leader. Morgan is a white cisgender man who began his working career in sales and then changed careers to move into IT and eventualy UX and Product. Our board consists of five members, including two alumni of the Tech Fleet program, who have first-hand experience on projects and entering tech as BIPOC women.

Our entire program has developed over the last four years through a community-driven process, led by Morgan and coordinated by several guilds of members. Our infrastructure was built by our community. As we have formalized into a non-profit, we have implemented governance structures to ensure our work is always supported and led by the needs of our community. Unlike most non-profits, we built successful programs without first raising money, and everything that we do is informed by research conducted by our own community. As leaders, we see ourselves as part of the community, as stewards and collaborators on a life-long journey to make the world one that supports human flourishing through technology and community.

We have developed real-world training programs where people work in roles such as UX Design, Product Strategy, Project Management, and UX Research, building real products and websites for non-profit clients. We have successfully trained hundreds of people. We're still making process improvements to make these projects more effective and valuable for our trainees, as well as incorporating more support to develop leadership and personal growth. 

We have an education and skills-development program with hundreds of graduates, teaching agile product development, Product and UX skills, and service leadership. We are continuously improving our programs as well as developing new avenues of career development for our thousands of members. Our programs come directly from research with and by our community. We have built a skills development database and are working on a project that will help trainees track their progress and communicate their skills to employers and peers.

https://techfleet.org

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The primary differences between our approach and other career development programs are:

1. We are truly bottom-up, community driven. We have specific governance in place to protect our programs from being anything other than what most meets our mission.

2. We specifically focus on removing barriers to access. Our training is free, our classes are free or very low-cost. We practice service leadership, meaning we create environments that are mutually encouraging and support people from where they are at. Our programs primarily include women, BIPOC people, parents, career-changers, and other people historically excluded from tech careers.

Our mission isn't just providing access to tech careers. It is changing the world by developing service-oriented leaders in tech with lived experience currently lacking in the power-over, extractive tech industry of today.

Currently we are tracking the number of people who take our classes and complete them, the number of people taking part in development programs like our Agile Residency, the number of people who join projects, the number of projects we have, the number of people who have gotten jobs after participating in our training, and the number of people taking on leadership roles in the community.

We're currently working to increase the granularity of our measurement so we have a better idea about the people in our community, such as location, skills they have and want to develop. We also want to have more data about the project process so we can improve the outcomes of projects for trainees and clients.

In the future, we want to develop indicators of our more broad mission to change the way tech careers can be, such as how we can increase the number of people who get jobs or create projects that support UNSDG objectives.

We currently do not have paid staff. We have been a bottoms-up, volunteer operation, and are now working to develop funding strategies to hire our first staff, projected to be an Executive Director and a Program Coordinator. We do currently pay our Masterclass teachers as contractors based on enrollment.

Our working volunteers consist of our five-member Board, our acting E.D., and other volunteers taking on work in the community. Currently our E.D. is working about 30 hrs a week unpaid, and our Board Chair is working 10-15 hours a week unpaid.

In addition, our trainees participate on projects part-time based on their individual availability, typically 10-20 hours a week.

Tech Fleet was founded 4 years ago. We became a 501(c)(3) in mid-2024.

Tech Fleet's community primarily consists of BIPOC people, women, queer and transgender people, and others historically excluded from tech. As a community-driven operation, we take a great deal of care to make Tech Fleet welcoming to all, while also recognising that there will naturally be different skills levels among our members. Our orientation to service leadership ensures that we always are looking for ways to support one another in our community and in our goals. We do not expect anyone to be an expert, we only expect people to be willing to learn, put in the work, and to be understanding and supportive of one another. We have a Board of Directors which includes people from our community, and we, as a board, do not dictate programming or process. Instead, we exist to support the ongoing mission and expansion of resources to accomplish our goals and roadmap.

Our planned business model includes several streams of funding.

1. Earned revenue

We currently have earned revenue from classes. We plan to expand these programs.

In future, we plan to also have revenue from:

- Client fees - based on a sliding scale so we can continue to serve small or under-resourced organizations who will support our trainee's learning process and timeline and benefit from the impact of our work

- Sponsorship - as we build out our communication channels, such as our newsletter, we can offer access to our our 10,000+ community

2. Foundation / Grant funding

We have thus far not sought this funding but now that we're an official nonprofit we can more effectively support our programs with ongoing and project-based funding from foundation and NGO partners. We also plan to collaborate with our nonprofit clients to apply for grants that support tech development for their own work as well as our training.

3. Community donations

We have not yet begun campaigns to raise money from our community and allies, because we have delivered our programs through volunteer efforts. Our many successful grads are passionate supporters of our work, and we expect to develop additional ways to encourage direct support.

In addition to these revenue-based approaches to resources, we also intend to develop paths to in-kind resourcing, such as partnering with open source foundations or other organizations to contribute staff time to help us develop new programs and career development opportunities.

In 2025, we plan to begin fundraising and supporting paid staff. Our board chair has experience in the tech nonprofit space and with development. Our plan is to have a revenue mix that is about 50-60% foundation and grants funding, 20-25% earned revenue (classes, client fees), and 5-10% direct support from our community and allies.