Earlier this year a small group of passionate Mac Admins community members announced the formation of a new 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the Mac Admins Foundation. You may have heard of it thanks to sessions at the PSU Mac Admins conference, the mention by Jamf CIO Linh Lam in the JNUC keynote this year, the MacSysAdmin conference session, in the Mac Admins Slack, or maybe even from seeing our popular VoiceOver shirt.It’s been a fun journey getting the Mac Admins Foundation built and shared with the community, and we’re actively looking for ways to share what’s happening at the MAF. Conference presentations, social media outreach, and posts like this are just a few of the ways we want to stay connected with y’all. This week Co-Chair Tom Bridge posted our first quarterly update which provides news on the Training Scholarship program we’re working on (with the support of Apple and Pearson), the expansion of the board of directors, and upcoming initiatives for 2023 and beyond. We encourage everyone interested in the doings of the Mac Admins Foundation to check out the update and to join us in the #macadminsfoundation channel on the Mac Admins Slack.
Another initiative currently in planning stages is a Mac Admins mentorship program. A group of volunteers has been meeting to build out a framework for a mentorship program designed to connect mentors and mentees within the community. We hope to have more news on this program soon! To get involved please join us in the #maf-mentorship channel on the Mac Admins Slack.
Something we officially announced in our MacSysAdmin presentation, and that I want to make sure to share here, is that the Mac Admins Slack is now funded entirely by the Mac Admins Foundation through donations made by sponsors, the community, and funds generated from the Mac Admins Foundation Store. This was one of the main driving factors of creating the non-profit from the beginning: preserving the independence of the Mac Admins community and ensuring free and open access to anyone wanting to join the Slack team. Paying for the Slack team ensures the preservation of the immense volume of knowledge shared within its channels for the benefit of all Apple IT professionals. But that’s not all the board, and the community, has hopes for in regards to the Mac Admins Foundation. Our mission is to support, foster, and grow the profession and its community. Initiatives like the Mentorship program, Training Scholarship program, and Conference Scholarships program are just a few of the ways the MAF intends to do that.
If you’d like to contribute you can do so in a few ways:
- Make a donation
- See if your employer does donation matching through giving platforms (we’re listed on Benevity, Deed, and PayPal Giving)
- Support MAF with Amazon Smile
- Buy something from the Mac Admins Foundation Store
If you’d like to get in touch with the Mac Admins Foundation, please reach out with the form on the website. In addition to that, our Slack DMs and inboxes are open for questions, comments, suggestions, and feedback. We are so grateful for the positivity and support from our sponsors and the wider Mac Admins community and are excited to see what the future holds for our incredible community.