We’re excited to share that RSE-AUNZ are joining OLS as our first Fiscally Sponsored Community (FSC)! We’ll be exploring this over the next year with RSE-AUNZ as they run their flagship 2024 RSE Asia Australia unconference.
About RSE-AUNZ
The community of Research Software Engineers (Australia & New Zealand) was formed in mid-2017. The community has grown steadily over the years and is now well over 450 members
The RSE-AUNZ website contains the goals for the community. In 2023, the RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee completed a Strategic Plan to be explicit about the community priorities are, and came up with a set of five strategic selection criteria:
- Does this make RSEs value themselves?
- Does this make Senior Managers value RSEs?
- Does this grow community or raise awareness?
- Does this or can this support Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)?
- Does this sit in the policy advocacy space?
If you want to join the community, sign-up to the Google Groups mailing list.
RSE Asia Australia Unconference
A major driver for RSE-AUNZ seeking fiscal sponsorship from OLS was the flagship event - Research Software Engineer Asia Australia Unconference, organised jointly with RSE Asia. This online event occurs every September and is attended by RSEs from many different research domains, all of whom work in some capacity with research software.
OLS support is crucial to run this event, since neither RSE associations have the necessary infrastructure to make financial transactions necessary for organising the Unconference.
Fiscal Sponsorship with OLS
Fiscal sponsorship is a relatively new program for OLS. It was started mainly in response to the fact that people participating in the OLS mentorship programs (Open Seeds and Nebula) often desire to take “next steps” for their communities or projects, but may not have the legal infrastructure to do so (e.g. ways to handle money, accounting, a registered organisation, etc.), or may have an institution they can work with that may not have the desired flexibility to meet their needs.
If you want to learn more about the program, our fiscal sponsorship page.