Craigslist Boot Camp

To everyone who may not know about Craigslist Foundation, let me start by saying that Craigslist is one of the very few, probably the only, Websites on the Internet that attracted millions of visitors to its site during 2008, while its founder managed to refrain from selling out to the billions of dollars available from the sea of investors that endeavor to make money from an Internet audience. Some may think of that element of big business as unscrupulous.

Craigslist postings are free to millions of everyday people without cost and to professional headhunters and apartment rental agencies, for a fee. Craigslist uses these dollars to support the site, creating a common good for all of us. The income received over the necessary expense of running the site is used to good purpose.

Craigslist Foundation is the non-profit organizational business model that operates the popular Website and utilizes part of that money to operate an annual Boot Camp in San Francisco.

The purpose of the Boot Camp is to connect the nonprofit community with their peers, potential supporters and resources to help the sector work more effectively. It empowers nonprofit leaders to get the resources they need to help effect change. The Boot Camp itself does not result in any economic profit to the Foundation.

This year Craigslist Foundation will operate its Boot Camp on June 20th in Berkeley, California. The very nominal fee for this one day event is $75. I want to go. I can pull together the $75.

Transportation, meals and housing will be a larger expense. I need some help with this aspect of attending.

My goal of creating a nonprofit venture to help an underrepresented and unsupported segment of our society, by creating a free social networking and informational source Website for them, while keeping it safe and private, is my goal for 2009-2010. If you would like to help me get to Boot Camp in Berkeley, CA this year, so that I might further educate myself on the process and connect with possible supporters to make it possible, I invite you to contribute to making this trip possible, either through the PayPal link that sits on the left border of this site or by publicizing the fund raising endeavor to those who might be able to contribute.