The Carpentries Strategic Plan for 2020-2025
As its last major decision, the 2019 Carpentries Executive Council approved the first Strategic Plan for The Carpentries. This plan guides our way forward for the next three to five years. This blog post summarises the Strategic Plan; the full version is published [on the Carpentries website]({{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/strategic-plan).
Introduction
The Carpentries was founded in January 2018 via the merger of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry and was joined later that year by Library Carpentry. All three of these organisations have been dedicated to teaching computing and data skills to their various communities. United under The Carpentries we have the opportunity to work together toward a bigger and broader vision of the future.
This Strategic Plan describes how the Executive Council and The Carpentries Core Team see the path forward toward that future. It lays out six broad goals, each with its rationale and underlying objectives, that will serve as touchpoints to guide our future actions. The idea is to provide a general framework for the direction of this organisation for the next 3-5 years.
Strategic Goals and Objectives
GOAL 1: Build regional and local capacity to empower sustainable communities.
Rationale:
The Carpentries is a growing organisation that continually strives to reach new, diverse communities. We want to make available the necessary support and resources to ensure that local and regional capacity can be built in a sustainable manner. This goal will empower Local and Regional Leaders and communities, including Member organisations, to create a self-sustaining network of equitable, inclusive, and accessible learning.
Objectives under this goal are about planning for geography growth, creating programs for local leadership and developing resources for building and supporting local communities.
GOAL 2: Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.
Rationale:
As an international community, we value inclusivity and want to continue to find our strength through diversity. We, therefore, want to lower barriers to participation by ensuring that our materials are accessible, that our Instructors are culturally responsive, and that our community continually strives to follow The Carpentries Code of Conduct in all organisational activities.
Objectives under this goal are about structures, resources and mechanisms for the measuring and improving of, and training in, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and to increase diversity in participation geographically and for under-resourced institutions and communities.
GOAL 3: Provide opportunities for growth and professional development of our volunteers and Core Team.
Rationale:
As an organisation that values a growth mindset and believes that our community is our strongest resource, we want to ensure our Core Team and our volunteers are afforded opportunities to grow professionally and personally in clear, structured ways. In this way, we will strengthen our community as a whole.
Objectives under this goal relate to recognition, professional development and relevant training opportunities.
GOAL 4: Facilitate the creation and maintenance of relevant, high-quality, community-curated curricula.
Rationale:
We teach foundational coding and data skills to researchers worldwide through Data, Library, and Software Carpentry workshops. The curricula for these workshops are maintained by community volunteers as well as our Core Team. We want to ensure that our curriculum Maintainers and volunteers are valued and that new members are welcomed as part of lesson development programs. We want to ensure that new lessons are developed and maintained in a structured and sustainable way.
Objectives under this goal are about empowering contributors and developing Maintainer and Curriculum Advisor programs.
GOAL 5: Strengthen organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive.
Rationale:
As an international volunteer organisation, we need a responsive and transparent organisational structure that ensures that our community members and Core Team members are valued and treated equally. Refining and streamlining processes will allow us to use our resources more efficiently so that we can spend more time and effort in areas that will help us achieve our other goals. Diversification of our revenue streams will improve organisational stability and allow us to plan farther into the future, enable new communities to join us and realize our vision.
Objectives under this goal focus on improving organisational and governance structures and resources, increasing and diversifying revenue streams, and make doing business internationally more smooth.
GOAL 6: Advocate for our values and vision to empower more people to work with data and software.
Rationale:
To become the leading inclusive community teaching computing and data skills, we want to advocate for our community’s values and develop synergies globally to empower people and enable them to reach their potential. Our mission includes promoting and modeling the importance of software and data in research; we want to empower more members of our community to advocate in these areas both inside and outside of our organisation.
Objectives under this goal are about creating resources and opportunities for getting our message out, and build relevant relationships.