The nonprofit Portland Women in Technology is shutting down, citing falling corporate funding for sponsorship.
The board voted in January to suspend operations due to “lack of predictable” funding required to support the group’s work. PDXWIT has been around since 2011 when an ad hoc group of women working in technology started meeting for regular happy hours.
Executive Director Hazel Valdez took over in December 2022. Early in her tenure she assessed the group’s runway and potential for fundraising. She said she knew it would be challenging but was optimistic the organization could carry on.
“Unfortunately, this optimism was misplaced,” she said.
There wasn’t a single event that led to the decision to shut down but several. First, the group saw an immediate decline in sponsorship renewals, Valdez said. The team took on the added expense of a development coordinator to boost fundraising, but that didn’t work. And, she said, the granting environment is much more difficult as more nonprofits compete for limited funding while corporate sponsorships pull back.
“Long story short, we recognized the need for our financing model to evolve in an effort to compensate for the new market conditions PDXWIT was now experiencing, but we were not in a financial position to enable the organization to effectively pursue a change in strategy," she said.
The group is a nonprofit and hosts events and other programs designed to support unrepresented folks working in technology. It does not charge for membership and counts 10,000 people within its community. It has hundreds of volunteers.
The group is expected to officially end before April. This also means cutting four staff members, including Valdez.
The board issued the following statement:
“The decision to close down PDXWIT did not come easy, but it was absolutely necessary. Due to the lingering effects of the pandemic coupled with ever-decreasing corporate budgets dedicated to diversity and inclusion work, the organization has found itself in an increasingly untenable financial position — despite incredible efforts by the staff and leadership to sustain it. Without predictable sponsor and grant dollars focused on diversity, inclusion and equity, PDXWIT cannot continue doing the work it has championed and supported for so long. This is a terrible loss for the community and for DEI work in general.”
PDXWIT's mission
PDXWIT has hosted hundreds of events over the years and even kept up virtual events throughout the pandemic. Recent past events included topics such as how to prepare for technical interviews, big data and AI, and how to break into a tech career or tech-adjacent career. The group also worked with more than 1,200 people through its PDXWIT Mentor Program.
In 2021 it went through its own inclusivity work and unveiled a new mission statement. It also committed to publicly documenting its own work on inclusion and intersectionality on its website to encourage other organizations in town to do the same.
In addition to networking and training opportunities, the group has also offered scholarships to members who wanted to participate in industry conferences but could not afford travel or registration. The group also collected data to illustrate the state of technology for women and unrepresented people in the industry through its annual community survey.
The group also has an active Slack channel and they are deciding if that will remain, Valdez said.
At its peak the group had a budget of about $500,000 and nearly 90 corporate sponsors.
This is the second major shift in support resources for underrepresented professionals in technology. Last year the TechTown program and its associated Tech Diversity Pledge program ended. That program had been housed within Prosper Portland and that group’s software cluster initiative. The work of TechTown was shifted to the industry trade association Technology Association of Oregon.
PDXWIT is recommending members engage with national organizations such as Black and Brown Founders, Girls Who Code, National Society of Black Engineers and Women in Cybersecurity. Locally, they point people to Prosper Portland’s Inclusive Business Resource Network, Latino Founder, Startups for All and Xcelerate Women.
