Nonprofit status

We are incredibly excited to announce that we have been granted the status of 501c3 Charitable Nonprofit Organization! This is wonderful news! We set out to become a nonprofit to truly be able to support and help grow our community with the additional resources and help and connections that comes with non-profit status. We are finally in a position to better do so.

Becoming a non-profit is only the first step of many more. Our mission statement has always been to support and engage our local cybersecurity community, focusing on education and shared knowledge. Nothing about our mission has changed, only a renewed drive to do so and new resources to make that happen. Our plan going forward to achieve that is to increase the educational content and value that 801 Labs provides to this community.

We want to focus on three main areas with this:

• Classes - more classes and educational content for people to participate in and learn from.
• Available resources - increasing and enriching the resources that the hackerspace can provide to the community. CTFs, lab infrastructure, tools and machines, software.
• Sustained community engagement - beyond just having more classes, we want to see more re-occuring content that engages with our broader community. Study groups, <insert topic> nights, events that follow an available curriculum and structure, etc.

We are still very much in the process of exploring just what and how many resources are now available to us as a non-profit. Grants, sponsorships, charity events, software and tools, other organizations in this space, etc. are all being considered, and we would love to hear your feedback about how we should proceed or ideas that can further these goals.

Some of the resources that have been made immediately available to us are:

• GSuite for non-profits
• Techsoup (techsoup.org)
• Reduced merchant fees through Paypal
• Access to grant and donation platforms
• The ability for you to be able to write off your donations!

Lets talk about donations! Any donation you have made/make this year may now be itemized and deducted from your taxable income! (if you would like to deduct previous years' taxes, talk to a tax expert for advice) To write donations off, all you will need the 801 Labs EIN, which is 46-4280893. Some companies have philanthropy programs where they will match donations made by employees, so be sure to check and see! This can be a great way for companies to be able to support the local communities and missions that their employees care about. If you would like help getting your company set up, please reach out to @BashNinja ([email protected]) to make that happen!

We are so excited to be moving forward and upwards. We also cannot wait to be able to see everyones faces again, and we will have a separate announcement regarding how and when the hackerspace will be re-opened very soon. If you have questions, comments, concerns, or are interested in engaging more with this community but are unsure how, please reach out to [email protected]

Thanks y'all, happy hacking <3