Reports on The Carpentries

One Year Independent: What We’ve Learned from Our Fiscal Sponsorship Transition

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 1st February 2025, The Carpentries completed its transition from a fiscally sponsored organisation to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Over the past year, the Executive Team undertook a formal evaluation to understand how this shift has affected our mission delivery, governance, finances, and relationships with our community. This post summarises the main themes that emerged.

Being independent has given The Carpentries greater latitude to make decisions that reflect our values and long-term strategy. This has been particularly important in a changing funding landscape. Our experience navigating a major federal proposal independently, and ultimately declining an award whose conditions conflicted with our commitment to inclusivity, underscored the importance of organisational autonomy and reinforced the role we intend to play as a values-led organisation in the open science ecosystem. Our leadership and decision influenced the Python Software Foundation to also reject federal funding on the same grounds.

Publication of The Carpentries 2024 Annual Report

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The past year’s Annual Report and Financial Statement are now available on The Carpentries website. Continuing with the approach we adopted for reporting in 2023, we have dissolved the distinction between the 2024 Annual and Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report, accompanied by a Financial Statement.

The 2024 Annual Report can be found on our website’s Impact page, and the 2024 Financial Statement is on our website’s Financials page.

Publication of The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report is now available on the Reports page, our central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports released by The Carpentries.

This year we dissolved the distinction between the Annual and the Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report. The Annual Report provides highlights of the work the Core Team and community achieved in 2023, and also provides some priorities for 2024. It includes messages from our Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and from our newly-constituted Board of Directors. It also shares key financial data on our income and expenditures over the course of 2023, giving insight to our continued financial stability for supporting our mission. Additional details about our 2023 financials can be found in our Financial Statement.

Sharing the 2023 Community Survey Evaluation Report

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2023, The Carpentries launched a community survey to inform and prioritise our work and that of the Core Team so we can better serve the community. We asked community members to take 5 minutes to provide feedback on their experience as Carpentries community members, seeking feedback that will help us better understand the benefits community members get from their participation and inform areas of improvement.

We received 200 responses to the survey. It is difficult to identify a response rate without an exact count of the number of active community members. However, this represents 5% of The Carpentries Slack workspace members and 7% of those subscribed to Carpentries Clippings, our newsletter.

Publication of The Carpentries 2022 Annual and Financial Reports

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The past year’s Annual and Financial Reports are now available. They can be found on the Reports page, the central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports released by The Carpentries.

The reports highlight all the work that the Core Team and community have done in 2022, and in addition the Annual Report also outlines some priorities for 2023.

2022 Annual Report

The Carpentries 2022 Annual Report contains a joint message from our Executive Council and the Executive Director of The Carpentries, Dr. Kari L. Jordan. It also reflects on the achievements of the organization and the whole community in responding to the year’s organizational priority of addressing the accessibility needs of our global community.

Now Published: The Carpentries 2021 Annual and Financial Report

Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This past year’s Annual and Financial Reports are now available. The reports can be found on the reports page, The Carpentries’ central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports.

We hope you take the time to read these reports to see all the work that our Core Team and community have done in 2021.

2021 Annual Report

The Carpentries Annual Report is an effort to summarize the work done towards our mission in 2021. It is a crucial tool that helps us understand where the community and Core Team have devoted our time, while also helping us know where to focus our efforts in the next year. Additionally, the report provides an opportunity to reflect on where we have been and where we are going.

The 2021 Instructor Training Report

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Instructor Training Team is excited to release the 2021 Instructor Training Report. This report is an in-depth look at the Instructor Training program and provides an update on its successes, challenges, and growth.

Quick Facts

Instructor Training Outcomes

Trainees rate Carpentries Trainers very highly.
- The majority of trainees thought Trainers gave clear answers to questions (97%), were good communicators (97%), considerate (99%), and enthusiastic (98%).
Trainees report higher levels of ability and knowledge after Instructor Training.
98% of trainees agreed that the atmosphere during Instructor Training was welcoming.
92% of trainees agreed that Instructor Training was worth their time.
74% of trainees report an increase in motivation to learn about teaching after Instructor Training.
Trainees are very likely to recommend Instructor Training to a friend or colleague.
- Recommendation scores have averaged 8.43 - 9 out of 10 for the last five years.
81% of Trainees hear about Instructor Training through word of mouth.

Instructor Training Growth

2020 Financial Report Carpentries Conversations

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Are you interested in discussing The Carpentries’ 2020 Financial Report and learning about how it was put together? Last month we announced the release of the 2020 Annual & Financial Report. Now that those reports have been made available to the community, we have scheduled two themed discussion sessions to dive into the reports later this month.

Please join Carpentries Operations Manager, Talisha Sutton-Kennedy, on a guided tour of the 2020 financial report. This discussion session (or Carpentries Conversation) will begin with a presentation and be followed by a question and answer session.

2020 Annual and Financial Reports

Wed, 19 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As with years past, we have spent some time reflecting on the past year and compiled annual reports which highlight some of our activities and shared accomplishments from 2020.

The 2020 Annual and Financial Reports are now available. The reports can be found on the Reports page, The Carpentries central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports.

2020 Annual Report

The 2020 Annual Report includes several highlights, notably a message from Executive Director of The Carpentries, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and a message written by the Executive Council. In addition, there are summaries of The Carpentries progress on our core operations and affirmations of The Carpentries values and mission.

2019 Reports and our Annual Reports Page

Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Two pivotal resources for The Carpentries community were published for the first time in 2019. The first is our 2018 Annual Report which was released in early 2019, and the second is our 2018 Financial Updates Report which was publicised by our Executive Council in mid-2019. Both reports have been an invaluable reference in communicating with new and existing community members, potential funders, member organisations, and others.

Today, The Carpentries is excited to release our 2019 Annual Report and 2019 Financial Report, and to share a central resource we have created to aggregate all Carpentries reports for ease of access.

Member Survey Results and the next Member Organisation Council Meetings

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Member Organisation Council Meetings held June 2019 were full of great conversation, questions and tips related to building local community around computational training using The Carpentries Membership. 34 representatives from 29 different Member Organisations worldwide joined four calls across three days and times to discuss all things Carpentries. We discussed the best format for regular instructor meetups, identifying local instructors, connecting to geographically local communities, the optimal number of instructors to meet training demand, and roles beyond that of instructor that facilitate workshop organisation, just to mention a few. For a more complete account, check out the meeting notes !

The Carpentries 2018 Annual Report

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Join us in celebrating the release of The Carpentries’ first official annual report! This report provides a quick overview of our activities for the past year and a look into the coming year. It also serves to communicate the mission, achievements, and fiscal health of The Carpentries to potential members and funding organizations.

Because this report is primarily intended for people and organisations encountering The Carpentries for the first time, it highlights the history of The Carpentries and the values of our community. We believe that this report will also be of interest to our current community members. It provides an quick, graphical, and (we hope!) fun overview of the past action-packed year, along with a statement of progress toward our mission, and a snapshot of our finances over the past year. If you’re looking for a resource to share with your department head, director, or other potential ally of The Carpentries - this is it!

The Carpentries: A Joint Narrative (January 2017 - March 2018)

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged officially on 1 January 2018 to form a new organisation, The Carpentries. In mid-June, The Carpentries held their first Executive Council in-person meeting. A report of that meeting will be published shortly.

In preparation for the EC meeting, Carpentries’ staff prepared a narrative report on the progress we have made as a joint organisation since we began to work together more closely from January 2017. Two key milestones during that time were the creation and launch of both The Carpentries Handbook and the new Carpentries website.

Library Carpentry Community Update

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver

Report-back from CarpentryCon and the latest governance call

Things are moving along nicely in the Library Carpentry community, helped by regular meetings of the governance group and lots of face to face talking at the recent CarpentryCon event in Dublin, where we ran a Library Carpentry Onboarding Workshop. Many people at CarpentryCon were keen to talk Library Carpentry. We are now firming up our ideas about our audience, and what constitutes a workshop, and we are currently discussing how we can get more workshops organised and more instructors trained. (We hope to announce an instructor training event shortly.)

Library Carpentry Hackathon a Great Success

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann and Belinda Weaver

Library Carpentry ran a two-day hackathon over 10-11 May as part of the annual Mozilla Global Sprint.

This was the third hackathon run by the worldwide Library Carpentry community. As ever, it was a great success, pulling in a number of people new to this community. Sprint participants from Melbourne had attended their first-ever Library Carpentry workshop only a week before.

Reflections on Assessment

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website As I approach my one-year anniversary on staff with Data Carpentry, I’m reflecting on what we’ve accomplished this year. I came into this role with no data science experience whatsoever: self-efficacy had been the focus of my doctoral dissertation and post-doctoral work. That background knowledge made for an exciting time exploring our workshop survey data and letting the community know what our learners think about our workshops.

Keep Calm and Write a Blog Post

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Writing a blog post should not be hard. A blank screen can seem very daunting, but if you populate it with a few questions, such as Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?, then you have the genesis of a post.

Workshop report? Once you’ve answered the questions above, you’re pretty much done. Throw in something that went well or a funny story about something that didn’t, and that’s it.

Data Carpentry Genomics comes to the Netherlands

Thu, 04 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Twenty-five life science researchers from across the Netherlands and Germany joined the event on March 22nd and 23rd in Science Park Amsterdam. The workshop covered multiple aspects of working with genomics data.

Lex Nederbragt from the University of Oslo, kicked off the event with an introduction to the core dataset. The rest the first day focused on working with R in RStudio environment to explore, clean and visualise metadata in a tabular format, presented by Mateusz Kuzak from the Netherlands eScience Center and has been wrapped up by Anita Schurch from UMC Utrecht introducing the Unix shell and file system navigation.

Bug BBQ squashes bugs!

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In preparation for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release, we hosted a Bug BBQ last week to resolve outstanding issues and issues identified during the Issue Bonanza.

The Bug BBQ and Issue Bonanza were a great success with 40 contributors in 8 countries holding lively discussions in the gitter chat room and submitting over 75 pull requests!

Throughout the event, the lesson maintainers commented on issues and pull requests, merged PRs and resolved merge conflicts. Francois Michonneau created a milestone in the R lesson with relevant issues for the BugBBQ, which will be a great model for future events. A huge thank you to all of our lesson maintainers who constantly demonstrate their commitment to keeping Carpentry lessons amazing!

Long-Term Assessment Strategy

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website A fair amount of discussion around assessment took place during the Software and Data Carpentry Instructor and Helper Retreat. One of the recommendations that came out of this retreat was to include skills-based questions in our pre- and post-workshop surveys to improve the accuracy of our survey results. We know that our learners come to our workshops having varying knowledge levels for programming. A way that we can capture this information, and determine whether our workshops make a difference in learner’s ability to work with data, is to add skills-based questions to our surveys. With the help of our community, we have done just that.

Updates from the Data Carpentry Steering Committee annual in-person meeting

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Every year the Data Carpentry Steering Committee members and Executive Director meet to review the previous year and strategically plan the next one. This year’s meeting was January 31 - February 1, 2017 in Durham, North Carolina, USA.

We started with a review of the previous year, and Data Carpentry has grown in all of our areas of focus, including number of workshops, number of instructors, types of curriculum, increased output of communication, assessment efforts, mentorship, partnerships, development of policies, involvement in grants, hiring of staff, and moves towards financial sustainability.

A Year in Review: Annual Moore Progress Report

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A year ago we were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Data-Driven Discovery initiative to support Data Carpentry to develop and deliver data skills training to researchers in the life and physical sciences. See our original proposal here. Thanks to the Moore Foundation, this support has allowed us as a community to run more workshops, develop new materials, develop infrastructure and advocate for the importance of data skills training for more effective and reproducible research.

YouTube for Data

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

TechCrunch is running an interesting report on Swivel, which bills itself as "YouTube for data". Anyone and everyone can upload data sets to share with the rest of the world, link together, and what have you. It's going to be a great resource for teaching...

...but I'm less enthusiastic about it for science, unless its creators have some verification and validation magic up their sleeves that they're not yet talking about. Still, it's another sign of what Richard Dawkins called "the evolution of evolvability": every new kind of thing (segmented bodies, eyes, web services) gives evolution a new affordance on which to act. Taggable public upload is turning out to be a very mutable affordance...