Roadmap 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.

Our 2026-2028 Bridge Strategic Plan is here

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Our 2026–2028 Bridge Strategic Plan

As we begin a new chapter together as a community, we are excited to share The Carpentries Bridge Strategic Plan for 2026–2028. This plan reflects where we are now as an organisation, what we have learned over the past five years, and how we intend to move forward in alignment with our core values.

The next three years are a bridge. A bridge between our recent period of organisational change and the future we are building together. A bridge between sustaining what works and investing in what is needed next. And a bridge between global growth and deeper, more equitable engagement with communities around the world.

The Carpentries Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries envision a world where all people have access to data and a true understanding of the software skills they need to address questions that are important to them, bringing diverse perspectives to challenges in science and society. We understand that comprehensive knowledge is not enough, however. Creating an environment where contributors have access to the tools they need, and feel included in the open science/open data community is imperative. This is where equity, inclusion, and accessibility come together.

Lessons Learned from our Call on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Our first Community Discussion on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility had such an impact on my work. Between the two calls we had 31 participants. I was so happy to see so many people on the calls, and appreciate everyone for their time, honesty, and perspective. We kicked off the call by reviewing The Carpentries [Code of Conduct]({{ site.code_of_conduct_url }}) and had everyone share something they’re proud of. Then we did a little jargon busting. If we were going to discuss our experiences around diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, it was important that we all had a shared understanding of what these terms meant.

Diversity is our Goal. Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility is how we get there.

Thu, 16 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Community Discussion: Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap

Whether you are new to The Carpentries community or have been part of the community for a long time, we want you to share your experiences, ideas, and perspective around equity, inclusion, and accessibility at the upcoming Community Discussion (21-22 May). Join the discussion at the following dates/times:

Tuesday, 21 May 1500 UTC
Wednesday, 22 May 0100 UTC

Sign up on the Community Discussions Etherpad to attend. Connection details for Zoom (video conferencing) and audio connection details are located on the Etherpad.

Library Carpentry’s Next Step Towards Becoming a Carpentries Lesson Program

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Chris Erdmann, Tracy Teal, John Chodacki

What Does It Mean to Be a Lesson Program?

When Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to become The Carpentries, one of the important things we needed to figure out was what it meant to be ‘a Carpentry’ within The Carpentries. Originally called Lesson Organisations in the merger discussions, they have been updated to be called ‘Lesson Programs’ in the current draft of the bylaws.

The idea for the Lesson Programs is that The Carpentries as an organisation can provide the operational and governance capacity and framework, and the Lesson Programs can focus on the goals, audience, and content of the curriculum within their program. This meant that Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry could retain the spirit of their lessons and community enthusiasm for those areas, while aligning operations around Membership, workshops, instructor training and other capacity building activities. It also created a pathway for new Lesson Programs, particularly for Library Carpentry, which was already an active community with a developing curriculum and interim governance group. We knew that working with Library Carpentry was on the short-term horizon.

A Roadmap for Lesson Development

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our Lessons Roadmap

Development of domain-specific lessons in data literacy is part of the Data Carpentry mission. Data types, language (both computer and vocabulary), the types of questions that people ask, and underlying assumptions differ between fields and communities. Therefore when learning about data analysis, it’s easiest to translate what you’ve learned to your own research when you’re being taught from the perspective of your own domain. This means that we are committed to developing lessons in new fields, with a variety of data types and on new topics.