More Harm Than Help

Hey. I'm a Black male in his late 20's residing in the United States. I grew up in Baltimore, which is currently ranked #11 globally among all cities worldwide in terms of crime rate.

I fit the description of what one would classically refer to as a "disadvantaged minority". That's why I'm speaking out against this project and blowing the whistle, sounding the alarms, and alerting all others to stay as far away from this organization, entirely, as they possibly can.

Issue No. 1 - The Stipend Amount

From what I read on the main site, the stipend provided for selected applicants for the internship is $6,000 (USD). This amount is to be paid out over 12 weeks.

Doing some quick math, that amounts approximately $500/week, for a 40-hour/week commitment.

Assuming the minimum wage where someone lives is $15/hour (generous, maybe Amazon Warehouse salary), that person would actually earn more income working in a warehouse at that rate ($600/week).

I'm not going to account for State / Federal tax since the $6k (or $5.5k?) doesn't include tax withholdings as mandated by the state. According to your site, "Interns will be required to fill out tax forms (either a W8-BEN or a W-9) in order to be paid."

Assuming the applicants you all select are not homeless or living well below the poverty line, a generous estimate for withholdings would be 20%+ (some may be returned in refunds when that person files for their tax returns the following year; little consolation for the immediate term impact). If we subtract that -20% from the $6k total, we're left with $4.8k total over a 3-month span (12-13 weeks).

That averages down to $369/week ($4,800/13[wks.]=$369.23).

However, even that total I provided above is slightly misleading since these payments are not disbursed to the applicant on a weekly/bi-monthly basis like a paycheck from an employer would.

Payout Structure is Oppressively Inconsiderate and Disrespectful

Below is a screenshot from your website outlining the payment schedule for interns:

If I'm interpreting what's written above correctly, interns can expect to receive (a) $2,000 in a lump sum payment immediately [minus tax withholdings] (b) another $2,000 over 6 weeks later at the 'mid-point' [contingent upon "successful feedback"; that's another problematic criteria] (c) followed by the final disbursement of payment at the conclusion of the program, 6 weeks later.

Before dissecting the information above, I want to revisit the same page I extracted this payment schedule from (https://www.outreachy.org/docs/internship/), and isolate this one particular statement about the time-commitment required of interns that have been accepted into this program.

To reiterate, you all explicitly state on your site (for interns) that, "Your project should be your primary focus during your internship. Unless contrary to any laws where you are located, you should dedicate 40 hours per week to your project for at least 12 weeks of the Outreachy internship's 13 week duration."

Putting that to the side, let's take a look at the payment schedule, outlined above.

$2k is disbursed to an accepted applicant upon acceptance into the internship (minus tax withholdings)
After that payment is disbursed, that applicant is not to be paid again for another 6 weeks, which equates to one and a half months, total.
During that time period, the applicant is still expected to work 40-hour weeks, faithfully with no sick / vacation / personal time taken (remaining cognizant here that this is just an internship).

Again, if we conservatively estimate Uncle Sam skimming -20% in State & Federal tax withholding from that first $2k disbursement, that intern will be left with $1.8k. Stretched over 6 weeks, that equates to this intern being forced to manage a budget of $300/week for 6-weeks straight without any economic relief.

These Conditions Border on Slave Labor

If someone were working 40 hours/week and only grossing $300, their raw adjusted wages/hour would amount to approximately $7.50/hour, which falls below the minimum wage in almost all 50 states (the federally mandated minimum is $7.25).

Even if we ignored the assumed withheld tax, and pro-rated the weekly payout at the flat lump sum rate of $2,000 spread over 6 weeks, the new hourly rate would resolve to $8.32 / hour.

Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana (no mandated minimum wage), Mississippi (no minimum wage), North Carolina, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina (no minimum wage), Tennessee (no minimum wage), Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are the only states that have minimum wages that fall below this hourly total provided by 'Outreachy'.

That's a total of 17 states.

That means 33/50 states legally require employers to pay more than what your "interns" would be making, weekly (pro-rated). That's nearly 2/3rd of the country.

(source - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state; data as recent as Sep. 2021)

This doesn't consider the fact that there are some states that mandate employers pay considerably more at minimum than what your program provides.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I was raised in Baltimore. I went to school at the University of Maryland, located in PG County. That's right outside of Washington D.C., where many of my fellow alumni sought jobs immediately following our graduation.

I was one of those children that sought employment in D.C. post-graduation. Having a degree elevated my potential choices (or so I hope). But had I not been blessed enough to have the opportunity to obtain a 4-year degree from the University of Maryland, any legal employer in D.C. still would have been required to pay me at least $15.20/hour.

That includes popular fast food restaurant chains like McDonald's.

That means that if I were to apply to a McDonald's anywhere in the D.C. city limits, regardless of the income of those residing in the surrounding areas, I'd be guaranteed to make at least +82% more, per hour, than what 'Outreachy', offers. I mention this because, when considering the current shortage of workers for lower-tier jobs like "cashier" at a McDonald's restaurant chain, its almost guaranteed that I would receive gainful employment at a McDonald's establishment if I traveled to ~3-4 locations on foot and filled out a job application in person there.

If you're incredulous about that claim, please see this article published by the Washington Post a month or so ago that covers the hiring woes of McDonald's, specifically, in this "post-pandemic" era we found ourselves in currently - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/17/fast-food-labor-shortage/

One jarring statement from that article (jarring in juxtaposition to the slave-like wages offered by your "internship"), here: "Fast-food wages historically trail those in other service industry jobs, with the typical U.S. worker collecting about $11.80 per hour or $24,540 a year as of May 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A retail salesperson, by comparison, made $30,940 a year. But even the biggest among them are going to greater lengths to attract workers: Walmart, Target and Amazon, for example, all announced full-ride college tuition programs for employees in recent weeks."

From this quote:

On average, any fast food restaurant hiring anywhere in the continental United States, is paying employees at any position approx. ~41%+ more/hour than what you all are paying your "interns".

Going back to the D.C. example, I gave, one could expect to make $608/week (before taxes), if they opted to work at McDonald's (or really with any employer willing to employ them within the city limits).

Of course, McDonald's, unlike your internship provides paychecks for their employees either once a week or once every two weeks (like most normal employers). Paying employees once every 6 weeks would put their survival in question, especially if those individuals were being paid the basement-level wage rate that you're offering.

If someone were to work 40 hours / week at the rate of $15.20 (D.C.'s minimum wage) for 13 weeks, they could expect to receive $7,904 (befor taxes), vs. the $6,000 (or ~$5.5k you're looking to give your "interns"). That's a 30%+ increase.

Questioning the Legality of Outreachy's Setup

After doing some cursory research, I quickly discovered that the organization responsible for creating & organizing this 'Outreachy' bi-annual internship employment event is domiciled in New York City.

Specifically, 137 Montague St., Brooklyn, New York (zip - 11201). That's in New York City.

According to records collected by the U.S. federal government, the mandated minimum wage in NYC is $15/hour at the time of writing. Taking this fact into consideration, one must wonder whether the "contractor" structure suggested by the mandatory W9-tax form completion by all accepted interns (before the first disbursed payment), is an accurate reflection of the relationship between internship and intern or simply a clever backdoor maneuver to circumvent federal wage laws in an effort to unethically, illegally & subversively acquire full-time employment from individuals in marginalized communities at nearly half the hourly wage rate they'd normally receive if gainfully employed at any other legitimate establishment in the city where your parent organization is domiciled.

An entry on 'Investopedia' covering the intracacies and nuances of 'W9' forms outlines potential ulterior motives that could drive a company to force their employees to complete a 'W9' form in lieu of a 'W4' or 'W2', as law mandates in structures such as this one.

That article can be found here - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/082714/purpose-w9-form.asp

Some notable excerpts from that article:

" Another situation in which you should hesitate before filling out Form W-9 is if the company asking you to do so is your employer and you are supposed to be classified as an employee, not an independent contractor. The difference is substantial."
"If you're an employee, your employer will withhold income taxes, withhold and pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, and pay unemployment tax on your wages. If you're an independent contractor, it won't. That means you'll be responsible for the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and that you won't be eligible for unemployment compensation if you are laid off" (profound)
"An unscrupulous or financially struggling employer might try to classify an employee as an independent contractor to save money." (likely the case here with 'Outreachy')
"If you're classified as an independent contractor, your employer's tax 'savings' will come out of your pocket as self-employment tax. You'll also become responsible for calculating and paying your estimated taxes four times a year and filling out Schedule C when you file your annual tax return."
- "If you're an employee, you should fill out Form W-4, not Form W-9."
"Here's an example of when an employer could legitimately change your status from employee to independent contractor...You will be able to work from home or whatever remote location you want, and you can complete the work during any hours you want, as long as your assignments are completed on schedule and you respond to work-related phone calls and emails on time" (this is clearly not the case for those that are selected as "interns" under the 'Outreachy' program as they are forced to clock in 40-hours/week, regardless of their work output & they must also check in to meetings with their mentor / supervisor, whom meticulously tracks whether that employee has completed work to a satisfactory degree; per that mentor's discretion, the employee in question, could be forced to work for another 5+ weeks before receiving their second or third $2k disbursement, regardless of whether that individual worked a legitimate 40-hours/week during the originally designated 12/13-week time frame or not. And even after an additional 5 weeks of unpaid work is solicited from the intern, the mentor is not required to provide feedback necessary to elicit the disbursement of the overdue payout for that intern as they could ultimately elect to terminate the agreement entirely at that point...these are sweat shop conditions, at best).

These Facts Alone Make Your Internship a "Must Avoid"; Soliciting Applicants from Marginalized Communities Under this Structure is Flagrantly Predatory and Sickening

Especially when considering the fact that you all are looking for candidates with the acumen necessary to quickly integrate useful digital / IT-related concepts & skills in a fairly short amount of time (13 weeks).

Which brings me to my next point.

Wages aside, when taking other factors into account, its questionable whether your employment structure is legal; adjudicating this program as unethical is a foregone conclusion for me at this point.

Beyond the sketchy employment structure shifted on the "accepted applicants" to this 13-week period of indentured servitude, the complete lack of employment benefit (or benefit of any kind) provided to these employees despite their 40-hour+ work week requirement for at least one full quarter of the year calls into question the nature of this program, entirely.

Here are the Benefits that McDonald's Offers to its Full-Time Employees (your internship provides...none):

Health and Dental insurance as well as options for Occupational Accident & Life Insurance plans.
100% 401k plan and performance-based bonuses
Employee discounts, flexible hours (your hours have zero flexibility since its mandated that interns work 40 hrs./week, for the full duration of the internship regardless of what issues may arise during their time; your site insists that if this requirement cannot be met, then the interns must work out an "extension" with their "mentors", which I'll assume must be completed if they wish to receive all 3 payout tranches from your program)

evidence of the claim above (from your website - https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/mentor-faq/)

Family Medical Leave as well as Maternity & Paternity Leave (your site doesn't include any information that so much as hints at the possibility for consideration for extraneous circumstances such as these; when considering the fact that we're currently in the throes of a global pandemic that has manifested a pattern of resurging at various intensities every few weeks or so, it appears that illness caused by the highly contagious COVID19 is not considered an acceptable extraneous circumstance either, since this is not mentioned)
Tuition Assistance (not even so much as an offer to provide a letter of recommendation for interns that successfully complete their 12-13 weeks of indentured servitude to the 'Outreachy' organization)
Paid Time Off (clearly out of the question for the slaves you all recruit for this program)

(source: https://employeebenefit.info/mcdonalds-employee-benefits/)

Mentors Hold Unmitigated 'God Tier' Authority Over Applicants

Nothing better to help out folks from marginalized communities than to suck them into a perverted, unmonitored / unchecked power structure where their financial fates are placed entirely in the hands of the mentors' assigned to "guide" them through their process (this is sarcasm).

In all seriousness, this is one of the aspects of the program that concerns me the most. By giving mentors what could effectively be deemed unfettered, superseding unquestionable authority to determine when an employee receives payment, with the power to delay said payment by up to 5 weeks (assuming its ever relinquished at all) without being required to provide any justification beyond their own arbitrary disposition on that employee's work, the mentor-intern power dynamic appears (from the outside looking in) as if it was constructed with the intent of making abuse (of all sorts), a near-inevitability.

To drill this point home, I'll isolate some statements from the 'Outreachy' project site outlining the mentor's role, duties & powers in relation to the project as well as the intern.

On your site, it is stated, "During feedback, mentors say how long they want the internship extended for. An internship can be extended by up to five weeks total."
That's followed with the statement, "After the internship extension is finished, mentors will fill out the feedback form again. At that time, they can choose to pay the intern stipend, extend the internship further, or terminate the internship."
Following number 2 (above), its clear that mentors are able to effectively force their interns to work an additional 5 weeks, using the money they're owed as a 'carrot on the string' to extract more work from these individuals. The only barometer that's used in determining whether an intern will be asked to work this additional time is the mentor's subjective assessment on whether the intern has put in enough work.
Under the "Adjust Project Goals" section, where it explicitly states: "Outreachy organizers prefer not to extend internships or terminate internship contracts if interns are putting in a full-time commitment."
"Mentors will adjust the internship goals to fit to the level of the intern's ability, their interests, and the project's priorities throughout the internship" (again, arbitrary)
"If your intern is putting in a full-time effort, you should authorize payment of their initial stipend." (operative word here, should, but not must; so if the mentor feels like being an asshole/unethical/abusive/manipulative or perhaps even extorting the applicant, then they are free to do so, without consequence & likely without even being detected or reported [again, this relationship is unsupervised & there seems to be no built-in 3rd-party mediation, arbitrator, or authority to "check" a bad mentor])
"An internship extension also moves the due dates of the mentor feedback by a similar amount. For example, if the internship was extended by 2 weeks at the midpoint feedback, then the final feedback due date be 2 weeks later, and the internship would end 2 weeks later." (drilling home the fact that extending the internship timeframe extends the payout dates as well, since the feedback dates would be pushed back and the payouts to interns cannot be delivered until positive / affirmative feedback on their progress & work has been reported to HQ ['Software Freedom Conservancy']

Where is the Money Going to?

Sponsorship information for 'Outreachy' is provided here on your site - https://www.outreachy.org/sponsor/

The actual list of sponsors (corporate or otherwise) and their corresponding donation tier levels are listed on your homepage underneath the 'May 2021 internship sponsors' header.

At the time of writing, that list includes: 'Amateur Radio Digital Communications', 'Ford Foundation', 'Google', 'Red Hat' (underneath the "Ceiling Smasher" tier).

This is followed by 'indeed', 'Microsoft', and 'mozilla' at the "equalizer" level.

At the "promoters" tier, you all have: AWS (Amazon), Bloomberg, Fedora, 'Wellcome', and Wikimedia listed.

Below is the sponsorship tier-scale re-published for convenience since we're going to reference it here:

Among the 'ceiling smashers', there were 4 companies listed
Among 'equalizers', there were 3 companies listed
At the 'promoters' tier, 5 companies were listed

Assuming each one of these companies contributed the absolute minimum required to receive tier designation, the calculated total among the companies listed above would be [($52k4)+($32k3)+($19.5k*5)]; which totals to $401,500 for the 'Outreachy' program.

But what is that money used for?

According to your site, only 52 interns were selected for the Dec '20 - March '21 'Outreachy' internship period.

Assuming they all successfully completed their internship without further issue and were paid the full amount promised ($6,000), the aggregate payout for that group of interns would equate to approximately $312k.

That falls well short of the $401,500 we calculated above (by about ~28.5%).

Of course, we can't look at the payouts given to these interns as a "sunk cost" by any means since the interns are required to complete 40-hour work weeks and are not paid until they have done so successfully (per the subjective assessment of their 'mentors').

This must be taken into consideration because despite 'Outreachy' claims of not "employing" these selected applicants as employers, but rather "contractors" (wouldn't a 'W4' form be needed vs. a 'W9'?), its clear that the individuals you all select as interns are working for you, full time.

For the sake of thoroughness, let's go back to the Sponsors and outline the remaining ones included under the 'Includers' tier.

Those entities are: 'Cloud Native Computing Foundation', 'Collabora', 'Debian', 'Foss Responders', 'Gnome Foundation', 'NumFocus', 'The Perl Foundation', and the 'Software Freedom Conservancy' (didn't feel your own organization was worth contributing at a rate higher than that reserved for the lowest tier of sponsor?).

Assuming a $6.5k flat contribution per member, the aggregate total received from sponsors in that tier must be at least $52,000. Adding that to the $401k total we calculated earlier, that brings us to an estimated total of $453,000 received from sponsors / donors for this very project.

To reiterate, with 50 applicants selected for the first round of this year (2021), the total payout for each applicant (assuming successful completion of their "internship"), would be $312k.

Juxtaposing that payout total next to the accrued revenue from sponsor donations for this most recent round ($453k new adjusted total), I calculated a 45%+ surplus, overall. Again, this does not consider the fact that the $312k in payouts are not donations but rather basement-low salaried

Digging Deeper into Your Parent's Finances

As iterated on your site and on the corresponding GitHub, this project, 'Outreachy', was founded (and continues to be maintained & operated) by the organization, 'Software Freedom Conservancy'.

Since that organization is a 501c3, I figured that the organization must public its tax returns publicly, per IRS law (Form 990). Fortunately, my intuition proved correct. More good fortune came my way when I was able to locate a valid source to extract information from this organization's 2018 & 2019 tax returns (ProPublica).

That site featuring links to various years' returns from this 501c3 organization can be found here (again, ProPublica) - https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/412203632

Specifically, I want to hone in on your org's 2019 tax returns here - https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/412203632/03_2021_prefixes_37-42%2F412203632_201902_990_2021030417785623

In the screenshot above, we can see that your organization pulled in $3 million in contributions in 2019 alone, an $800k+ increase over the previous year ($2.2 million raised; +36% increase in contributions). In total, your organization clocked $3.3 million in revenue for 2019, an increase from the $2.7 million made the previous year.

Yet despite these increases, you all failed to adjust the stipend payouts for your accepted interns to the 'Outreachy' program, accordingly; so it seems the additional ~40% windfall of cash the Software Conservancy received couldn't find a home in the organization's own 501c3 subsidiary that begs for additional sponsor contributions on an annual basis whilst simultaneously forcing mentors to find their own independent sources of funding as well.

Evidence of this is provided by the wayback machine.

Stopping Here Because I Have Shit to Do

I'm disgusted with this organization. Trust and believe that I am far from done at this point. There are a million more points of contention & concern that I have with this project and I will make sure that they are all isolated, identified, brought to the public's attention, then subsequently sent to be reviewed by the appropriate regulators and enforcement bodies responsible for ensuring that poison like this program does not continue to fester much longer in its current state.

Its clear to me at this point, that this program was established with the purpose of trapping those from marginalized communities without opportunity, not for the sake of elevating their situations, but rather to exploit them.

There's no rational reason why any reasonable individual with any sort of opportunity around them (in any facet) would ever consider agreeing to the oppressive mandates for employment your "opportunity" comes with.

The wages that applicants are paid is outright unethical. They're not even competitive with what one could expect as an entry-level worker at McDonald's in the city where your organization is domiciled.
The fact outlined in number one (above) notwithstanding, your most recent published Form-990 tax returns (for 2019), show that your organization netted approx. ~$3M in contributions, which is a rough increase of ~40% from the prior year. Despite this windfall of cash your organization received, you all are paying applicants *even less money than you did prior to this windfall (you all paid them $6.5k in 2019, before the completion of that fiscal year that saw you all net a ~40% increase in contributions; source - https://web.archive.org/web/20181105051722/https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/)
Based on the information conveyed on your site in conjunction with open source intelligence provided by the IRS & other helpful entities like 'Investopedia', I strongly believe that the W9 form mandate imposed on all accepted applicants is illegal under U.S. federal law. Sadly, it appears that federal law is being disregarded for the sake of further exploiting these applicants whom you all shamelessly, yet boldly profess a mono-focused interest in recruiting for this program
The authority given to mentors places applicants at risk for being exploited, abused (in all ways), extorted, manipulated, mistreated, defrauded and/or scammed...all in the name of 'Outreachy'. The fact that there was no thought put into providing some sort of external adjudicator to deliberate matters like whether a mentor is justified in extending the work-time required for an applicant to receive the money they were promised (or any payout at all), makes it patently obvious that this program wasn't designed by individuals that truly had the welfare of the applicants solicited from marginalized communities (explicitly & solely), at heart.

To that last point, I want to provide this screenshot below of the main page of Outreachy's site, to drill in the point of how egregious your recruitment tactics are.

Expect a follow-up to this within the next 24 hours. This draft may have some rough edges in it; again, I'm busy. Expect those to be ironed out before being sent to the appropriate regulators and shopped around the open source community and the broader software / IT-space in my effort to ensure that I can spread awareness to as many people as possible to stay far, far far far far far away from this insideous, malevolent facade of an organization.

Entities like this are why we can never turn our backs on gov't and regulation entirely.

Someone needs to take on the responsibility of cleaning up the trash that pollutes this country so that the rest of us decent human beings can live unencumbered by the filth that organizations like this ('Outreachy' & the 'Software Freedom Conservancy') epitomize.

The day this program and its attached parent organization are shuttered or pushed into the furthest nether regions of the cyber world will be a joyous occasion deserving of raccous celebration and cheer for we will be able to declare that we exorcised the 'open source' community and purged it of your organization's villanous presence, leaving it with one less parasitic, amoral opportunistic cockroach scuttling about evoking nausea among all upstanding individuals unfortunate enough to have caught glimpse of your grotesque, hideous and poorly done impersonation of a legitimate organization.

The day this vision is brought to fruition will be too soon.

outreachy / website

This Project is an Abomination (Not a Troll; Written by Black Male from Baltimore City) #505