In case you've missed my announcement on twitter:

Folks who are interested in exploring alternative education models may wish to follow my tumblelog, Education Reimagined.  This may well end up being the name of the non-profit we start, but for right now it's where I've been posting the resources I've been reading as I study how to rethink the way we've been doing education for the last century or so.

Jordan and I sat down today and made a list of the different revenue models for Ruby Mendicant University and its parent non-profit organization.  We started off this program knowing that we didn't want to charge for admission to RMU and that we wanted to treat commercial sponsorship as a last resort.  This required us to get a bit creative, but we've now got some ideas in mind that might be worth persuing.

We're looking for feedback on what people think of these ideas, and would also love to hear some ideas of your own.  Here's what we've come up with, in no particular order.

Membership Program

The Free Software Foundation runs a membership program, in which someone can become a FSF associate for  $120/yr.  This membership is tax deductable, and comes along with some benefits, ranging from some simple things like a membership card and newsletter to free admission to a conference hosted by the FSF.  We think a program like this could work for RMU once we've got our non-profit set up.

Patronage Program

We want to keep RMU and whatever educational organization we develop grassroots, and don't wish to go the corporate sponsorship route.  However, we wouldn't mind promoting individuals who were willing to make a major contribution to our organization.  These folks would likely donate something like $2000 and then get a permanent bio sketch that they could update on their own that would be featured on our organization's public website and mentioned in the newsletter that was distributed during that time period.  We feel that by connecting with individuals rather than companies would be a way to preserve the grassroots feel while still allowing some promotion of what those folks are up to.

Benefit Events

We can run some events that folks interested in what we're doing may want to attend.  For example, to promote RMU, we might be able to do something like a dinner at a conference with some special guests, or maybe even a training.  If things get more stable, we could consider running our own conferences as well.

Free Software Bounties and Reverse Bounties

Free software maintainers could approach RMU with bounties for features or fixes to their applications and libraries.  We could also post ideas of our own and ask for community funding to build useful things.  We'd work out a way to share revenue between the organization running RMU and the alumni who might help out with the work. 

Partnerships with other Non-profit Organizations

We could work with other non-profit organizations who need software built.  We could either put together a joint funding drive or accept funds directly from the NPO we'd be serving.  Similar to bounties, we'd need to work out a way to ensure alumni are compensated for their work while still also gaining a bit of income for our organization.

Job Listings

Our alumni have all had the opportunity to work side by side with me for several weeks, and I have a decent sense of their capabilities.  Many are open to consider contracting work, and some may even be looking for full time postions.  While the RMU Alumni list is currently small (22 people), they are an ideal target audience for someone looking to staff up with fast learners who already have a grasp of Ruby basics.  I am considering setting up a system in which primary employers or those needing freelance work can reach the alumni students who are interested, and charging a reasonable fee for listings.  This would likely be a manually filtered system on both sides, which would guarantee that only the best possible matches were set up.

RMU Consulting

I've considered either partnering with Madriska, or setting up some other company through which folks can hire a combination of myself and some well qualified RMU alumni to do general consulting work.  The RMU alumni are all folks that I can personally vouch for and would be happy to work with, so it might be possible for us to use consulting as a revenue stream if these other ideas don't pan out.  However, most of the other options we've been considering have centered around creating direct value for the whole community, so we'd prefer to do that where possible.

RMU Products and Services

We are producing a lot of educational material and tooling.  We are considering things like writing books, or running some web applications that people can pay for.   These materials would be under free content licenses, but folks might wish to pay for the convenience of someone else running and maintaining a system for them, or for a nicely formatted ebook rather than the raw manuscript.  But these are mostly by-products, so it remains to be seen to what extent this will be a big source of revenue for us.

Direct Donation

Last but not least, we will gladly accept direct donations.  Hopefully with enough public relations and with enough content released to the community, folks will see the value in what we're doing and wish to support us.  But by the looks of it, we have a lot of work to do before the direct donation model works well for us.  Perhaps things will get better when we have tax exempt status.

This is what we've come up with so far.  What ideas seem interesting to you?  Do you have some of your own?  Please give us feedback in the comments on this post, or if you wish to discuss things privately, email me at gregory.t.brown at gmail.com

Ruby Mendicant University is now accepting open submissions for the 2011/T1 Entrance Exam, which covers placement for the January, February and March core courses, as well as some waitlist positions that guarantee placement in the 2011/T2 sessions if a spot doesn't open up earlier.

Why Join RMU?

If you join RMU, you'll go through an intense three week online training course with me, in which you work on real problems and contribute to open source.  I maintain extensive office hours three days a week and will discuss pretty much anything related to software development during those times.  While RMU is a demanding, participants-only program, the general student body is now up to around 100 people, all of which are dedicated to improving their craft and helping their fellow students do the same.

The sessions themselves are deliberately kept very small.  We don't expect to run with more than 15 students per course throughout 2011.  Those who successfully complete the course gain alumni status, which opens up the doors to taking a number of additional courses we're putting together, and also gives them access to an alumni network which will become a great resource over time.

If you are able to commit to spending at least 10-15 hours a week working through problems for your 3 week core course, and want to be part of a new and exciting grassroots movement to improve technical education, you should definitely take the RMU exam.

The Entrance Exam

RMU is 100% based on problem solving, and that's shown by the way we do entrance exams.  You can download the exam package to get a feel for what is required.  In it, you'll find a PDF with instructions and a CSV data file you'll need to work with.  The PDF should explain everything you need to know about the problem, but feel free to ask questions as they come up, either here in the comments or in the #rmu-public channel on irc.freenode.net.

Submission Instructions

When you have completed your exam, you should create a private gist and add to it any Ruby code you wrote for the exam, and the output
text files you generated.

Once you have created your gist, you can submit your exam by filling out this form in the RMU web application:

http://university.rubymendicant.com/exams/9bb368b7c9d7cfd440170fbd0cceeab4a0bc699a

You can use the account you create to monitor your submission status. If accepted, it will become your permanent RMU account.  Please be sure to use an email address that you wish to use with google groups and applications in the future.

IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT CREATE A PUBLIC GIST.  YOU WILL BE DISQUALIFIED IF YOU DO THAT!

Deadlines

Seats in RMU are provided on a first-come first-serve basis to those who pass their exam, so there is an incentive to submitting early.
The exams may be submitted any time between now and the end of 10/19 by UTC time.  I will close submissions at that time, or when all positions are filled, whichever comes first.  At the time of writing, we still have roughly 27 slots available, but over 80 people received the exam early because they pre-registed, so act fast!