Establish Equalify Association with Unrestricted Funds

[bbertucc]

Problem

Equalify’s development is currently constrained by UIC policies, limiting outside influence on the roadmap:

• UIC hiring rules prevent us from recruiting talented engineers without college degrees.
• External organizations using Equalify (e.g., Duke) lack a clear channel for sustained support.
• At a recent session with ~80 Higher Ed accessibility professionals, we had no clear call-to-action to engage them with Equalify.

Additionally, I’ll be presenting at multiple conferences over the next 6 months. This creates a natural opportunity to funnel interest into a formal association, but no structure exists.

Proposed Solution

Create an Equalify Association to provide governance, funding, and community engagement:

1. Recognize UIC as the primary funder and stakeholder, while allowing meaningful external influence.
2. Use agile frameworks (e.g., WordPress model) instead of slow consensus-driven models (e.g., W3C).
3. Allow unrestricted funds to accelerate growth and sustainability.

If the association can repay original investors ($175k), additional assets such as the Equalify trademark could be transferred to the association.

Implementation Steps

• Define a framework that works for both UIC leadership and Equalify ambitions.
• Hire an Executive Director (ED) to lead the association and community development. That ED will:
  • Launch an Equalify user group by January to avoid forks diluting control.
  • Establish recurring monthly meetings, agendas, and outreach efforts (modeled after WordCamp).
  • Develop training resources, record instructional videos, and maintain regular updates (GitHub posts, newsletters, social media).
  • Build a membership program and sponsorship structure.
  • Represent Equalify in Industry groups (W3C, Educause, AHG, Digital Collegium, CSUN, ..)
  • Plan an annual Equalify conference/meetup.

Benefits

• Access to unrestricted funds for critical needs (hiring, paying back investors, supporting community).
• Clear call-to-action for Equalify users and Higher Ed partners.
• Greater resilience and sustainability beyond UIC.

Risks/Considerations

• Potential loss of control if assets are ceded to the foundation.
• Need to balance UIC’s leadership role with community influence.

[bbertucc]

Assigning @a11ydoer and myself to this issue.

[bbertucc]

@joelhsmith curious what you think about this one. Also going to send it to the existing Equalify User group for feedback after @a11ydoer looks at it.

[bbertucc]

An option is to add @a11ydoer, Matt Mullenweg, @kevinandrews1 and maybe another investor on the board of a nonprofit endowment focused on Equalify. We have a 501c3, which can take the trademark with the endowment being run by those trustees.