Special Bulletin: NEW SLACK INVITES! and Slack FAQ
Answers to frequently asked questions including what will happen to the old Slack, how to get access, etc.
The new VFA Fellows Slack is live! Invites are being sent out in waves (we’re getting hit with a spam limit). Once you get an invite from VFAFellows2, please accept it—the more acceptances we get, the sooner the spam limit will be taken down. You can also skip the line by going to #alumni-general in the old Slack or in the 23/24 Discord and using the invite link there.
In our short survey, overwhelmingly respondents were in favor of the move with 98.8% voting yes. The Slack situation has been messy and evolving since August, with updates shared but not everybody always know what the current status is. So, we took some time to try and answer ALL questions in one place—keep scrolling for answers to everything that anyone has asked about the Slack.
We hope to see you on the new Slack soon!
- VFA Fellow Slack Volunteers
Amanda Tien (‘15) with support form Micah Leinbach (‘17) and Julia Wang (‘17)
* If by April 15 you still have not received an invite (check your spam folder for whatever email inbox was affiliated with VFA previously) and think you qualify for one*, please see B3 below. Update: Please do not fill out this form until April 15! It will take us at least that long for us to invite people in waves especially because we’re being spam-blocked by Slack :)
PS: We try not to send emails aside from the monthly newsletter, but we felt this was important. Thanks for receiving it to your inbox!
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:
A. Why we are starting a new Slack?
B. *Who will be in the New Fellows Slack and How to Onboard?
C. Why Slack?
D. What if people don’t move to the new one?
E. What’s been done so far to try and control the original VFA Slack?
F. What could happen in the future?**
G. Is this a Not-Premium Slack? And What Will Happen to the Original VFA Fellows Slack?
A. Why we are starting a new Slack
Fellows have no control over who gets added (or kicked out) to the current Fellows Slack.
Fellows have no say in the VFA Board’s decisions to either delete the Slack and/or sell/transfer to someone else.
Many Fellows are unable to access the current Slack for reasons out of their control, including: they worked for VFA for a time and VFA decided to remove them from the Slack, their account is affiliated with an old college email address they no longer have access to, they did some of the Fellowship but did not complete the full two years.
Our community is not a product.
Fellows can do more if we control it. For example, we can create automated job listing email listservs that people can subscribe to.
We choose to trust our community. There is one singular shared admin account to the new VFA Fellows Slack. We’ll never go look in your private messages or sell this space or the data in it.
We believe that all Fellows should have access to this community for free.**
We previously shared this information in last month’s newsletter bulletin along with a 2-question survey asking if people agreed with the decision. Responses were overwhelmingly pro:
B. *Who will be in the New Fellows Slack and How to Onboard
Fellows-only. Fellows are defined as anyone who completed Training Camp, and was not off-boarded due to moral or ethical reasons. VFA as we knew it does not exist and will likely not exist again. We are not interested in trying to do the work of defining who or who is not a Fellow.
To onboard to the new Slack:
Accept the invitation (either by direct email or go to #alumni-general in the old Slack or in the 23/24 Discord and using the invite link there).
Go to your profile and change your DISPLAY NAME to be your first and last name with year like this (“Andrew Yang (‘12)”)
In your profile, change your profile picture to be your real face — it helps build community!
Suggested: Join at least one #city- channel and one #work- channel
We are sending out invites via the records we had from the last days of VFA, though their records were incomplete. If you think you qualify for an invite to this community, but did not receive one (check your email spam folder!) by April 15, please fill out this request form here.
Please do not fill out this form until April 15. It will take us at least that long for us to invite people in waves especially because we’re being spam-blocked by Slack :)
C. Why Slack
We thought about this a lot, but at the end of the day, we chose the technical platform that people already “understood” (versus Discord) and had buy-in to. There are existing norms and understanding of what this space is.
We also felt an app based model kept people recognizing this as a “home beacon” so-to-speak, rather than LinkedIn or Facebook which necessitates social media buy-in and is also subject to algorithms.
In this Slack, because it’s Fellow-owned and created, we’ve also built out channels that we know are useful to our community, like easy-to-find channels from the get-go for each major VFA/USA city, private channel per Fellow year, and industry subjects like “vc” or “sales” so people can ask advice.
D. What if people don’t move to the new one?
That’s something we recognize is a real pain point. It’s why we’ve waited this long to consider moving forward. We were hoping by now that the VFA Board would either give us control of the Slack OR give control of the Slack to an entity we trusted. However, neither has occurred. With any kind of community building, it’s only as strong as the people who engage. We hope you’ll engage with us, join the new VFA Fellows Slack, and encourage 3+ VFA friends to join, too.
E. What’s been done so far to try and control the original VFA Slack?
We, members of the VFA Community Collective (the active group of volunteer Fellows who have been building and supporting our community), have been requesting ownership access of the Slack since early August. From the VFA Board and VFA HQ, we have been promised control in September, then it was delayed, then it was ultimately denied in October. Then, in November, we were told the conversation was open again, and then ultimately denied. In December, it was confirmed that the VFA Slack is seen as a program asset and is available to purchase as an “acquisition.”
F. What could happen in the future**
We would love to see a version of this space where there are more active alumni engagement efforts occurring. At this time, we’re all volunteers who have already given a lot to the community. So, for now, we are not committing to any kind of plans, activities, etc. But we welcome that in the future and would love to see people build. To that end, we will have a #future-of-vfa channel where anyone can discuss their ideas, any time.
There are potential versions of this in the future where there might be membership fees or other dues-based models. We, as individuals, have our own thoughts about that. However, what we all agree on is that there should always be a space where people can come back to, for free, and share things.
G. Non-Premium Slack and What Will Happen to the Original VFA Fellows Slack
When we were previously requesting ownership of the VFA Fellows Slack in September, we were quoted that the annual price to maintain premium—even at a nonprofit rate, for the number of people we have—would be $10,000/a year. This is not worth fundraising at this time especially annually and especially since we (as alumni volunteers) do not have a business or organizational structure. If someone else wants to take the lead on this or has a connect at Salesforce/Slack, go for it!
Note: The current VFA Fellows Slack will downgrade regardless in April to the free version. So, if you have archived messages you care about, now’s the time to save them.
With the free Slack, we will have access to the previous 90 days of messages. To help manage around this, we will continue to lean on our external, Fellow-owned resources like the Notion, and we will also utilize a welcome bot with info plus reminder announcements to ping pinned messages at the top of the new 90 day cycle.
Submit a Blurb for the Next Newsletter
The next newsletter will be on Thursday March 6, 2025. Submit your blurb here (it’s also linked on the homepage of the newsletter) any time in the day/evening on Weds Mach 5.
Thanks for reading VFA Community Collective Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive updates from and about VFA Fellows.