During the past few months, we’ve been in the (strenuous but enjoyable) process of applying to join the 2011 Astia cohort and we were incredibly delighted and honored last week to be asked to join the Astia Portfolio.  We’re really looking forward to the 2011 Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs workshop and meeting up with all the other businesses asked to join this year.

If you’re not already familiar with Astia, they’re a non-profit organization that helps link women-run businesses up with advanced business education, venture capital and lots of other awesome stuff.  I really admire the work that they are doing, which I will let them tell you about in their own words:

Astia is a global not-for-profit organization built on a community of men and women dedicated to the success of women-led, high-growth ventures and to the eradication of the need for the organization within the decade.

The Astia method is designed for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs who understand the value of extraordinary relationships and believe in giving back.

Their focus is on connecting businesses with female leadership (in DonationPay’s case, that would be moi!) with venture funding, an outstanding and far-reaching network of advisors, and access to a powerful support system; their Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Workshop begins in a few weeks and we are so delighted to be able to attend (and by we, again, I mean I).  Looking forward to the workshops, panels and work with the Astia advisory team, who donate their (very valuable) time pro bono to help businesses like ours continue to expand and provide innovative products or services to the market.

Also, their CEO, Sharon Vosmek is pretty much completely amazing.  Check out her video interview here about Astia’s mission and it’s practical work:

Long story short, we are totally stoked!  The entrepreneur’s workshop is happening just a hop, skip and a jump away from our new offices here in Berkeley, so I will do my best to Tweet and blog from the front lines.  Also, obviously the first order of business is for Astia, a non-profit, to ditch PayPal as their donation processing provider and start raking in the individual donation dollars with DonationPay!

Happy Fundraising,

AJ

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ