The .NET Foundation is moving all membership to Outseta, a membership platform, so that every member record lives in one place and every member has an account of their own.
For a long time, our membership records have been spread across a few systems. Some people applied through the form on dotnetfoundation.org. Some joined in earlier application rounds that we ran from a spreadsheet. A lot of members are on the members team on GitHub. It mostly worked, but it left us without a single, reliable answer to a simple question: who is a current member of the .NET Foundation?
It also left members with no way to see or correct what we hold about them.
Outseta fixes both. All membership records, more than 900 of them, are now consolidated into a single platform. Members get their own account where they can check and update their information at any time.
"Membership is the foundation of the Foundation, and we owe members a straight answer about their own status and their own data," the .NET Foundation said. "One system, one record per member, and the member holds the keys. That is what this move gives us."
In the first week of October, we will send every member an email from [email protected] with a link to activate their account. Members click the link and set a password. Everyone needs to do this once, because activating the account is how a member confirms their membership.
The activation link works for 30 minutes. If it has expired by the time a member opens it, the page offers to send a fresh one.
The activation email comes from our own domain, dotnetfoundation.org. It will never ask anyone to reply with a password.
The sign-in page itself is hosted by Outseta at dotnetfoundation.outseta.com. That is expected, and it is the only other domain involved.
If a message about this arrives from any other address, members should not click it and should let us know at [email protected].
If nothing has turned up by the middle of October, check the spam or promotions folder first. If it still is not there, we may not have a working address on file, which is common for members who joined through the GitHub members team and keep their email private. Write to [email protected] with a name and GitHub username and we will sort it out.
This is a one-off email about a member account. It does not sign anyone up for marketing. The newsletter stays separate, and it stays opt-in.
Member accounts hold only what members gave us when they applied: name, email, country, GitHub, LinkedIn and Discord usernames, committee interests, how they heard about us, and the date they were approved. For members who joined through the GitHub team, it is the GitHub username plus the name and email on their GitHub profile. Members who would rather not be listed at all can write to [email protected] and we will remove the record.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week of 14 September | - Announcement, newsletter, and social posts |
| First week of October | - Activation emails go out in stages |
| Week of 12 October | - Reminders, and a resend to members who have not activated |
| Week of 26 October | - Final resend to anyone still not activated |
More detail is at https://dotnetfoundation.org/news-events/detail/.net-foundation-moves-all-membership-to-outseta. Questions are welcome in the #general channel on our Discord, or at [email protected].
The .NET Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that supports the open source .NET ecosystem. We steward open source projects, run community programs and events, and give the .NET community a home that is not owned by any single company. Membership is free and open to anyone working in or around .NET.
Learn more at dotnetfoundation.org.
Chris Woodruff - Board Director, .NET Foundation
[email protected]