Virtual Coffee has always been a free, volunteer-led developer community supporting the tech...

title: Virtual Coffee Needs Your Help published: true description: tags: community cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cslacllcxnjb0e9qe6nr.png

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published_at: 2026-03-31 15:29 +0000

Virtual Coffee has always been a free, volunteer-led developer community supporting the tech community since 2020.

We host small-group coffees, challenges, learning opportunities, and community spaces where folks can ask questions, find encouragement, share job leads, get support, and build relationships with other people in tech.

For many members, Virtual Coffee has been more than another Slack group or online event. It has been a place to feel less alone while learning, job searching, changing careers, growing as a developer, or navigating the tech industry.

And we want to always keep it free.

That matters to us because our members are in many different seasons of life, employment, financial security, energy, and capacity. We never want cost to be the reason someone cannot participate.

Right now, though, Virtual Coffee is struggling to cover the basic costs that keep the community available.

Over time, sponsorships and individual contributions have declined. We have reached out to people and companies, covered costs ourselves when needed, and worked to reduce expenses by lowering tool costs, reviewing what we can remove or replace, and building more of our own infrastructure.

We are close to covering the basics, but not quite there.

We are also being realistic about capacity. Virtual Coffee is volunteer-led, and we are very aware of volunteer burnout. We are not promising a big relaunch, a burst of extra programming, or a sudden expansion. Our immediate goal is simpler: stabilize the basics so Virtual Coffee has room to thoughtfully plan for a sustainable future.

If you believe free, welcoming developer communities matter, we would be grateful for your support.

You can help by sponsoring Virtual Coffee through GitHub Sponsors. Even a small monthly contribution helps. One-time contributions help too.

You can also help by sharing our GitHub Sponsors page with someone at your company who supports developer communities, open source, learning, DevRel, or community programs.

And if you are looking for a developer community where you can show up, ask questions, learn with others, and be known as a whole person, we would love to welcome you.