Sponsoring Queer in AI

We need monetary support to help with our scholarships programs and event organization. Your support helps us provide aid to queer folks in need and organize workshops to provide a platform for queer research. If your company is interested in sponsoring Queer in AI, please fill in this form and our organizers will reach out to you.

About Queer in AI’s work

Queer in AI is a community of over 1200 queer and ally students, scientists, and practitioners in machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, robotics, cognitive science, and related fields. Queer in AI’s mission is to make the AI/ML community one that welcomes, supports, and values queer scientists.

Queer in AI works to help the queer AI community with many programs:

  • Workshops to highlight the work of queer scholars, as well discussing issues that affect our community;

  • Socials and meetups to build community;

  • Mentoring for undergraduates, graduate school applicants, and faculty applicants;

  • Scholarships and microgrants for graduate school application fees and emergency needs;

  • Advocacy to make conferences, schools, and policy more diverse and inclusive of queer people;

  • Participatory creation of technologies by and for queer people.

Scholarships, Microgrants, and Direct Aid

  • I was unsure about my ability to submit applications and take care of rent, necessities and family emergencies. This scholarship has made an unquantifiable difference.

    Jessica

  • This aid has helped me in paying for the testing fees and prepare my passport paperwork, I applied to this scholarship to able to pursue my dream and it provided me with the money that I don’t have.

    Thameur

  • If I could only apply to a few, I don’t think I would have said anything about my identity. This gave me the room to feel less concerned about that effect and be my truest self.

    Nicole

Statistics of our scholarship recipients.

Graduate School Application Fee Scholarship

Queer people disproportionately experience financial hardship for many reasons, including employment discrimination and lack of family support. Queer in AI, together with oSTEM, runs several scholarship and direct aid programs to provide small but highly impactful financial aid to the queer community.

Graduate schools are incredible opportunities for queer people, critical for pursuing careers in AI/ML, and, more broadly, for many pursuing their dreams to help their communities and opportunities to move to queer-friendly locations. However, applying to graduate school can cost well over $1000 USD. Each school charges application fees, tests such as the TOEFL and GRE cost hundreds, and many schools require expensive third party vetting of international applicants’ transcripts. Many schools do not offer fee waivers, or require onerous documentation that can be impossible for many applicants to obtain.

Queer in AI runs a graduate school application fee scholarship, providing up to $750 to help cover fees. In 2022 we expanded this program by over 5x to meet need, disbursing over $41,000 to 50 queer scientists to help them pursue grad school. Scholarship recipients were incredibly diverse, including every continent but Antarctica and 60% of whom identified as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color. Our 2021 program allowed 51% of applicants to take admissions tests, 43% to avoid skipping on essentials, 31% to avoid skipping on groceries and food, 29% to avoid skipping bills, and 11% to avoid skipping rent.

Emergency Aid Program

Queer people often have little savings for financial emergencies. Unexpected medical bills, school fees, or a need for temporary housing to escape an abusive situation can derail studies, careers, and lives. Queer in AI co-organizers an emergency aid program with oSTEM that provides fast-turnaround microgrants to queer people experiencing financial crisis to address this need.

Workshops, Socials, and Community Building

Workshops and Socials

Queer in AI has organized thirteen academic workshops at top-tier conferences: ICML 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, NeurIPS 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, NAACL 2022 and ACL 2023. In these, attendees heard from incredible lineups of panelists & speakers on technical topics, and topics of relevance to the queer community. Recent talks and panels include: Gender Across Cultures, Creating Safer Spaces for Trans and Non-Binary Folks, Caste in Institutions and Tech, and Neurodiversity. Workshops also feature research poster sessions, socials, and short mentoring sessions.

Queer in AI has also awarded over $35,000 in travel grants and registrations to people from dozens of countries to attend conferences where we hold workshops and socials. For virtual conferences we have continued our accessibility programs, covering registration fees and offering internet grants.

Anticipated 2024 Workshops and Socials

  • Workshops: NeurIPS, NAACL

  • Socials: EACL, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, LREC-COLING, ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, CoRL, HRI, CVPR, AMIA Symposium, FAccT, AIES

Mentorship

Many queer people struggle with a lack of community and especially with a lack of senior queer people in their fields. To address this we run mentorship programs for undergraduate students, graduate applications, faculty applicants, and speed mentoring sessions. Since 2019, we have matched over 50 graduate school applicants with qualified mentors to review and help improve their applications.

Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy

Queer in AI works to ensure an inclusive and welcoming experience for queer people at every conference we host events at. We work with conference organizers for months before each conference, ensuring that gender neutral restrooms are present, pronouns are used and displayed, effective and queer-inclusive code of conducts and grievance policies are in place, and trans-inclusive publishing practices are followed. We often also work on accessibility, and work with individual community members on specific concerns. These and other best practices we advocate for are available in the inclusive conference guide we maintain.

Sponsorship Packages

We provide Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers as stated above. Following are the benefits our sponsors receive:

Silver Tier Sponsors:

  • 25% amount earmarked for Queer in AI aid programs

  • Recognition in Queer in AI promotion materials

  • Company’s name on website

  • Receive list of opted-in participants’ contact information and resume book after each conference

  • Participate in sponsor Meet and Greet Table*

Gold Tier Sponsors:

  • 30% amount earmarked for Queer in AI aid programs

  • Recognition in Queer in AI promotion materials

  • Company’s name on website

  • Receive list of opted-in participants’ contact information and resume book after each conference

  • Participate in sponsor Meet and Greet Table*

  • Recruiting/Demo table or virtual booth/room

Platinum Tier Sponsors:

  • 40% amount earmarked for Queer in AI aid programs

  • Recognition in Queer in AI promotion materials

  • Company’s name on website

  • Receive list of opted-in participants’ contact information and resume book after each conference

  • Sponsor Meet and Greet Table*

  • Recruiting/Demo table or virtual booth/room

  • Participate in our mentorship and networking event**

  • Two minute speaking opportunity or slides during conference socials throughout the year

* Each workshop will feature a 45 minute sponsor meet and greet social, where small groups of attendees will rotate between sponsor hosted tables for conversation.

** We will co-organize a one hour virtual mentorship and networking event with you.

A La Carte Sponsorship

In addition to sponsorship packages, we also offer sponsorship for specific purposes.

Graduate Application Fee Scholarship

$750 to support a queer scientist to apply to graduate school and take entrance tests. The donation will be recognized in our social media, website, and other programming.

Queer in AI Microgrant

$750 to support Queer in AI microgrants which includes travel grants, conference registration grants and emergency fund. This will be recognized in our social media, website, and other programming.

Workshop Sponsorship

$5000 to sponsor Queer in AI workshop operations which includes rental of venue, honoraria for speakers, food for attendees and registration grants for authors.

Payments

Note on Payments

Sponsorship are processed by Queer in AI's parent organization, oSTEM; payments are to be made to the oSTEM External Partnerships Program. Queer in AI will have first say in using this money to sponsor the events above. Any leftover money may be used for future events or programs, such as travel scholarships, or affinity workshops in other fields (e.g.: Queer in HCI).

oSTEM Sponsorship

In 2018, Queer in AI officially became a member organization of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, Inc. (oSTEM, Inc.) as part of oSTEM’s External STEM Partnerships committee.

Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM), Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional society focused on LGBTQ+ people in the STEM community. oSTEM has more than 90 student chapters at colleges/universities and professional chapters starting in cities across the United States and abroad, and organizes an annual conference for queer students and professionals in STEM attended by nearly 1,000 people, including nearly 175 people in computer science and related fields. oSTEM has sponsorship tiers for this annual conference available in the oSTEM sponsorship packet. View oSTEM’s sponsorship opportunities at https://www.ostem.org/page/sponsorship-opportunities.