Applying to be a Mentoring Organization

The Organization application period is a very important time period for an Organization Administrator. The primary Organization Administrator submits the organization application to the contest and if accepted, ensures the organization's homepage on the Google Code-in website accurately and effectively represents the organization.

Please note: Only organizations that have participated in past instances of Google Summer of Code are eligible for acceptance as Mentoring Organizations for Google Code-in.

Submitting an Organization Application

The organization application is filled out on the Google Code-in website. To create a new organization application, go to the homepage login and click on Register as an Organization button. If you want to edit an existing organization application before the submission deadline, go to My Dashboard, click on My organization applications, and choose your organization from the list. 

1. Choose an "Organization id". Make sure that your Organization id is descriptive of the name of your project. For example, "The Apache Software Foundation" could be "apache" or "asf".  Please do not choose a Mentors' name, or something only a project insider would understand.
2. Your "Organization name" should be the full, formal name of your group, e.g. Google Open Source Programs Office or The Linux Foundation. Please be complete.
3. For "Organization description", please provide an overview of your organization that will be publicly displayed on its profile page should the organization be accepted. Here is an example:
   • "Google is a proud user and supporter of open source software and development methodologies. As a company, Google contributes back to the Open Source community in a variety of ways, including source code, Project Hosting on Google Code, and our student programs Google Code-in. For more information on Google's open source activities, visit code.google.com/opensource."
4. Please provide a URL for your organization.
5. Choose you organization's license from the drop-down menu. 
6. Please review the Mentoring Organization/Mentor Participant Agreement and, if you agree to the terms therein, click the "I Agree to the administrator Agreement" check box. You will notice that this agreement incorporates the Contest FAQs and Terms of Service by reference. Make sure you have reviewed these documents prior to agreeing, and please make sure that all of your Mentors understand that they are also bound by these terms.
7. As part of this process, you have to specify a backup administrator. Please keep in mind that they must also have a profile from having participated in Google Code-in or Google Summer of Code in a previous year. 
8. Link to your tasks page. This is one of the most important parts of your application as it lets us see what type of work you plan to have the students work on for Google Code-in. Please be sure to include at least 5 tasks from each of the 5 categories. This is similar to the Google Summer of Code Ideas page. A link to your bug tracker is not sufficient.
9. Be sure to include tags on your application. By entering tags such as programming languages and the version control system your project uses such as "Python" or "git", and descriptors of what your project does, such as "HFOSS" or "games", it makes it much easier for appropriate Students to find your organization in Melange.
10. For IRC channel and mailing list, please note that these are not required text fields. If your organization does not use IRC or you use forums instead of mailing lists, enter this information in these fields. 
11. Clicking the Submit button submits the application, and returns you to the organization application edit form. If you do not see an "Data saved successfully" confirmation message the submission was not successful. There is an error somewhere on the form, e.g. a required field missing. Such an error will be shown in red, but you may need to scroll down to find it. You can confirm the submission by visiting the My Dashboard -> My organization applications and click on your Organization name and you will be able to see the information that was sent to the Contest Administrators. 
12. You will be able to edit your submitted organization application from your dashboard until the application submission deadline. After the deadline, you cannot update your application. Should your organization be accepted, you will be able to update much of the information you submitted via updates to your organization profile.

How do I know if our organization has been accepted?

You will receive an email - sent to the email address indicated in your profile - from the Contest Administrator notifying you whether or not your organization was accepted. Emails will be sent at the time specified in the contest timeline for the announcement of accepted organizations.

Creating an Organization homepage 

You will receive a direct link to the Edit profile page for your organization in the email you receive announcing your acceptance into the contest. Please note that your organization will not appear in the Mentoring Organizations details list linked from the homepage until you have completed all the required fields in the organization profile form. Alternatively, you can edit your organization homepage by going to My Dashboard -> Edit organization profile -> click on the name of the organization whose profile you want to edit from the list -> edit the profile and Submit.

Much of the information you entered when submitting your organization's application to the contest will pre-populate to the organization profile page. The information requested is also largely self-explanatory, but here are some tips for filling out this page:

Who can see which sections in Melange after my Organization has been accepted?  

All information you enter in the Public Info is publicly available. Only Organization Administrators can see:

• Student's Organization scores 
• Mentor emails 
• The Proposed Grand Prize Winners

Designating Organization Administrators and Mentors

Anyone who wants to be an Organization Administrator or a Mentor must have first registered themselves on Melange with a Google Account.

The default Organization Administrator is the user who submitted the organization's application. You can invite more users to be Organization Administrators if they have created a profile in Melange for the current year's contest. My Dashboard -> Invite Org Admin -> Click on the Organization name -> Enter the username of the person you would like to send invitations to and enter the message you would like to send those you are inviting to be Organization Administrators.

Mentors

Because Google Code-in involves working with young students, Melange is designed so that Organization Administrators needs to invite the Mentors to be a Mentor for the contest rather than Mentors registering on their own. 

Accepting a Mentor

Once a user has been invited to be a Mentor for an accepted organization, that Organization's Administrator will be able to view whether a Mentor has accepted the request by going to My Dashboard -> Outgoing Invitations. You can view all of the invitations sent out by your organization and if the Mentors has Accepted the invitation.

How does a Mentor resign? How do I fire a Mentor? 

The Mentor informs their Organization Administrator that they no longer wish to be involved with the contest. The Organization Administrator then sends a request via e-mail (outside of Melange) to a Contest Administrator to have the account of a former (resigned or dismissed) mentor deleted from Melange.

How do I resign as Organization Administrator? 

First, contact the Contest Administrators to notify them you will be leaving and that your Backup Administrator is aware of the change. 

Send a request to melange-soc-dev@googlegroups.com requesting to resign as a Mentor and have your account deleted from Melange.  

I administer an umbrella organization. How do I identify my sub-organizations? 

When creating your task list (for more information see the Creating Tasks chapter in this manual) be sure to designate the sub-organization that the task is for in the task title. Your organization homepage should have information describing the sub-organizations for students to reference.

Loading an organization logo into Melange

This is done in your My Dashboard -> Edit organization profile.  Click on the corresponding organization in the list. Under "Logo URL", enter the URL where your logo is available for download as a JPEG, sized 64 pixels by 64 pixels or smaller.

If you don't like how your logo displays in Melange and cannot fix the problem on your own, please send an email to melange-soc-dev@google.com.