Partner with OFU 2026

Online Facilitation Unconference · November 5–7, 2026 · Online, worldwide

The short version

OFU is the annual gathering of people who facilitate online — a participant-driven exchange where the agenda is proposed and hosted by the people in the room. Founded in 2013, run as a community event ever since.

Community partners share OFU with their people. In return your organization is on the site, your members get a real discount, and you get free tickets and a place in the goodie bag.

No money changes hands, in either direction.

What we ask

Let your community know in whatever form actually fits how you communicate — an email, a couple of posts, a newsletter segment, a Slack channel, a note to your certified trainers. You know your people; we would rather you reach them well than follow our template.

That is genuinely it. There is no fee, no exclusivity, and nothing to sign.

What you get

Your logo on the OFU homepage, on the partner wall, linked to your site.

A 30% discount code for your members. It is yours, and registrations through it are tracked so you can see what your sharing did.

Your members can also take the geo-fairness discount on top: anyone may take 25%, 50% or 75% off depending on where they live, honor system, no questions asked. Combined with your partner code, a full-price ticket at the deepest rate comes to $26. That is not a marketing offer you are passing along — it is a price your members can actually afford, at an event that only needs to cover its costs.

Two free tickets to start, and one more for every ten people who register through your code. At full price those two seats are $298. Once a ticket is unlocked it is yours permanently — if someone later cancels and the count dips, you keep it. No clawbacks and no policing.

One offer in the virtual goodie bag. Everyone who registers can browse it: a free month, a template pack, a course seat, an open workshop — whatever is genuinely useful to a facilitator. A title, a paragraph or two, and a link straight to you. We read every offer before it goes up, and we never pass on anyone’s details: if someone wants what you are offering, they sign up with you directly.

How it works

1. Tell us you are in — the form at ofuexchange.net/apply takes about five minutes.
2. We email you straight away, and you can sign in immediately — no password, we send you a link.
3. Send us your logo, a one-line blurb and your goodie-bag offer. We review each one; nothing appears on the site unannounced.
4. We confirm your partnership and issue your discount codes.
5. Share it with your people, whenever suits you. Your portal shows how many have registered through your code, and how close you are to the next free ticket.

Your codes, and when they work

Your codes start working on September 9, when the $59 super early bird opens. Before then the only ticket on general sale is the full-price anchor, so a code sent early would be worth less to your members, not more — August belongs to two invitation-only offers we run to our own lists. Your portal shows the date on every code.

Sharing a code before its date gets your members an error rather than a discount, which is the one thing we would like to spare you.

The event

Who comes: independent facilitators and consultants · public participation and community engagement practitioners · L&D and organizational development teams · trainers and learning designers · community managers · agile coaches and change management practitioners · activists · leaders · change makers

First initiated in 2013 by Tim Bonnemann and run by a group of inspired volunteer practitioners. Since 2017, OFU has been hosted by the Center for Applied Community Engagement LLC. The event has been run on a cost-recovery basis — it covers what it costs to run, and that is the whole of it.

That is why anyone can take 75% off without being asked to prove anything, and why partners matter to us: you are how people hear about it.

Questions we expect

Is there a catch, or a cost? No. We are not selling you anything and you are not selling us anything. You share the event with people who would find it useful; we give your community a better price and put your name on the site.

How much work is this really? An email and a couple of posts. Uploading your logo and blurb takes five minutes in the portal.

Our community is small. Is it worth it to you? Yes. A hundred engaged facilitators who trust you is worth more to this event than a mailing list of ten thousand who do not.

Can we see who registered through our code? You see the count, never a list. We do not share attendee details with anyone, ever.

What if we cannot get to it until October? That is fine, and late sharing still counts — the ticket ladder does not expire. The one thing worth knowing is that ticket prices step up on September 9, September 23 and October 21, so your members get more for the same code the earlier you send it.

Can we host a session? Yes, like anyone else — sessions are proposed by participants, including yours. Come with a question you are stuck on rather than a presentation.

And if only three people turn up, that is not a failure. Open Space, which the unconference format grew out of, puts it plainly: whoever comes is the right people. They chose your session over everything else running at that hour, which is a stronger signal than a full room gives you.

We would rather sponsor. There is a separate prospectus for that, with three levels from $250 — read it at ofuexchange.net/sponsor.

Talk to us

hello@ofuexchange.net

Changelog

We publish this while details are still being settled, so here is what has changed since it went up. Nothing on this page ever shrinks: what you are promised when you sign is recorded then, and additions reach everyone already at that level.

• v0.2 (Aug 14) — first published draft.