<aside> 📌 History and Mission of Hack4Impact, Member Expectations

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What is Hack4Impact?

Hack4Impact is a student-run 501(c)(3) dedicated to empowering students to build software for nonprofits. We have 17 chapters at different universities across the United States, with over 1000 student developers, designers, and product managers. Our students gain immensely valuable experience working directly with nonprofit partners, designing, building, and delivering custom software applications from start to finish, all while serving their communities.

To learn more about what other active chapters are up to check out the following link!

Hack4Impact Chapter Center

Our Mission

To empower engineers, designers, activists, and humanitarians to create lasting and impactful social change, fostering the wider adoption of software as a tool for social good. Our guiding principles as an organization are:

📈 Impact ≠ usage metrics

🫂 Users ≠ end users

📶 Measuring impact

🔎 Emphasize their reality

🤝 We are partners

📊 We can do harm

Example Projects

• In 2019 the Cal Poly chapter built a web interface to a SQL database for a nonprofit called ECOSLO, allowing them to better manage and use their beach cleanup data
• This past summer Emory University built out a data visualization for Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit that works to protect Atlanta forests. The tool was able to display employee and volunteer hours to visualize the impact that the organization was making.
• What made these projects and teams successful?
  • Frequent and clear communication with the nonprofit!
  • Connected all members of the team to nonprofit representatives
  • Agreed on project requirements BEFORE accepting the project
  • Team members asked for help and were clear about their abilities
  • Directors were given status updates so they could help when needed