How we brought together 30 students to build software for social good
Our journey in starting a Hack4Impact nonprofit chapter and bringing the Tech x Social Impact movement to the cornfields of Urbana-Champaign 🌽
“Building Technology for Social Good”
Last August, I attended Hack4Impact’s “Building Technology for Social Good” event at the Airbnb headquarters in San Francisco. I stumbled upon this event by chance on Eventbrite while browsing for some combination of technology, product management, and nonprofit-related events in the Bay Area. With an interesting premise, an opportunity to visit the Airbnb office, and the promise of food 🍕, I decided to check it out.
At this event, members of the recently formed Hack4Impact National team explained their origin as a nonprofit organization at the University of Pennsylvania, their mission to build software to enable nonprofits, and their plan for expansion across the nation. The talk focused on how to build a tech-driven social impact organization and ended with a call to action for aspiring technology leaders to build such organizations on their own college campuses.
The talk resonated with me. I was familiar with building technology for social good. As an undergraduate, I was a part of a research group that built low-cost prostheses for amputees in developing countries. I recalled my realization of how technology could be a tool for widespread impact, reaching the less fortunate around the world, rather than just producing the next iteration of the Xbox or iPhone. Both companies and individuals could be applying their technological expertise in so many more socially impactful ways.
Inspired by the mission of Hack4Impact, the charisma of the National Board leaders, and the potential of building something new, I shared my excitement with a close friend, Varun, and convinced him to join me. Together, we applied to their chapter program in the hopes of building a successful Hack4Impact nonprofit chapter at UIUC.
Upon applying and interviewing with the National Board which consisted of a written application, a couple video chats with National Board members, and a mock product design challenge, we were selected to be part of Hack4Impact’s first cohort of incubating chapters.
Building a Social Impact Team & Product
In our first semester of operation, our goals were modest: recruit a team and successfully deliver a software product to our nonprofit client. We needed to establish a foundation of committed members and develop our organization’s reputation before we could hope to scale.
Building the ideal team is a challenge at Hack4Impact, because our definition of ideal means not only selecting applicants that are the strongest technically, but also taking in students who have minimal experience but are willing to put in the time and effort to gain a lot from being a part of such an organization. After all, Hack4Impact exists not only for nonprofits, but also for students from all different kinds of backgrounds. A diverse team is able to share their unique backgrounds and experiences with each other and come up with more creative solutions that cover the full spectrum of user needs. On top of that, teams cannot be too big or too small, and elements such as team chemistry and the requisite technical skill set need to be considered as well.
From over 30 applicants, we took six new members, raising our member count from two to eight. Together as a team, we spent the next two months designing and building a product for our nonprofit client. Our first project was with the Neighborhood News Bureau (NNB), a nonprofit based in St. Petersburg’s midtown area in Tampa Bay, Florida. Their mission is to promote the education of journalism and the preservation of African American history. NNB had been developing a large database of local black history stories and resources and was struggling to figure out the best way to make this data useful to the public, primarily students in the local community (schools, libraries, community centers and local organizations).
We started by having several calls with NNB to dig deeper into the problem. As the product manager, I wrote the product requirements document (PRD) fully detailing our product solution: NNB MapStories, an educational tool where students can explore historical data through a timeline and historical maps, and where the nonprofit staff can easily add/edit data through the application itself.
Following this, we helped the team get up to speed on our tech stack: React, Flask, and PostgreSQL. The next several weeks we spent developing the product. We met weekly to discuss technical and design choices, to make sure all members knew why they were building their feature and were aware of what everyone else was doing, and to distribute tasks for each member to work on outside of our meetings.
We started having “dev nights” where we would all set aside a chunk of time at night and meet for several hours to just work on the project together. This was a great time to get help from each other, but also there is nothing quite like working on a Wednesday night with a team towards a common goal and sharing sweet cookies to facilitate team bonding. In addition, we began to build our community by starting our “meetups” initiative which was where we would pair up members to meet outside of Hack4Impact each week.
In early January, we successfully handed off our product. NNB has already started to add their historical data to this application and the product will be launched mid-2018 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first African-American settlers in the St. Petersburg area (1868)🚀.
Scaling4Impact
As a result of our successful first semester, Hack4Impact UIUC graduated from being an incubating chapter to becoming one of the first official Hack4Impact nonprofit chapters 🎓. We had successfully recruited a team, shipped a product to a nonprofit, were featured in our school newspaper, and now it was time to scale.
Since January, Hack4Impact UIUC has grown from 8 members to 34, and we are working with a total of four nonprofits. For Kiva, we are building an APR pricing tool to replace a tool “universally hated” by their employees and volunteers. For Cut to the Case, we are developing a sexual assault reporting platform to facilitate the report process. For Love Without Boundaries, we are creating a management system to support a tutoring program between Cambodian students and English tutors. Finally for Neighborhood News Bureau, we are working on a new feature release to add additional functionality to what we built first semester and improve the user experience.
Scaling such an organization comes with a lot of its own challenges worthy of a separate post. However, getting to see this community of people who are passionate about tech and social impact grow is well worth the challenge. Ultimately, we hope Hack4Impact will not be a place where students only want to join to gain experience working on impactful nonprofit projects, but a wholesome community students wish to join as well.
Hack4Impact continues to expand nationally and we would love for student leaders passionate about technology and social good to join our mission. If you are interested in starting a Hack4Impact organization at your school, visit here for more information!
Alvin Wu recently graduated from UIUC with a BS/M.Eng in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He served as the Co-Founder, Co-Director, and as a product manager for Hack4Impact UIUC. You can reach him at alvin@hack4impact.org.
