Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Awards Multi-Year Grant to hackNY to Support the New York City Technology Ecosystem
NEW YORK, NY — January 16, 2019— Today hackNY, the innovative non-profit connecting students and startups in the New York City’s growing technology ecosystem, is pleased to announce a partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Foundation will award hackNY a two-year grant to support the organization’s efforts to build a responsible and inclusive innovation community in New York City.
Co-organized by faculty from NYU and Columbia, hackNY has since February 2010 organized summer fellowship programs that pair promising technology students with successful NYC startups such as BuzzFeed, Etsy, and MongoDB. Additionally, hackNY organizes 24-hour hackathons during which hundreds of students from universities across the world collaborate on creative coding challenges. In a recent hackathon, students developed novel software solutions to tackle societal challenges such as protecting schools from guns, making online communities safer, bringing education to those with fewer resources, and helping the world be more accessible to those with disabilities.
This generous grant from The Sloan Foundation will enable hackNY to expand its existing mission as well as establish a sustainable financial model as it enters its second decade.
“We founded hackNY to create and empower a diverse community of student-technologists who will become their community’s future leaders, while at the same time removing barriers to entry for underrepresented groups in the New York tech community,” said Chris Wiggins, Columbia University professor, Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times, and co-founder of hackNY. “Support from The Sloan Foundation will enable us to continue to run excellent mentoring programs that leverage our students’ skills to address social good while expanding our mission to foster inclusivity in technology.”
“We believe that a strong, diverse, and inclusive technology ecosystem is a key driver to society’s health and prosperity,” said Sloan Foundation program director Josh Greenberg. “Over the past decade, hackNY has been developing New York City’s next generation of technology leaders, and we are thrilled to help support its continued work with a special emphasis on the ethical development and use of technology.”
hackNY is now recruiting an entrepreneurial Executive Director to lead and expand hackNY’s programs; please click here to see the job description and contact info@hackNY.org to learn more!
About the Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in three broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics; initiatives to increase the quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists. Sloan.org
