| id | title |
|---|---|
why |
Why Opportunity Hack? |
So, what makes Opportunity Hack different?
It is different than most hackathons, in that the hackers are working to solve a problem for a specific non-profit. So, in that way the thing that makes it different is that the goal is to develop a solution that charities use on an on-going basis. We've been working at this since 2013.
There are now few other hackathons doing similar things, so in the end, I think the primary difference is the goal.
We bring together technologists and charities together to create lasting solutions for non-profits and lasting philanthropy for technologists.
:::important Our goal is to make it so that technology professionals realize they can make a lasting difference in their communities, not just by writing a check, but by using their skills and expertise to help others. :::
The main intent behind this is to make funding Opportunity Hack much easier. Funding fuels the mission.
We currently have a complex payout structure for our sponsors – we ask sponsors pay winners directly, this means we lose control over project completion, and we lack the visibility into payments made to Opportunity Hack winners. We also would like to be able to classify a company’s contributions as a 501c3 tax-deductible expense, currently we are unable to do this.
If we are able to publicly hold a fundraiser, it allows us to expand the supportability of Opportunity Hack outside of weekend hackathons, although initially our sole goal will be to fundraise for our weekend hackathons only. Long-term we can ideally use funds to sustain our impact to the community by maintaining all of the winning projects that are being used in production by the various non-profits.
Another secondary reason is to make the marketing agreements and the process we have to go through easier as well. We currently have to have legally binding marketing agreements between the founding company and partner companies in order to use their logo. Many companies hesitate to have any legally binding contracts with founding for-profit companies because they are seen as competition.
When negotiating for space, we have to negotiate as as for-profit company which makes it more difficult to obtain a space to hold Opportunity Hack for free. If we are a public charity, the sponsoring location can allocate this cost as a tax-deductible expense – making it easier for us to obtain space.
We currently do not receive any support from the for-profit founding company to keep code and software that has been developed up-to-date, and free of security vulnerabilities. This means that non-profits who receive a final project have to keep up with this on their own.
We would like to deliver a cloud-based solution for the many problems that non-profits have. After conducting years of hackathons, we understand common challenges that every non-profit has. We've been initially investing in senior capstone projects as a method to further develop standard solutions, but we need to collocate and offer solutions in a single location with specific focus.
Opportunity-Hack.org can be developed with the following example modules:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Food pantry and food bank
- Paper form digitzation into HTML forms
- Volunteer engagement solutions
Within our Arizona chapter, we have documented all projects and non-profits we've worked with. This will give you a better idea of the scope of this mission and vision.
Opportunity Hack has not been present on social media, nor has there been much effort to promote sponsors. Moving to a 501c3 will require that additional effort and money be spent to ensure that sponsors have a tiered structure in place with specific outcomes provided at different levels of funding
We'd like to spend additional effort (as can be seen on this GitHub repository) to allow anyone to host an Opportunity Hack event. We would like the logos to be freely available along with other swag so that at the click of a button, anyone can host an event in their location for non-profits who have technical challenges.
This is unchanged from the current mission and objective.
From opportunity-hack.org:
If you’re passionate about leveraging your technology and business skills to help improve your local community, join PayPal’s Opportunity Hack. This energizing two-day hackathon is open to the public and its goal is to connect local non-profits with skilled computer engineers and business-savvy volunteers to help solve some of their most pressing tech problems. Volunteers compete for prizes and are awarded with seeing their solutions put into action by the non-profits.
Officers
- President
- Chief World Changer (CWC)
- CTO
- COO
Board of Directors (7 total people to start – the board can always elect more people)
- Opportunity Hack Founder 1 – already has agreed
- Opportunity Hack Founder 2 – already has agreed
- Opportunity Hack Founder 3
In addition to the 4 officers above
Absolutely – covered in the first answer.
Yes – initially (before Opportunity Hack has enough sponsorship money to support complete operations), it will be business as usual. We would use any funds to compensate for the money that the founding for-profit company currently provides, but we would still continue to ask for the same budget from the founding for-profit company in 2020.
In the long-term, hopefully within the next 5 years, we’d have enough funds to fully support Opportunity Hack at each site without majority funding from the current for-profit company. The goal is to offset the current funding by fundraising from external sources.
We have also been developing an open-source Opportunity Hack model where a volunteer in a location Opportunity Hack does not operate in can conduct a weekend hackathon with Opportunity Hack branding.
- AZGiveCamp is a similar hackathon-based group that seeks to help non-profits in Arizona.