| id | title |
|---|---|
npo |
Non-Profit Organizations |
The Hackathon is really like a three-legged stool.
- Cooridinating team
- Hackers
- NPOs (aka hackees)
You can't do this job well without being thoughtful about all of these. Now, from a population perspective, this seems like the easiest, simply because there are fewer people and moving pieces involved, but if you don't do this well, it's not possible for the Hackathon to be great.
This is actually much harder than you would think. You think to yourself:
"Hey, self, I'm offering these people something for free, no strings attached, so they should be jumping all over that."
True, but that's part of the problem. Until you've run this for a few years and gained some credibility in the community, it does seem like it must be some sort of scam. So, to that end you're going to have to spend a lot of time explaining what it is you're trying to do for them. They also will have to give their time and energy to it, which for most NPOs is pretty significant.
We're trying to build a culture in the technology community where people can realize that they can contribute by more than just writing a check. Additionally, the things that technology is capable of doing are amazing and we want to be able to help you use them to help other people.
We need you to think about what the current problems you're facing in your organization. What are the things that you spend a lot of time doing, that if you didn't have to do, you could spend more of your time and energy on helping the community? We want you to come up with that list, and then we'll help you refine that problem statement so that our hackers can come up with solutions to the problem.
Well, I've seen your website, and that's true. [Ok, you can't really say that, no matter how much you might think it. Let's try that again.]
Ok, this is a good example. Why do you think you need a new website? What is it about your current website that is making it so that you can't help the community? Let's talk about what those problems are and instead of saying "I need a new website" maybe let's restructure that into something like:
"I need for it to be easier for our users to be able to find our services".
Great, what are those services? How do they use them? What are they used for?