Interested in working with Hack4Impact?
That’s awesome! We’d love to talk with you, so please email penn@hack4impact.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
We want to help maximize your nonprofit’s impact, and we’re serious about project quality. We’ll communicate frequently and work with you closely to ensure we’re building exactly what you need.
We generally charge $1,000 per project. Our pricing is need-based, and if your organization is not able to afford the cost, we will be happy to lower or even waive the fee. All client contributions feed right back into Hack4Impact to pay for professional development events, speakers, organization retreats, and operating costs.
We are thoroughly impressed with the high-quality work Hack4Impact has done with PhillyFoodFinder.org. The team was extremely professional, timely, organized, and transparent throughout the process of building the website. The website specifications that we requested from the team were implemented beautifully, and the team even developed additional capabilities that they identified as useful and important as they became more familiar with the project. PhillyFoodFinder.org will make a significant and observable impact on anti-hunger efforts in Philadelphia, and Hack4Impact has made that progress possible.
Application and Development Process
Brainstorming
Come up with an idea for application that might be useful to your organization.
Make sure also to visit our completed projects page to see what types of applications we’ve built in the past
Interest Period
Once you have an idea in mind, you should fill out the nonprofit interest form. Describe your organization and your project idea. This will help us get an initial sense of your goals, needs, and expectations. The form can be found here.
Introduction Call
A member of Hack4Impact will reach out to you to schedule a phone call. We’ll use this phone call to learn more about your organization, project idea, and how Hack4Impact can help. Please use this phone call to ask further questions about Hack4Impact.
Incubation Period
Up to a week before the application deadline, we will work with you to define, clarify, and tighten your project specifications. While submitting a draft of your application for feedback isn’t required, we strongly encourage applicant organizations to do so.
Application Period
Submit the project application! Each fall and spring semester, we choose three to four nonprofits to partner with. We will notify you within a few weeks of the application deadline whether you have been selected for the upcoming semester.
Scoping and Ideation
If your application is successful, you will be paired with a Hack4Impact project manager (PM), a tech lead (TL) and developer team. Your PM and TL will reach out to better understand the project and to create a plan for the features and timeline of the project in a Project Requirement Document (PRD)
Development
Once the PRD is finalized, we will begin development on the project. Your PM, TL, and development team will work with you over a period of 3 months to build an app. The PM and TL will work with you to ensure that the project is completed on-time and to your specifications.
Hand Off
At the end of the semester, we will officially hand off the project source code to you and your organization for you to begin using! Depending on your technical requirements and resources, we can also help you set up a web host to run the application, or you can integrate it into your existing infrastructure yourself.
Testing Period
After we hand off the project, you will have a trial period of two months to test out the application. We’ll continue to provide technical support during this period, so if anything breaks or you discover bugs, we’ll happily fix them.
Frequently Asked Questions
We work on a variety web based applications. These can range from volunteer management systems to automated SMS chatbots. Some examples of tools to consider include:
A platform that allows you to keep track of the organization’s activities and see where cost-cutting can occur.
A database system that allows you to more easily search through previous financial, client, or service records.
An application to keep track of your clients and better assess your overall impact.
Make sure also to visit our completed projects page to see what types of applications we’ve built in the past.
Our main focus is on software engineering and developer education, so our current offerings do not include:
Basic website design and development.
We do not build websites that are purely content-based, such as Wordpress blogs or landing pages.
Technology integration or consulting.
We do not set up or integrate existing solutions such as Salesforce or Drupal.
We source projects for both the Fall and Spring semesters around June and November respectively. Please fill out our nonprofit interest form and keep an eye on this page for exact dates.
We generally charge $1000 per project. Our pricing is need-based, and if your organization is not able to afford the cost, we will be happy to lower or even waive the fee. All client contributions feed right back into Hack4Impact to pay for professional development events, speakers, organization retreats, and operating costs.
Most projects run for about a semester, so about 3 months of development. For the month leading up to that development period, your tech lead and project manager will with you to plan the project. If you are interested in doing a larger project, share your idea to penn@hack4impat.org and we will see what we can do!
Currently, most of our projects are build using React and Typescript/Node.js with an Express and MongoDB backend. Feel free to check out our TypeScript boilerplate here.
Historically the Penn chapter of Hack4Impact has focused on mainly web development focused projects. If your project specifically needs a mobile app feel free to contact us at penn@hack4impact.org and we can connect you with another chapter.
For all inquiries of partnership or sponsorship, please contact us at penn@hack4impact.org.