If you have a passion for tech for good and want to encourage innovation at your charity, running a hack day (aka hackathon) could be just what you need. In this presentation we cover: • What is a hack and how can it benefit charities? • What makes a good hack and how can it encourage innovation? • How the Hack4Good movement is building solutions to humanity's biggest problems • How to attract developers to your cause and build #apps4good

1. Fostering Innovation – the secrets of running a
charity hack
IoF National Convention July 2014

2. What we will cover
• What is a hack and how can it benefit charities?
• What makes a good hack and how can it encourage
innovation?
• How the Geeklist #hack4good movement is building solutions
to humanity's biggest problems
• How to attract developers to your cause and build apps for
good

3. Who are we?
Jamie Parkins
Product Manager at JustGiving
@jghackers
Dan Cunningham
Director, Geeklist #hack4good
@dancunningham

4. Who are we?Who’s been to a hack before?

5. Who thinks it’s this?

6. What does wikipedia say?
A hackathon (aka hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an
event in which computer programmers and others involved
in software development, collaborate intensively on a
software project.

7. Pizza & Red Bull right?

8. It’s building amazing stuff!

9. Intense collaboration

10. Time bound

11. Responding to an open brief

12. Harnessing innovative technologies…

13. ….to develop solutions to real world problems

14. Typical Hack outcomes
Tech
understanding
Poor ideas
validated
Cultural
change
A new
solution!
Hypothesis
tested
Energy &
collaboration

15. So why are people increasingly turning to hacks?
- To scratch an itch that they can’t currently resource
- To tackle a timely/relevant issue head on and fast!
- To test a hypothesis / hunch
- A chance to collaborate with 3rd parties
- The fun of experimentation
- A potential low cost / low risk entry into a market
- To learn (you learn loads!)
- Instigate cultural change

16. And what’s the benefit for charities?
- To pilot a new product or idea quickly and cheaply
- Test market acceptance/readiness for an idea
- Collaborate with sector colleagues or their supporters
- Encourage new ways of giving/supporting their cause
- Reduce admin/resource (a hack can = an internal process
improvement!)
- Increase awareness of your charity in new spaces / territories
- Discover innovative ideas from other fields / sectors / outside
perspectives
- Engage positively with talented people outside of your four
walls

18. Case study #1 – JustHacking
- Ran our own 24 hour internal hack in April
- Challenge was to simply come up with new ideas that would
enhance our business (inside or out)
- Cross team (finance, marketing, customer support, software
dev etc)
- 8 ideas, 3 of which have since been refined and soft
launched
- Bundles of energy
- Read our storify at https://storify.com/jghackers/justhacking

19. Idea generation Rough ‘n ready! Celebrate success!

22. Case study #2 – Two charities already hacking
Ran their first innovation hack in 2013 to test 3
project ideas
“We know intelligent communications will raise Fundraising income.
Our challenge was actually can we do this, do it quickly and do it
well. We started the day with five fundamental barriers and a few
labour intensive bit-part solutions. We left the room at the end of
the day with one solution and two strategic, yet quick,
deliverables.”
@MeredithNiles Head of Fundraising Innovation at Marie Curie

23. Case study #3 – Brands that hack
• Brands are starting to use hacks for R&D and staff retention
”Industries that you would never think are trying see how they can harvest the
benefits of hackathons. It’s decentralizing their IT in favor of a greater
collaboration between developers, marketers, and CEOs to create products or
simply get ideas flowing outside the typically constrained box.”
[Angelhack founder Sabeen Ali]

24. Brands that hack
• http://www.fastcolabs.com/3030628/why-do-big-companies-do-hackathons
• http://www.workforce.com/articles/corporations-adopt-the-hackathon
• http://thayerprime.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/when-hackdays-just-arent-cool-some-
pr-advice-for-brands-and-companies/
• Normally well organised, well drilled events
• Can charities start to leverage your corporate partners?
• Be wary of not ripping off attendees as Cadbury’s did.
Chocolate < IP

27. “united globally we hack a better world”
 A global movement - multi-city 48-hour hackathon events
 Uniting leading minds – software engineers and NGOs
collaborate intensively to build solutions to some of humanity's
greatest challenges
 Creating real-world impact – 1 in 5 projects continue
 122 cities and growing

28. NGO partners

29. Whitecane
 Winners of #hack4good 0.5, built
in New Delhi, India (Feb 2014)
 Whitecane is a mobile app to
help people with visual
impairments such as
prosopagnosia recognise the
faces and emotions of their
loved ones.
 Field testing with local charities

31. Siltinapp
 1st place #hack4good 0.5 in Dublin
 Sanitation Marketing - market-
driven approach to satisfy
consumer demand for sanitation
products in developing countries
 Web + Mobile + SMS app that
enables people to obtain price,
product and supplier information
for sanitation products within
their geographical area
 Working with GOAL Ireland to set
up field trials in Sierra Leone

33. How you can get involved
 Define the challenge / problem statement – what is the
problem technology might help solve? Who has the
problem? What constraints are there?
 Pitch your challenge live - either locally or globally
 Collaborate at the hackathon – 48-hours – ideation,
development, feedback, presentations
 Commit to take it forwards – further development,
piloting, field testing, funding

34. Image: Climateoutreach.org.uk

35. Image: Trocaire on Flickr

36. Image: John McColgan, US Forest Service

37. Image: Oxfam East Africa

38. Global hack against climate change
12-14 September 2014 - 3,000+ participants – 40+ cities

39. 15 global climate change challenges
http://hack4good.io
AWARENESS
 Public awareness
 Personal impact
 Digital activism
 Visualisation of impacts
 Climate negotiations
ADAPTATION
 Resilient communities
 Temperature rise
 Extreme weather
 Ecosystems and nature
 NGO collaboration
ACTION
 Consumer behaviour
 Energy production
 Responsible finance
 Sustainability
 Reforestation

40. When disaster strikes - Philippines typhoon

41. Philippines Typhoon Appeal app
• Outcome of 2 Hack4Good collaborators
• A donation journey that enabled people to share their £5 gift to
Facebook and encouraged friends to donate
• Simple message, simple journey
• Tech utilized: JustGiving APIs, Facebook Apps, Heroku (cloud
hosting)
• Built in 5 days, raised £30k
• 54% of people who donated shared to their Facebook friends

43. Hack4Good Disaster Response Team
You?

44. 10 Tips for joining a hack
1. What do you want to achieve? Learn new skill, test something,
motivate your developer team, scratch an itch?
2. Plan in advance, hacks are often at weekends
3. Don’t overly plan in advance – remain flexible
4. Bring people with buckets of enthusiasm and good ideas
5. Be prepared to collaborate
6. Research your idea – understand user needs / be the user
7. Look at what tools and softwares you can leverage – don’t reinvent
the wheel
8. Get your environments running in advance
9. Eat well, drink well
10. Go for it!

45. 10 Tips for running a hack
1. Give advanced notice (use forums, meetups etc)
2. Set a clear and open brief / challenge / problem statement
3. Embrace openness e.g. open data, open source, open innovation
4. Good venue, with kick ass wifi
5. Make it free (offset with sponsors)
6. Offer on day support
7. Be willing to promote and talk about the winners. Celebrate
success v prizes
8. Be flexible (things change on the day)
9. Build alliances with partners and API providers
10. Create a dialogue channel / document the day (social, storify etc)

46. Upcoming Events

47. Useful resources
Meet Ups - http://www.meetup.com/UK-Hackathons-and-Jams/
The Hackday Manifesto - http://hackdaymanifesto.com/
2014 – The Year Hackathons got serious -
http://blog.readingroom.com/2014/03/19/hackathons-got-serious/
Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Hacks -
http://blog.eventbrite.co.uk/everything-you-ever-needed-to-know-
about-running-a-successful-hackathon/

48. Interested?
Want to
join a
hack?
Want to
run a
hack?
Want to
join the
Disaster
Response
Team?
Sign up to our survey at
https://justgivingapps.wufoo.eu/forms/hack/

49. In summary
There are many types of hackathons and they’re either competitive or
communal. They can be aimed at start-ups, developing open source
projects, they can be aimed at serving a specific community or brand or
even to explore the possibilities of a new product.
But one thing holds for all hackathons – they are about building things.
[Fadie Hannona, MakersAcademy]

50. Thanks for listening…
Slides: http://just.ly/running-a-charity-hack