Our Services
We currently support web based and data science projects but we are open to other different types of projects. Historically, we’ve found that the impact we can make, the amount we can learn, and the time and effort needed to build these kinds of projects fit well with our constraints and goals.
To find out more about some of the projects that we've done in the past, feel free to look through our projects page or our pitchbook, which also has additional information pertaining to our project process and timeline.
Please keep in mind that because one of our core focuses is on software engineering and developer education, our offerings currently 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.
That said, if you’re looking for help with that sort of thing, we might be able to recommend some other tools or services that fit your needs. So feel free to reach out anyway!
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We absolutely recommend working with Hack4Impact. We needed to address English competency in Cambodia, and Hack4Impact was the actual organization who helped us get it done. Hack4Impact gives nonprofit organizations an opportunity to collaborate and support their mission in ways they even may not have considered.
Application Process
Our application process is designed to be as straightforward as possible. If you are interested in working with us, you can contact us at uiuc@hack4impact.org with your organization and vision for the problems you are facing. We will carefully consider your submission and reach out to you if our goals goals align. Some aspects of potential projects that we pay close attention to include technical complexity, impact, and mission.
Initial Contact
Reach out to our team via email to get started with the application process. We'd love to hear more about your organization and potential project ideas as it will help us get an initial sense of your organization's goals, needs, and expectations while you progress through the application process.
Context
We will reach out shortly to schedule a call to dive deeper into your organization and project ideas, while also explaining more about what we do and our goals. Then, we will also work with you to define and clarify your project ideas.
Scoping
We may schedule additional calls to further tighten your project specifications. With these additional meetings, we aim to dive deep into your specific ideas to gain a better understanding of the reasoning, value, and impact of these potential projects, outline specifications for these ideas, and narrow them down to a few that we believe we can reasonably accomplish with our development timeline and that align with your organization and our goals.
Ideation
We aim to create the most impactful product for your organization and ours. Our team will continue to work with your organization to gather additional insight through discovering pain points, conducting user research, and incorporating other feedback from your organization. This way, our development teams can jump right in after ideation and build the best product that serves your needs!
Confirmation
We will review the details for the finalized project and confirm that our goals and expectations are aligned. If everything checks out, our our project leads will contact you to begin the development process!
Frequently Asked Questions
Each project has a Product Manager, who will be responsible for communicating with the client, leading the team, and delivering a successful product as well as a team of software engineers to build the technology. They will be leading a team of 5-8 developers with a possibility of a designer as well. They will start off diving even deeper into your idea and problems and come up with a Product Requirements Doc (PRD) specifying your requirements and timeline. Development will start shortly afterwards and they will maintain contact with you throughout the entire process to gather feedback. Notable dates will the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) demo, which will happen around the middle of the semester and the handoff, which will be around the end of the semester. For more information, look here.
Traditionally, projects and development will span one semester, after which our team will transfer ownership of the repository and any additional resources created during the development process. More recently, however, some projects have spanned the course of an entire year in an effort to ensure quality and impact. The development process follows the exact same structure in these cases, where a fully fully functional prototype is completed after one semester. However, these projects continue by gathering feedback during the next semester and iterating on the prototype to ensure that we're creating the most impactful and useful product for our clients. The length of the project is discussed and agreed upon from both parties before official development.
Meeting frequency is very dependent on the team and client. Generally, teams hold weekly or biweekly meetings with their clients. Other checkpoints include initial calls to scope out and define the project with our project leads, an MVP demo, and a Final Handoff presentation.
We typically charge a fee of $1,000 per semester to our clients for any work that we do. As a student-led nonprofit building products for other nonprofits, we typically incur costs from using services like Amazon AWS or other third-party APIs as we build our products. We also aim to develop our members professionally and foster a collaborative, passionate, and dedicated community by offering tech talks, networking events, and organization-wide retreats. Thus, the development fee mainly goes towards technology costs, professional development, and community events. However, we understand that nonprofits may have different financial circumstances and are open to making accommodations on a case by case basis.
Tell us about your organization and the problems that you are facing. Let us know what your vision is and come in with some initial project project ideas. Don’t worry about the validity of those ideas - we use them as a starting point for deeper conversation regarding your organization during our initial call! While a detailed application would be helpful, we also have a very supportive team that will guide through our process and inform you of all the relevant information that we will need along the way.
Our Past Projects are the best examples! Some other examples include:
- A platform that displays your organization’s resources for the public on a map.
- A system to communicate with and collect data from users via text message surveys.
- A tool to automate a time-consuming manual process.
- An application that allows you to keep track of the organization's activities and see where cost cutting can occur.
- An application to keep track of the people you serve and better assess your overall impact.
- Or anything else that will empower you to broaden your impact!
For all inquiries of partnership or sponsorship, please contact us at uiuc@hack4impact.org.