About Us

We Believe In Using Tech For Good

Hack4Impact believes in technology’s huge potential to empower activists and humanitarians to create lasting and impactful social change. We work to foster the wider adoption of software as a tool for social good.

Our Mission

Hack4Impact exists for both nonprofits and students. We connect student software developers with nonprofits and other socially responsible businesses to develop powerful new tools for social change. This enables nonprofits to further their mission and better engage their clients. We are committed to increasing awareness of technology's potential for good.

Our Values

Intentionality

We evaluate the trade offs of our decisions, choose a direction to head, and crush our goals. Whether it be personal or professional growth, we avoid mindless movement and instead purposefully act. We work with intention. We understand that at the end of the day, Hack4Impact exists to build solutions that are right for our nonprofit partners and their users. We carefully assess the concerns of our users, stakeholders, and partners, to develop a custom solution that fits our precise constraints.

Curiosity

We are eager to learn about technology, ourselves, and the world around us. We dive deep into our fields of study and work, and seek feedback from our teammates, students, and teachers. We are hungry, yet humble; we are able to set aside our egos and view each moment and interaction as an opportunity to learn. We are incredibly curious about our nonprofit partners. We know we might not know everything, so we must ask the right questions to even begin to grasp the complexity of our partners' situations. Curiosity also enables us to look beyond our immediate vicinity and deliver the best solution to our partners, even if the solution isn’t built by Hack4Impact.

Empathy

We look to understand perspectives, situations, and needs, and therefore are not afraid of asking or being asked clarifying questions. We make intentional, well-informed decisions by understanding the environments we are surrounded by and deeply listening to our teammates. We are then able to best mentor our own teammates growth because we can see where they are coming from. Empathy drives every decision we make on behalf of our nonprofit partners. Our empathetic approach provides a North Star to our development process. We’re able to settle difficult debates by agreeing and executing on what’s best for our partner.

How We Work

We partner with nonprofits and other socially minded organizations to build impactful products. Each product is spearheaded by a dedicated development team on a one or two semester timeline.

Meet The Team

Like many others, being a part of a social impact organization was always appealing to me, but I was unsure if and how I could be a part of technology-enabled impact. In my time at Hack4Impact, however, I have not only been able to engage in developing human-centric technical solutions for nonprofits across the world, but I have also been able to find my niche within UIUC. I’ve worked alongside a group of incredible developers and designers and grown in all aspects of my life by having so many mentors around me. I am so grateful to be a part of this community and I can’t wait to continue to see its impact in the next few years!

Riya Jain
Software Developer