Hack Club is a global nonprofit network of high school computer

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

s, makers and coders founded in 2014 by Zach Latta. It now includes more than 500 high school clubs and 40,000 students. It has been featured on the

TODAY Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'') is an American morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television ...

, and profiled in the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' and many other publications.

Programs

Hack Club's primary focus is its clubs program, in which it supports high school coding clubs through learning resources and mentorship. It also runs a series of other programs and events. Some of their notable programs and events include:
HCB
- A

fiscal sponsorship Fiscal sponsorship refers to the practice of non-profit organizations offering their legal and tax-exempt status to groups—typically projects—engaged in activities related to the sponsoring organization's mission. It typically involves a fee-b ...

program originally targeted at high school hacker events
AMAs
- Video calls with industry experts such as

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...

Vitalik Buterin Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin (; born 31 January 1994), better known as Vitalik Buterin (), is a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding ''Bitcoin Ma ...

, and

Sal Khan Salman Amin Khan (born October 11, 1976) is an American educator and the founder of Khan Academy, a free online non-profit educational platform with which he has produced over 6,500 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic ...

Summer of Making
- A collaboration with

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

Adafruit Adafruit Industries is an open-source hardware company based in New York, United States. It was founded by Limor Fried in 2005. The company designs, manufactures and sells electronics products, electronics components, tools, and accessories. It ...

Arduino Arduino () is an Italian open-source hardware and open-source software, software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardwar ...

to create an online summer program for teenagers during the COVID-19 pandemic that included $50k in hardware donations to teen hackers around the world
The Hacker Zephyr
- A cross-country hackathon on a train across America
Assemble
- The first high school hackathon in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the stated goal of "kick ngoff a

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

renaissance"
Epoch
- A global high schooler-led hackathon in

Delhi NCR The National Capital Region (NCR; ) is a region centred upon the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi in India. It encompasses Delhi and several districts surrounding it from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The NCR and ...

organized in public to inspire the community of student hackers and bring hundreds of teenagers together
Winter Hardware Wonderland
- An online winter program where teenagers submit ideas for hardware projects and, if accepted, get grants of up to $250
Outernet
- An experimental four-day hackathon and camping trip in the

Northeast Kingdom The Northeast Kingdom (also, locally, "The Kingdom" and abbreviated NEK) is the northeast corner of the U.S. state of Vermont, approximately comprising Essex, Orleans, and Caledonia counties and with a population of 64,764 at the 2010 census. T ...

2024 Leader's Summit
- A 72-hour hackathon in

where teenage club leaders built projects for their club members to use
Wonderland
- A 48-hour hackathon in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

where teenagers built projects using random items found in their "chest"
Apocalypse
- A 42-hour high-school hackathon at Shopify's Toronto office, with the theme of a "zombie apocalypse"
The Boreal Express
- A cross-country hackathon on a train in partnership with

Via Rail Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via (stylized as VIA Rail), is a Canadian Crown corporation that operates intercity passenger rail service in Canada. As of December 2023, Via Rail operates 406 trains per week across eight ...

originally planned from

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, but was turned around due to wildfires in

Jasper, Alberta Jasper is a specialized municipality and townsite in western Alberta within the Canadian Rockies. The townsite is in the Athabasca River valley and is the commercial centre of Jasper National Park. History Established in 1813, Jasper ...

Arcade
- An online summer program in collaboration with GitHub, allowing teenagers to log work on creative projects to earn “tickets”, which could be exchanged for prizes
Onboard
$100 grant for high schoolers to produce PCBs
High Seas
- A program which allows teenagers to log work via Wakatime and "shipping" their projects to earn "doubloons", which can be used to exchange for prizes

Funding

Hack Club is funded by grants from philanthropic organizations and donations from individual supporters. In 2019, GitHub Education provided cash grants of up to $500 to every Hack Club "hackathon" event. In May 2020, GitHub committed to a $50K hardware fund, globally alongside

and

, to deliver hardware tools directly to students’ homes with a program named Hack Club Summer of Making.

and the Musk Foundation donated $500,000 to help expand Hack Club in 2020, donated another $1,000,000 in 2021, and an additional $4,000,000 in 2023. In 2022,

Tom Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name. Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Tom'' (1973 film), or ''The Bad Bunch'', a blaxploitation film * ''Tom'' (2002 film) ...

and Theresa Preston-Werner donated $500,000 to Hack Club.

References

{{reflist Hacker_culture Clubs and societies Computer programming 2014 establishments in Vermont