Capital One: Gift the Code

The Gift the Code hackathon is a Capital One Canada initiative to provide local charities with a tech boost in a creative and innovative manner. Through Gift the Code, Capital One connected with the tech community and has created a successful recruiting pipeline of developers, data scientists, and product designers. The hackathon successfully helped close the technology gap of local charities and not-for-profits.

Over a 48-hour hackathon at the Globe and Mail Centre, more than 650 hackers worked tirelessly to help solve the challenge facing their charity.

Man speaking on stage at Capital One hackathon

Process

E

Developed event strategy and generated a project plan

E

Designed event experience and finalized logistics

E

Utilized Hackworks platform for submission management, team assignment, and judging

E

Acquired stakeholders - charities and partners

E

Recruited judges, mentors, participants, and speakers

E

Ran hackathon and provided support for a successful hack

Three girls holding Capital One blankets

Hackathon Summary

Since 2016, the Gift the Code Hackathon has had a simple purpose at its core: to help our community leveraging our collective skills and use digital for good to help bridge the tech gap faced by local charities. Hence, teams were able to choose the charity they would like to identify solutions for, and worked along with their charity representative to learn more about the unique challenges the charity is facing to determine what needs to happen to help solve it. 

Final Result

Ultimately, Capital One and Hackworks have been able to bring together over 650 generous tech enthusiasts, digital strategists, and social good experts to help bridge the technology gap faced by many charity organizations.

Hacking Hours