Hack Club is a global nonprofit network of high school computer programming clubs[3] founded in 2014 by Zach Latta and Jonathan Leung.[4] It now includes more than 1,000 high school clubs and 80,000 students.[5] It has been featured on the TODAY Show, and profiled in the Wall Street Journal.[6]
History
Hack Club was founded in 2014 by Zach Latta and Jonathan Leung. At that time, Latta was a 16-year-old who had graduated high school early and was employed by Yo. Latta would win a 2015 Thiel Fellowship for Hack Club in June of that year, at which point he did not plan on attending college.[4] In 2016, Latta and Leung would be placed on Forbes 30 Under 30 list for education. At that point, Hack Club was in a total of 52 schools, 12 US states, and 5 countries.[7] At the time of a profile of Latta by Business Insider at the end of January 2016, Hack Club had established clubs in the United States, Canada, Australia, India, Estonia, and Zimbabwe.[4]
In March 2020, Hack Club relocated from Silicon Valley to Shelburne, Vermont.[8] In April 2020, the Hack Club facilitated an AMA (Ask Me Anything) between its members and Elon Musk. The event was originally planned to last 30 minutes, but Musk was impressed enough with the participants to allow it to extend for over an hour.[9][10] In 2021, the organization accepted a $1 million donation from Musk. That same year, the organization had clubs in 400 different schools.[8] In January 2022, Hack Club had over 20,000 students in clubs located in over 22 countries.[11] In July 2025, the number of students jumped to over 70,000.[12]
Organization
Hack Club consists of several local clubs ran by students in their own schools. These clubs are provided up-to-date curriculum, leadership and community-building training, and software tools by Hack Club.[3][4] The organization provides grants for hardware such as microcontrollers, circuit boards, sensors, or motors. A Slack instance is also provided for all members across different clubs to communicate with globally.[8] Latta has described this methodology as a "club in a box."[3]
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:
Summer of Making 2020 - A collaboration with GitHub, Adafruit & Arduino 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[16]
Assemble - The first high school hackathon in San Francisco since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the stated goal of "kick[ing] off a hackathon renaissance"[18]
Epoch - A global high schooler-led hackathon in Delhi NCR organized in public to inspire the community of student hackers and bring hundreds of teenagers together[3]
Winter Hardware Wonderland - An online winter program where teenagers submit ideas for hardware projects and, if accepted, get grants of up to $250[4]
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
Summer of Making 2025 - A program which allows teenagers to log work via Hackatime, post devlogs to show their projects progress and "ship" their projects to earn "shells", which can be used to exchange for prizes in the shop
Neighborhood - A program which offered housing in exchange for 100 hours of work initially followed by 40 per week logged via Hackatime. It has ended premature[19] of its original closure date of August 31.[20]
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.[21] In May 2020, GitHub committed to a $50K hardware fund, globally alongside Arduino and Adafruit, to deliver hardware tools directly to students’ homes with a program named Hack Club Summer of Making.[22]Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation donated $500,000 to help expand Hack Club in 2020,[23] donated another $1,000,000 in 2021,[24] and an additional $4,000,000 in 2023.[25] In 2022, Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner donated $500,000 to Hack Club.[26]
