eHacks is a non-profit with the mission of providing interdisciplinary learning experiences that empower students to solve pressing social issues through technical innovation.

Over the past three years, eHacks has focused on running hackathon-style events based out of Western University. We've invited over 520 students to build over 100 projects, learn from 30 workshops, and connect with industry professionals at top firms (e.g. EY, IBM, RBC, ALPHASHINE, and more).

After three years, despite our success, our team has begun to wonder if we are doing the right thing. Hackathons are a crowded market, and with the growth of well-organized virtual hackathons, the barriers to entry have decreased sharply.

This project is a call for a new direction. Your job will be to determine if hackathons are still the best route for us, and if not, what we should offer to best act on our core mission. While we are a non-profit, we do spend money. Figuring out how to do the most with our money is critical.

Your task will be to follow the design thinking process to 1) identify the problems that we should be solving, 2) identify some ways that we should be solving them, 3) and craft a plan that allows eHacks to prototype those new directions and, ultimately, turn them into our purpose.

Your final deliverable will be a presentation or document outlining your process, your proposal for how we should move forward, and a plan outlining how we would achieve your plan.

We will meet with students on a weekly basis for at least an hour to check-in on progress and answer any questions. You will have access to eHacks' Google Workspace, which contains historical documents dating back to our first event. You will be expected to keep these documents confidential. We agree to be accessible during regular business hours via chat or email (up to your preference), with the agreement to reply within ~24 hours to inquiries (though it will often be faster).