Prizes

Clearly this needs to considered in budget as well, but this is for the detailed discussion.

Trophies#

Let's get the easy one out of the way. Trophies are nice. Typically we've done the standard engraved awards, and those are nice. But how many do you get? Teams are going to be between three and five (or between X and Y, but still a variable number) so you have to buy at least five.

There are a few problems with this.

  • You probably won't have the top three with five team members, but you have to buy like you're going to, so you're going to waste a few.
  • It's really nice to get a trophy, but then what the heck do you do with it? After a while you're just going to throw it away, and that's kind of waste.

The solve to this is to spend more money on a single trophy. This solves all of these problems.

  • You actually will spend less money on one nice trophy than five good ones.
  • You don't waste any.
  • The team can rotate it through people, and when they're done it can go in some sort of college/club trophy case, where you get further publicity out of it.

Money#

Clearly, cold, hard, electronic, dollars is a great motivation. As a result it's probably one of your top costs and top draws. It also represents a large part of your budget. What your dollar numbers end up is up to you, but you probably need to ensure you provide some differentiation between 1st and 3rd. Here are some amounts we've used in the U.S.

  • $6000, $3000, $2000
  • $3000, $2000, $1000

The other challenge is ensuring that your projects get completed. To do that we typically split the prize money to roughly 20% paid after the hackathon and the remainder paid when the solution goes live for the NPO

Other Prizes#

This is where you have a lot of flexibility with your other partners. We've offered:

  • Software bootcamps
  • NBA entertainment experiences
  • Hardware

But I think the single most successful one is likely:

  • Job interviews

We do not guarantee positions, but we guarantee that the winning teams, at their option, will get to talk directly to HR about options. It can be internships or just straight up job interviews.

Remember back to when you were in college, this is the most precious thing that exists. It is also a big benefit for your other sponsors. It gets them access to an automatically curated group of candidates. These are people who have:

  • Had the initiative to spend their weekend coding
  • Probably have a passion for the work
  • Have risen to the top by producing results