Without a venue, you don’t have a hackathon. You need a venue. Lock in.
Make a LONG list of potential venues. You need to reach out to 20 venues to find ONE that says yes.
If you want to run the best hackathon you can: reach out to AS MANY as you can. With personalized emails each. It will be rough but a great venue makes an amazing hackathon.
A basic venue needs:
The best venue is:
| A BIG SPACE 🏠 | Whatever space you find should be BIG! Not a school-gym crammed. They’re spending the next 24 hours there – give them room to breathe. |
|---|---|
| WELCOMING 🫂 | Should be exciting for teens! Github, Shopify, Figma. An awesome workspace → more ideas! Big windows, couches, rolling chairs. |
| OVERNIGHT 💤 | 24-hour events are where the ✨magic✨ happens. People are too locked in for 12-hour events. We want them to have fun! Try your best to find an overnight one. |
Here are a bunch of good ideas you can add to your list – use Google Maps to find nearby options!
| Makerspace | AMAZING space for hackathons. They often have multiple rooms, and can sometimes provide hardware/marketing for your event |
|---|---|
| Startup | More supportive of nonprofits and hackathons! They’re less risk-averse than larger corporations. Sometimes, they have fancier offices too. |
| Corporate Office | Please avoid cubicles (isolates participants from one another, hard to reach), but a good space if they’re willing to do overnight! |
| Library/University | Good spaces if they have big windows and good funding! Not that great if it’s boring, classroom-like, with lecture halls. Try not to isolate participants! |
| Schools | Avoid unless it’s a fancy, private school or well-funded. We don’t want to remind participants of an academic setting! |
Once you have your mega-list of spaces, you need to reach out to them. This step can make or break your chances, so here’s how to do it right:
Try not to use generic email addresses (ex: info@xyz). Find employees / COOs / people of seniority. Going through website portals is very finicky. Do not assume you’ll get to actual people directly, assume your message will go into the void.
Tools to find emails:
Remember: free trials might be temporary, but temporary emails are infinite ;)
🛑 DO NOT:
USE CHATGPT (to write the WHOLE thing. Maybe use it to correct grammar)
Be overly professional. It’s stupid. It’s useless. You’re not on LinkedIn, don’t pretend to be. Be respectful, but be enthusiastic, youthful.
MASS EMAIL. It will get you NOWHERE. People can tell when it’s a mass email and you don’t care. You will send 1000+ emails (like I did) with NO answer. Ten customized emails is a million times better than a thousand mass emails.
✅ DO:
If you can, you should go to a workshop about writing effective emails & get feedback on your email before sending it! We’ll hold a couple to get you guys started.
Example:
I’m RenRan, a 17-year-old high school student from Ottawa. This [month], I’m organizing Ottawa’s first all-girls high school hackathon!
July 5-6, we’re running JPEG, a 25hr coding event for 70+ teens. JPEG is affiliated with Hack Club, the “world’s largest open source community of teenagers who love to code and build stuff”.
Learning to code through hackathons helped me make some of my best memories—and friends. But there are very few opportunities for high schoolers in Ottawa, let alone girls, to attend these social coding events.
Impact Hub is incredible. Especially your Compassionate Community program and the Cartier Women’s initiative in recognizing women entrepreneurs.
Our event has everything—but a venue. We’re wondering if Impact Hub Ottawa could donate your space to us overnight July 5-6?
I’d love to jump on a call to answer any questions or iron out details!
Warmly, RenRan Sun (she/her)
renran@hackclub.comBe nice to them, maybe they’ll host another event in the future!
Ask for monetary donations, food, supplies, or mentors.
They answered, which means congrats! They care!
BUT do not SPAM THEM or Hack Club might end up blacklisted.