We received the ✨Wolfram One Award: Top 3 API and Tech Hacks Award
We were inspired by the Waltham Rotary Club’s mission and their goal to make a positive impact on the community. One particular point that attracted us to hack for the Waltham Rotary Club was their strategy towards creating a more youth-focused platform. In addition, we were inspired to create a virtual food and clothing drive to provide humanitarian aid even with restrictions on in-person events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We ultimately re-developed the original Waltham Rotary Club website, re-integrated the color scheme, and included new features for all users. Waltham Rotary Club’s current plan lacks a diverse platform, which leads to a low participation and attendance rate during club meetings. With this new and improved website, we offer a myriad of attributes: streamlined communication between Waltham Rotary Club and their members through a feedback form, an Eventbrite-styled collection of upcoming events, and a donation platform in collaboration with local organizations, such as the Greater Boston Food Bank and Family Thrift.
The new Waltham Rotary Club website not only fulfills Rotary ideals by servicing new generation’s projects, but it also initiates positive experiences by establishing mutually beneficial relationships. Now, Waltham Rotary Club can gain increased exposure and networking for the Waltham Rotary Club, as well as increased membership within the younger generation and cohesion with Rotaract.
We used Repl.it for collaboration as well as bootstrap for consistency and a unique user interface. We referenced the Waltham Rotary Club’s current website to make sure we continue to embody the purpose of their non-profit and the core values they hold. For the contact us and event forms we used the Formspree API to store the user’s responses in a database. We also included the square checkout API for the virtual food and clothing drive events as a way to make checkout easier and more efficient. Lastly, we used the Google Maps API to embed the Waltham Rotary Club’s location.
Linking Square payment and checkout API to the website Glitches with Repl.it Implementing bootstrap features that were new to us Navigation bar covered the logo on different device sizes (computer vs mobile)
This was our first time utilizing Square’s various APIs and connecting them to the back-end and front-end. Though we ran into some challenges, we are proud of our virtual food and clothing drives that successfully integrate Square’s payment system for donations to Waltham Rotary Club’s partner organizations. We are also proud of our new and improved Events page. We included past events hosted by Waltham Rotary Club and future ones that are great fundraising and community opportunities. Additionally, our Event page allows Rotary Club members to sign up for club events through a simple form that is linked to the Formspree database. Finally, we are extremely proud to have created a responsive website that can be viewed on mobile devices comfortably.
As mentioned before, this was our team’s first time learning about and integrating Square’s payment and checkout API into our website, which we completed successfully. In addition, we learned the importance of the Formspree API and how user information is stored in the backend server side.
Overall, DeisHacks was an incredible education experience, where each of us were given the learning opportunity in brainstorming, coding, and developing a project with a non-profit organization. Although this hackathon was unlike the traditional tech-focused hackathon, the integration of both marketing and technology allowed us to gain exposure and experience into project management.
As a very diverse team, we learned how to collaborate virtually with multiple time zones, states, and busy schedules. We are extremely happy that we were granted the opportunity to participate in DeisHacks and create a project for Waltham Rotary Club. We hope to come back for DeisHacks 2022!
Our hope is that the Waltham Rotary Club will be able to help other non-profits and implement our virtual food and clothes drives. To improve their event turnouts and participation, social media will be important moving forward to attract a diverse and younger generation. We would also like to keep events more up-to-date on the website and remove events that have passed.
For our current hackathon project, we hope to continue improving the user interface and experience to create the best possible experience for current and prospective members. Additionally, as some of us are designers, we hope to create a digital poster for Waltham Rotary Club’s marketing plan and design infographics for recruiting members.