Social Good Hackathon: Maximizing Potential @ West Valley College
Build technology that serves your community.
The AI for Social Good Hackathon is a one-day event at West Valley College, hosted by Maximizing Potential, the student-run nonprofit founded here on campus.
Every track is built around a real need identified by a local community organization. You’ll join a team, build a working prototype with AI, and present it to judges, including the partners themselves. The best projects don’t end at demo day: partners get the first look at every prototype built for their track, with an eye toward adopting it after the event.
The tracks
- Senior Fraud and Scams, with Successful Aging Solutions & Community Consulting (SASCC): How can we build helpful tools that support seniors' ability to detect, avoid, and report scams and fraud?
- Community Engagement, with the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce: How can we engage the community and educate them about Saratoga's great businesses and activities in a fun, interactive way?
- Volunteer Coordination, with the Kiwanis Club of Campbell: How can we help organizations recruit volunteers, match them to the right roles and schedules, and make volunteering simple and rewarding?
Prizes
$1,000 in prizes, sponsored by Maximizing Potential:
🥇 1st place: $500
🥈 2nd place: $300
🥉 3rd place: $200
Projects are judged on real-world impact and feasibility.
Technology partners and additional prizes
Keenable: web search credits for every participant
Keenable is a web search API for AI agents that can search the live web, read full pages, and return links and dates. Every participant receives $250 in Keenable credits, with no card required. The winning teams share an additional $1,000 in Keenable credits in total, distributed at the awards.
George Trushevskiy from Keenable will introduce the tool during the opening, join the community partner panel, and judge with the partners.
Redeem the participant code SOCIALGOOD from November 6 at 12:00 AM through November 8 at 11:59 PM Pacific time. One $250 grant per account, for new or existing accounts.
New accounts: https://app.keenable.ai/signup?focus=1 Under “Where did you hear about Keenable?” choose Other and enter SOCIALGOOD.
Existing accounts: enter SOCIALGOOD in the Promo code box at https://app.keenable.ai/console/billing and select Redeem.
Have one person per team set up an account and connect the team's own key before the build begins. Setup for Claude, ChatGPT, and code editors: https://artifacts.keenable.ai/socialgood/
Keenable's eligibility and usage terms apply: https://keenable.ai/terms
Chert: Best Use of FaceTime
Chert is joining the hackathon as a partner! Build an AI agent that is more useful when it can see, using the Chert FaceTime API. iMessage is optional.
First place in the Chert track receives $300 plus guaranteed software engineering interviews for the Chert Fellowship at Chert, a Y Combinator (YC) company. This additional track prize is separate from Maximizing Potential’s $1,000 in main event prizes.
Judging: use of video (weighted 2×), wow factor, and usefulness.
Chert is also offering free FaceTime/iMessage lines to participants.
Get started and find build support in Chert’s Discord: Join Discord Server
Learn more: https://www.trychert.com/
Who should come?
The event is free and open to the public: West Valley students, students from nearby community colleges, high school students, and anyone who wants to build with AI for good.
Register individually and find your team during check-in, or come with a team already formed. Bring a laptop and a willingness to collaborate.
Schedule
9:00 – 10:15 AM · Check-in and team matching
10:15 – 10:45 AM · Opening and track introductions
10:45 – 11:45 AM · Panel with our community partners
11:45 AM – 2:15 PM · Build
2:15 – 3:30 PM · Judging
3:30 – 4:05 PM · Winners announced
4:05 – 4:35 PM · Ceremony
4:35 – 5:00 PM · Networking
Snacks and lunch provided!
The build session is 2.5 hours, so aim for a small, working prototype that solves one problem well.