About CommuniHacks

Apply to be a hacker at communihacks.ca!

CommuniHacks is a 24-hour hackathon where students build technology to solve real problems faced by local nonprofits and community organizations. At the start of the event, local community organizations each present 3 problems they are currently facing. Then, hacker teams of size 3-4 select one of these problems and spend the next 24 hours designing and building a software solution. If a partnering organization believes a team's solution is strong, they will invite that team to continue building with them in a volunteer position.

CommuniHacks is an MLH 2027 Season Hackathon!

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$CAD 6,000+ in prizes
+ other prizes
1st Place
1 winner

Choice between Airpods 5, DJI Neo Mini-Drone with 4K Camera, 7 Months of Claude Pro, and a Hall Effect Keyboard.

- 4 ElevenLabs 3-month Pro tier passes
- 4 Nord bundles, 1 year
- 4 CodeCrafters 2-year VIP licenses
- 4 Mobbin 1-year Pro passes
- 4 O'Reilly books
- 4 CleanShot licenses
- 4 .xyz free domains, 1 year

2nd Place
1 winner

- 4 Precision Soldering Irons
- 1-year of NordVPN, NordPass, and Incogni
- 1 GB of data for Saily
- 4 O'Reilly books
- 4 Art of Problem Solving $25 discount codes
- 4 CodeCrafters 1-year VIP licenses
- 4 .xyz free domains, 1 year
- 4 CleanShot licenses

3rd Place
1 winner

- 4 Mouser swag packs with dev kit
- 4 O'Reilly books
- 4 CodeCrafters 6-month VIP licenses
- 4 .xyz free domains, 1 year
- 4 CleanShot licenses

Best Use of Cloudinary for Community Impact
2 winners

1st Place: $1200 in Amazon Gift Cards ($300/member)
2nd Place: $400 Amazon Gift Card

[MLH] Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry
1 winner

Digital Gift Card || GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

[MLH] Best Use of Gemini API
1 winner

MLH Swag Kits || It’s time to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?

Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice
Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers
Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more
Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?

[MLH] Best Use of ElevenLabs
1 winner

Wireless Earbuds || Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.

Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!

[MLH] Best Use of Vultr
1 winner

M5Stack Official Tab5 || Vultr empowers hackers to bring their high-performance projects to life instantly; providing everything from the speed of one-click deployment and scalable cloud compute, to specialized Vultr Cloud GPUs that can power AI-driven applications. We want you to push the limits of what can be built when infrastructure is no longer the bottleneck!

Sign up for a Vultr account today and claim your free cloud credits! Take your next hack to the cloud with Vultr for a chance to win some awesome prizes for you and your team!

[MLH] Best Use of Solana
1 winner

Assorted Prizes || The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it’s time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.

Harness Solana’s core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.

Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.
Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).
Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.
Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!

[MLH] Best Use of Tiger Data
1 winner

Stream Deck Mini || Building high-performance apps under hackathon deadlines shouldn't mean spending half your weekend configuring complex databases or learning obscure query languages. Tiger Data extends PostgreSQL to give student developers an ultra-fast foundation for real-time data, time-series metrics, and complex analytics.

Why build with Tiger Data this weekend?

Standard SQL Power: Query massive datasets instantly using the SQL you already know, with no complex NoSQL aggregation pipelines required.

Unified Data Stack: Store relational user profiles and high-frequency metric streams side-by-side in a single database.

Instant Dashboards: Serve lag-free, real-time frontend charts using pre-computed Continuous Aggregates.

90%+ Data Compression: Store millions of events on free-tier cloud instances without running out of disk space.

Whether you’re building real-time IoT monitoring, AI-driven analytics dashboards, or financial prediction engines, show us how Tiger Data powers your project. The team that demonstrates the most innovative, impactful, and performance-driven use of Tiger Data will take home some great prizes!

All Participants
100 winners

- Wolfram|One, one-month access
- ElevenLabs 131k credits, one-month access
- Mobbin Pro, three-month access
- n8n Cloud Pro, one-month access
- Lovable credits
- PCBWay coupons

Total Prize Value
$CAD 6,000 in cash
1 winner

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Raghav Sethi

Raghav Sethi
Senior Software Engineer @ Instacart

Karthik Manoharan

Karthik Manoharan
Founder @ Loci; Prev. Technical PM @ Foresite Technology

Kima Joulji

Kima Joulji
Senior Product Development Engineer @ AMD

Joshua Ricker-Rampersad

Joshua Ricker-Rampersad
Senior Software Engineer @ Pinterest

Alex Astrum

Alex Astrum
Developer Relations Engineer @ Google

Cressa Price

Cressa Price
Senior Engineering Director @ D2L

Prathap Shetty

Prathap Shetty
Senior Lead, Software Consultant @ Virtusa

Milindkumar Shah

Milindkumar Shah
Manager @ Cognizant; Prev. Senior Software Developer @ IBM

Community Organization Partners

Community Organization Partners

Judging Criteria

  • Problem Understanding
    Does the team clearly understand the partner organization's challenge? Did they engage with the actual need rather than just building something loosely related?
  • Solution Quality
    Is the solution functional, well-designed, and does it genuinely solve the problem? Does it work as demonstrated?
  • Technical Execution
    Is the project technically sound? Did the team use their tools and technology effectively given the time constraint?
  • Usefulness
    Could the solution realistically be adopted or continued by the partnering organization after the event?
  • Presentation
    Did the team clearly explain their problem, solution, and demo in a way that was easy to follow?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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