HCB - The open-source, nonprofit neobank
Built by students, for students—HCB is the nonprofit neobank powering local hackathons, clubs, and teams with 501(c)(3) status. Collect donations, send payments, issue cards, and manage funds with ease. Focus on building—we’ll handle money.
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Dysperse
Grimo
@manucodes omg this is actually genius! (☆▽☆)
wish i had this back in school, would have saved so many headaches.
trying to get bank stuff sorted for our anime club was a nightmare lol. this looks way easier than dealing with old banks or even some fintechs not built for this.
like, instant 501c3 status? thats wild. is it really that fast? 🤔
really removes a big blocker for students wanting to build cool things. love the open source part too.
great job team, congrats on the launch!!
minimalist phone: creating folders
This is a maximally good thing!!!
As students, we "were required" to study and not earn money but at the same time they wanted us to be active (which is usually done by building your projects – but you need funding or something that helps you start besides knowledge you need to earn along the way).
Hopefully, something like this gets to Europe and specifically into some countries.
@busmark_w_nika Thank you! A lot of our features have definitely grown out of necessity; our goal is to reduce the barrier to entry as much as possible to encourage more people to drive positive change. Starting a nonprofit is a great way for students to make an impact, and it also gives them a chance to learn and demonstrate their skill. In the current world, there's too much friction, and teens are discouraged from taking time away from school to run projects. HCB changes this by providing them everything they need within 24 hours of applying.
minimalist phone: creating folders
Didn't you have any issues with bureaucracy due to this project? Because if we wanted to make something like this in Europe (Slovakia), it would take a village :D
This is the best piece of banking software I have ever used.
The incredibly quick support is awesome, so is the fact that you are fiscally sponsored by a legitimate organization with minimal fees, the fact it’s open sourced and anyone can see how it was made, the fact it makes so many opportunities available for students where they can have cards and bank accounts for their org without the crazy admin that goes into it otherwise, I’m planning my third hackathon on HCB, and it has hands down made my life so much easier.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has made HCB such an awesome piece of software. (Sorry for the rant lol)
Where is the landing page?
@admiralrohan hackclub.com/hcb
Which parts of this product are open sourced? Please provide the links
@eshangin The entire platform is open-sourced with an AGPL licence! https://github.com/hackclub/hcb
@eshangin hack.af/gh/hcb - the whole product is open source!
@eshangin everything, https://GitHub.com/hackclub/hcb
I really like the GUI , it looks simple and fresh
So cool! Been using HCB for over a year now and it's just so intuitive and useful. It simplifies a process that was always so daunting: raising money, storing funds, transferring balances, making transactions, and dealing with the logistics of handling money as a high schooler. HCB has really made it easier to do everything from fundraising to spending the money we raise; and ultimately, has allowed us to focus more on the actual events and hackathons we run rather than all the complicated logistics and legalities of fundraising as a high schooler. The HCB Operations team is also amazing and so quick to help—and the new Wise transfer makes it extremely to use HCB internationally, especially in Canada :)
So excited to mess around w/ HCB now that it's open-source!
@kevinjosethomas Thanks Kevin! We're glad we're able to support you and your organization, and it's great to hear how you've been able to thrive on HCB. I'm looking forward to seeing more community involvement in the coming months, and I'm happy to chat 1:1 if you ever want a more in-depth tour of the HCB codebase.
Built by students for students—love this! How does HCB handle transaction fees?
@desmond_ren1 Hey Desmond - I use HCB for my coding club and Hackathons.
HCB covers transaction processing fees for donations! See https://hcb-engr.hackclub.dev/posts/were-making-payment-processing-fees-disappear-101088
@desmond_ren1 @whatbeato Yep! HCB covers all transaction processing fees. Organizations don't need to worry about card processing fees from Stripe or the cost of sending ACH transfers.
The only fee users have to consider is our flat 7% fee on incoming revenue to cover our operational costs.
Excited to see nonprofit tools for students! 😄
this is a bit different
Grimo
omg this is actually genius! (☆▽☆)
wish i had this back in school, would have saved so many headaches.
trying to get bank stuff sorted for our anime club was a nightmare lol. this looks way easier than dealing with old banks or even some fintechs not built for this.
like, instant 501c3 status? thats wild. is it really that fast? 🤔
really removes a big blocker for students wanting to build cool things. love the open source part too.
great job team, congrats on the launch!!
@stainlu Thanks, Stain! Through the magic of fiscal sponsorship, every organization gets 501(c)(3) nonprofit status under The Hack Foundation’s umbrella. For teenagers that apply at https://nonprofit.new, our current response times for applications are ~24 hours, and it really is that fast compared to the usual process of applying for 501(c)(3) status with the IRS and setting up a bank account with conventional banks.
i've been using hcb for quite a while now and it's absolutely been amazing and pretty much seamless. much appreciation to the team who make sure the experience is that way and remains that way <3
Love that HCB is tackling this space, how does it simplify budgeting and reimbursements for student-led teams juggling multiple funding sources?
@alex_sporenberg Thanks Alex. We have some pretty neat tooling to help organizations categorize transactions and bucket donations into different funding sources. Users can leave notes and tags on transactions within the platform to keep their financial information centralized.
You also mentioned reimbursements; last year we launched our own in-house reimbursement system that allows organizers to upload receipts and receive a direct deposit within a few hours. You can read more about it here: https://blog.hcb.hackclub.com/posts/reimbursements-289630
Awesome! In which countries is it available in europe? Can we open one being from Spain?
@natalia_eiriz Hack Clubber here (just not a HCB staff). Technically you can sign up from anywhere, but because of the pain of getting nonprofit status outside the US, you only get tax-deductible donations from American donations for now. (Disclaimer: IANAL)
@natalia_eiriz It's available globally!
This is very useful :)
Had Scrapyard a few weeks ago and it helped our team to send an invoice quickly and the fact that it's transparent is just great.
A product for students is such a great idea! I love it. I hope students no longer have to worry about financial tasks outside of their studies.
This is a maximally good thing!!!
As students, we "were required" to study and not earn money but at the same time they wanted us to be active (which is usually done by building your projects – but you need funding or something that helps you start besides knowledge you need to earn along the way).
Hopefully, something like this gets to Europe and specifically into some countries.
So excited for this one! I and Hack Clubbers grew up using HCB and we love this new milestone. Congrats everyone!