import Letterhead from '../../../components/letterhead'

<Letterhead
title="May 2020 Transparency Update"
desc="An update with the latest open finances from Hack Club HQ."
img="https://workshop-cards.hackclub.com/Transparency%20Update.png?theme=light&brand=HQ&fontSize=225px&caption=May%202020"
author={{
  name: '@zrl',
  avatar: 'https://hackclub.com/team/zach.jpg',
  url: 'https://app.slack.com/team/U0266FRGP'
}}
date="2020-06-03"
path="transparency-may.mdx">

In 2014, after dropping out of high school at 16 to become a programmer, I started Hack Club. I had so many questions. How would finances work? How did other organizations get donations? How did they budget and spend their money? How much does it cost to run a program that reaches 1,000 people? What is an appropriate monthly salary for an employee? How much do lawyers and CPAs cost?

For me, learning to program was largely possible because of open source: the code of so much software written by both professionals and hobbyists is available publicly on GitHub. When you see under the hood at how software is made, you learn yourself. But nonprofits don't work that way. They are enigmas to outsiders. While top-level information is available to the public via [IRS Form 990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_990) ([example](https://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/946/946069890/946069890_201712_990.pdf)), the actual budgets and details of spending are closely guarded secrets—often not even donors, staff members, or board members are privy to how nonprofits spend their money.

That lack of transparency creates an ivory tower of nonprofits that is near-impossible enter as an outsider. Since it's impossible to learn from what other organizations are doing, this results in a world where you have to be born into a high-priest class to successfully start a nonprofit and receive major gifts.

We’d like to do things differently at Hack Club.

A totally transparent nonprofit not only shows others how to do it. It also increases accountability. This is a goal of the Liberman family, who have inspired and supported Hack Club's transparency goals over the last year. In 2019, Hack Club won the [Frank Prize](https://grant.frank.ly/) of $1M to support growing Hack Club's programs and to support Hack Club in increasing transparency. Two weeks ago, [we announced we were publicly opening Hack Club's bank account](https://hackclub.com/elon/).

While a bunch of transactions in a bank account is great, I want to summarize Hack Club's spending in May 2020 publicly. This is something that I wish other nonprofits did when Hack Club was first getting started.

The below summary was calculated from HQ's export from [Hack Club Bank](https://hackclub.com/bank/). You can see our full current account at https://bank.hackclub.com/hq/ using Hack Club Bank's new [Transparency Mode](https://twitter.com/hackclub/status/1262471150963130374).

### Revenue (total $20,621.78)

- **Donations ($15,621.78)**
  - $15,000 - Ron Conway
  - $244.20 - Samuel Escapa
  - $200 - Tim and Kate Clem
  - $97.50 - Jake Brownson
  - $20 - Jeffrey Owens
  - $19.30 - David C Farnan-Williams
  - $19.30 - Reid Workman
  - $10 - Chaleb Pommells
  - $9.48 - Tyler Hilliard
  - $2 - Hamza bnr Bellucci
- **Consulting Income ($5,000)**

  _This was a one-time project to advise Think Together on their September 2020 school re-opening plans._

  - $5,000 - Think Together

Thank you to all the new donors to Hack Club this month. You make Hack Club possible. We rely on donations to keep Hack Club free for students. [Donate here.](https://hackclub.com/donate/)

Please note that [Elon Musk also donated $500K this month](https://twitter.com/hackclub/status/1263153557945159680), but the gift didn't hit our account until June 3rd, so it will be included in the June finance update.

### Expenses ($61,729.35 - nearly entirely salaries)

- **People including taxes ($57,625.25)**

  _For the first time, Hack Club staff is growing beyond 3 people. When we were still tiny, we all took essentially the same salary of $4K/month. Now that we're growing, we still need to figure out how we want to think about salaries as an organization._

  - $13,333.33 - Christina Asquith - COO, leads donor side
    - $9,962.34 - Net pay
    - $3,370.99 - Employee taxes
    - $1,020 - Employer taxes
  - $6,666.67 - Chris Walker - Clubs
    - $5,268.17 - Net pay
    - $1,398.50 - Employee taxes
    - $510 - Employer taxes
  - $6,500 - Zach Latta - Executive Director
    - No taxes pre-withdrawn due to 1099, net pay above
  - $5,166.67 - Max Wofford - Clubs, working with Chris, recently owning Hack Club Bank too
    - No taxes pre-withdrawn due to 1099, net pay above
  - $4,761.90 - Lachlan Campbell - Design, https://hackclub.com
    - No taxes pre-withdrawn due to 1099, net pay above
  - $4,425 - Hack Club India Team
    - There are 117 Hack Clubs in India overseen by Athul and his team. We provide monthly funding to cover salaries for the team, an office, and operational expenses like travel and food.
  - $4,166.67 - Matthew Stanciu - Clubs, working with Chris and Max
    - No taxes pre-withdrawn due to 1099, net pay above
  - $3,500 - Theo Bleier - Donor side, working with Christina
    - No taxes pre-withdrawn due to 1099, net pay above
  - $3,100 - Michael Destefanis - Runs operations on Hack Club Bank
    - $2,444.13 - Net pay
    - $655.87 - Employee taxes
    - $237.15 - Employer taxes
  - $2,000 - Melody - Community and running [our Twitter](https://twitter.com/hackclub)
    - Note: Melody is paid $4K/month. I've been paying them weekly out of my personal bank account and getting reimbursed by Hack Club. Not all the reimbursements for May have gone through yet, which is why this number is $2K instead of $4K.
  - $1,642.86 - Sean Victory (filled in for Michael during medical leave, this was his final payment + $500 bonus)
  - $495 - James Click (contractor on AMA video editing, ~$150/each)
  - $100 - Sammi Brie (contractor on graphic design for Elon AMA)

- **Hardware Chris Purchased for Simone and future AMAs ($1,201.11)**
  - $938.08 - Bass Pro
  - $256.51 - Lowe's
  - $6.52 - Amazon
- **Software ($1,121.31)**
  - $260.25 - Rippling (payroll processor)
  - $249.90 - Zoom
  - $184.66 - Airtable
  - $99 - Zapier
  - $82.83 - Calendly
  - $59.99 - LinkedIn Premium
  - $45 - Figma
  - $40 - QuickBooks
  - $39 - Mountain Duck
  - $26.99 - Dialpad
  - $14.99 - Castr.io
  - $9 - Unity
  - $8.50 - DNSimple
  - $1.20 - Mailgun
- **Hack Club Bank ($515.25)**
  - $207 - Expensify
  - $181.60 - Earth Class Mail (mail processing service)
  - $120 - DocuSign
  - $6.65 - Lob (check printer)
- **Hosting ($464.81)**
  - $425.12 - Heroku
  - $18.50 - Compose.io
  - $9.11 - Digital Ocean
  - $6.54 - Linode
  - $3.50 - Vultr
  - $2.04 - Backblaze
- **Food ($434.71)**
  - $409.78 - Groceries
  - $24.93 - Staff lunch in Philly
- **Office ($287.46)**
  - $207.79 - Standing whiteboard
  - $42.39 - White noise machine
  - $21.39 - Video call lighting supplies
  - $15.89 - Kitchen supplies
- **News ($67.94)**
  - $38.99 - Wall Street Journal
  - $12.95 - Business Insider
  - $12 - Stratechery
  - $4 - New York Times
- **Minecraft Server ($59)**
  - $59 - Wholesale Internet
- **Mail Team ($117.49)**
  - $59.49 - Supplies
  - $49 - ShipStation
  - $9 - Aftership
- **Misc ($42.81)**
  - $42.81 - Medicine

The above numbers are on a cash basis, meaning they only include transactions that hit our bank account or cards this month.

In some cases, there are expenses that we have committed to in May that have not yet hit our accounts, like rent for the space that the team is currently staying in. I've done my best to list all known missing transactions below:

- $500,000 donation from Elon Musk
- $5,000 in rent for May 17th - June 14th (4 weeks) for team in Vermont
- $1,800 paid to Melody for work done in April and March 2020 (I paid them at the time from my personal account and have not been reimbursed yet)
- $3,670 paid to Lewis Mudge for rent the 2nd 1/2 April and the first 1/2 of May (place Max and I stayed in). Similarly, I paid Lewis at the time from my personal account and have not yet been reimbursed.
- ~$100 gas for staff trip to Vermont

Please note: there may be errors in this post. While I have pulled the numbers directly from Hack Club Bank, I did mess around a bit in a spreadsheet and have not double checked my work. I believe that all numbers below are approximately correct.

If you’re interested in seeing the Google Sheet I used to calculate the above numbers, you can see it at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UDw7YewsS5wJIVm0Uh5wOGlM2Ddv-kZVrD3QqIypvRQ/edit.

Please note that while the above encompasses all of HQ's spending in our Hack Club Bank account, it does not include GitHub grants to clubs, postage bought by Mail Team, or grants made from our internal "Discretionary Fund" to students in need that is funded by Ron Conway.

_Thanks to Christina, Melody, and Lachlan for their help writing this post._

</Letterhead>
