Hacker Trivia Night

Hack the planet. Frag the man. Free the world.

A gamified computer education event awarding cash donations to community beneficiaries in need.

Donate to the Hacker Trivia Night Prize Pool

Donate to raise funds for Hacker Trivia Night Beneficiaries and grow the prize pool for the next game!

Thank you so much for your contribution to the Hacker Trivia Night prize pool!

Your donation has been cancelled.

Donate now Donate anonymously

Donations will show up as being sent to techlearningcollective@riseup.net, the Hacker Trivia Night producers. Learn more about Tech Learning Collective.

How are donations collected?

Donations are collected via PayPal to ensure they are secure, fast, and reliable. We never get access to your payment card information, which means we never store it on any of our systems. Since we never have access to your financial information, we cannot lose control of it—even in the event of a breach.

Can I donate anonymously?

Yes! You can choose to donate anonymously by clicking the “Donate anonymously” button. When you donate anonymously, your contribution appears as “Anonymous” in all our reporting.

Even if you don’t choose to donate anonymously, we will only ever publish your first name, last initial, contribution amount, and date of your donation, which is the same information published by platforms such as GoFundMe.

Can I donate directly to a beneficiary?

Many groups have their own fundraising campaigns set up and we would be thrilled if you chose to support any of our beneficiaries in any way you like. You are always welcome to support a beneficiary’s own fundraising efforts independent of Hacker Trivia Night.

However, Hacker Trivia Night would not be a game if it didn’t have a prize pool, so the only way to influence which beneficiary your Hacker Trivia Night contribution goes to support is to become the best hacker you can be! The more skilled you become, the more likely you are to score the most points during Hacker Trivia Night competitions and thus earn your chosen beneficiary the biggest winnings.

The most affordable way to become “31337” is to attend Tech Learning Collective cybersecurity workshops.

How much of my donation goes to support beneficiaries?

Most money goes to support beneficiaries, but sadly payment processors always take a percentage of donations. Refer to the PayPal Fee Calculator to get an idea of what proportion of your gross donation amount is taken by fees. The short version: for donations within the United States, PayPal will take a 2.9% plus 30¢ fee per transaction. Your specific percentage may differ depending on how you choose to make your donation.

Beyond payment processor fees, Tech Learning Collective takes a certain amount of donations to cover operating costs for the event itself. This includes any associated technical fees as well as compensation for our small but dedicated staff of activist teachers and trainers. This is how every other charity organization functions as well, so it is not unique to Hacker Trivia Night. Our operating costs are not a percentage of the prize pool, which means the larger the prize pool for a given game, the higher percentage goes directly to beneficiaries.

This is possible because Tech Learning Collective has intentionally designed our systems by striving to reduce fees and operational costs as much as possible. The fact of the matter, however, is that there is only so much that can be done within the framework of capitalism. The true solution to financial crises such as this one is to abolish the need for money in order to be able to access necessesities like food, shelter, and education in the first place.

Where can I see information about donations?

We report donation information in real-time on our Web site in numerous places, including this Web site’s home page, each individual event’s page, and the event listings pages. Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions!