Our Impact
Our learners come first at Hack the Hood. We are committed to their success. Our programs inspire each learner to begin their journey into the tech sector and take their first step toward opportunities in tech. To evaluate our programs’ success and efficacy, we measure 7 distinct impact metrics across all of our programs. We assess our impact by conducting pre and post program surveys to evaluate our learners' experiences. Here are the impacts from our 2021 Programs.*
* The metrics reported reflect positive percent change only, meaning that on a scale from 1-5, where 1 strongly disagrees and 5 is strongly agree, we are only capturing a response as a positive change if the learner reported moving from neutral to strongly agree. This shows a smaller overall impact number (as some learners move from strongly disagree to neutral) but better captures the positive impact we’ve had on learners. This a more robust measurement of skill attainment, and captures learners who were not confident at all or neutral in their responses on the pre survey and progressed to confident and very confident in the post survey.
“The next steps that I plan to take as a result of what I learned in this course is to continue my career path in the tech industry… I want to be able to develop my own game and build my own programming software one day. I do feel inspired on my journey to use technology for good and addressing social justice issues because I learned that technology is advancing more every day and there are things that we can do to make technology better. We should use technology to help out the community and find solutions to social justice issues. Thank you for this amazing opportunity!
This program inspired me to pursue a career in the technology industry and I will continue to challenge myself more.”
— Summer 2021 participant
Efficacy in Improving Employability Skills
Increase in Technical Coding Skills
96% efficacy in improving employability skills such as communication, career awareness, and career navigation skills.
89% of learners reported an increase in their technical coding skills.
Career Planning
94% of learners left with plans for careers, certifications, bootcamps, or higher education in technology.
Continuing Education
86% of the learners plan on formal education at the associate or bachelor's level.
When asked on an open ended question on both the summer and fall post surveys to list any concrete next steps they plan to take as a result of what they learned in the course:
19% students across both surveys indicated they plan to apply for an internship or explore a career in technology.
Students without programming experience saw a 64% increase in interest to pursue a degree or certificate in a technology field
Sense of Belonging in Technology
97% of learners gained a sense of belonging in tech when considering their goals, access to role models, and affiliated identity. For learners overall, and also across nearly all student subgroups, participation in the program increased students’ sense of belonging in technology and in social capital and in having role models in technology careers.
We had an even higher impact on the increased sense of belonging for these subgroups:
64% for female identifying
91% for learners without programming experience
73% for Black/African American learners
58% for below poverty threshold
Reaching Personal Goals
97% of the learners achieved at least one skill, career, or economic goal. Learners reached their personal goals “to a great extent” through participation in the program, including their primary goals to improve their programming skills and to learn about different jobs and careers in technology.
45% of the learners indicated that the program helped them learn very specific or unexpected programming and computer science skills.
37% said mentoring and field expertise incorporated into the program helped them to effectively explore or make a decision about their career or college pathway.
26% of learners the Hack the Hood programs helped build confidence so that they could continue to grow their programming skills
23% indicated that our program format met their needs by being engaging, and by focusing on project-based learning, digestible content