AI for Social Enterprise — Hackathon

Got an idea for how AI could help a social enterprise do more good? Or the skills to build one? Join us at UTS Startups for a fast, hands-on two-day hackathon where builders, designers, founders and changemakers team up to turn AI ideas into working solutions for social good.

How it works

Day 1 — Monday 21 September | Validate Problem

Bring a problem, an idea, or just your curiosity. Pitch it to the room, work with mentors to sharpen your concept, stress-test it against real needs. By the end of the day, the strongest ideas will have found their teams and started building.

Day 2 — Tuesday 22 September | Build & Pitch

Heads down with your team, continuing to turn Day 1's concepts into working prototypes — with mentors on hand to help you get unstuck and go further. The top 5 teams will get to pitch to the whole room.

Both days run 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM at UTS Startups.

Who it's for

Social enterprises with problems worth solving, students eager to build something that matters, and developers who want to put their skills to work for impact. You don't need a team or a finished idea to join — that's what Day 1 is for.

Prizes

For each member of the winning team:

• Partial Social Impact Fellowship scholarship (valued at $659) by the Social Impact Hub

  • The Fellowship is a 12-week program for people who are ambitious to make an impact, whether they're leading a nonprofit, early in their career, running a social enterprise, or driving change inside a larger organisation. Through masterclasses, hands-on projects, mentoring and a community of 500+ alumni, Fellows build the skills, network and confidence to embed impact in their career and work. Valid for the cohort starting March 2027

• ElevenCreative Pro for three months (valued at $419), by ElevenLabs

  • ElevenCreative is the platform powering millions of creators, marketing teams, and media companies worldwide. Generate, edit, and localize studio-quality audio and video in minutes.

• A SECNA 12-month individual membership (valued at $150)

  • The 12 Month SECNA membership helps social enterprise founders and supporters build connections through three core benefits: sharing business news, offers, and asks directly with the network via the Weekly Member Update; accessing virtual peer mentoring for practical guidance from experienced founders, and attending discounted networking events and specialised learning opportunities to build relationships within the NSW and ACT impact ecosystem.

• Goods 4 Good prize pack

  • Discover the best of social enterprise with this special Goods 4 Good prize pack. A curated collection of products from Australian social enterprises—beautiful products with a purpose, where every purchase helps create positive impact.

• Innovator's Playbook by Naithan Baird (valued at $35), sponsored by City Quokka

  • Design Thinking expert Nathan Baird shares his 20 years of hands-on experience, tools and methods for developing a winning customer-centric approach to innovation.

What you'll get

• Prizes for the top projects

• Hands-on guidance from mentors across both days

• Feedback from judges assessing solutions on quality, impact reasoning and viability

• A community of people using AI to drive social impact — and a project to show for it

Spots are limited. Register below to secure your place.

Judges

Nandeeta Maharaj is the founder of Goods 4 Good, a platform connecting consumers with products that create positive impact for people and the planet. Goods 4 Good was named Social Enterprise of the Year at the South Asian Women Business Awards Australia 2025. Nandeeta is also a Social Enterprise Champion with SECNA and founder of Made for Change—a purpose-driven venture supporting organisations on the frontline helping women and children affected by domestic violence.

Ramana Kirubagaran is Chief Information Officer at MultiLit, an Australian provider of evidence-based literacy and numeracy programs, where he chairs the AI Steering Committee and oversees the organisation’s AI pilots. He also advises Koorana Child and Family Services on IT strategy. With 15+ years of senior leadership across higher education, government and not-for-profits, he brings a focus on making new technology practical, secure and genuinely useful in mission-driven organisations.

James Hornitzky is a Digital Enablement Specialist at Social Traders and has over ten years’ experience working with leading Australian charities and social enterprises in digital product and technology roles. James is currently researching the thesis topic ‘Developing social enterprise as a financially sustainable model of NFP innovation’ as a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney. James is a non-executive director at The Moreneta Initiative.

Eva Sheluhina, Forward Deployed Engineer at ElevenLabs. Ex-McKinsey, Ex-SAP, focused on AI Transformations: systems, practices and frameworks for delivering resilient agentic workflows at scale.

Sponsors

UTS Startups is the home of Sydney's best emerging startups, and the largest early stage startup incubator in the country.. Located on the corner of Broadway and Harris Street in the heart of the Tech Central precinct, it offers 250 incubator desks, a two-level event space built for hackathons and meetups, and programs spanning high school students through to UTS alumni. Its public events and programs are open to everyone. If you are interested in learning more about the UTS Startups space or community, reach out to Startups@uts.edu.au.

Social Impact Hub helps purpose-driven leaders and organisations grow their impact. They provide advisory, education and capability-building support across areas like strategy, governance, impact measurement, business planning, financial modelling, investment readiness and leadership development, and connect enterprises with experienced specialists through their Professional Impact Network. Their mission is to support social innovators to build sustainable, impactful ventures that create lasting positive change.

SECNA is a member-led peak body representing the interests of social enterprises and entrepreneurs across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Together, we build connections across government, business, and community to collaborate and influence change. We connect, champion, and advocate for a diverse community of social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. We strengthen and support the ecosystem by building community, mentoring members, sharing knowledge and resources, and creating opportunities for collaboration and growth. We champion social procurement across business, government, and public platforms, and advocate for investment and policy settings that enable social enterprises to grow and thrive.

ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company. It builds AI voice and audio models, creative tools, and conversational agents across 70+ languages. Millions of consumers, developers, governments, and businesses use ElevenLabs — including employees at two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies. With its models and platform, the company aims to transform how people and businesses communicate with the world.

Goods 4 Good is a platform connecting consumers with products that create positive impact for people and the planet. Goods 4 Good is Social Trader Certified, a member of Australian Social Enterprise Peak bodies and was named Social Enterprise of the Year at the South Asian Women Business Awards Australia 2025.

HackHQ is the submissions and judging platform for this hackathon. Teams submit through a single link with no account to create, judges score from their own private links on any device, and results are live the moment the last score is in. It is built for organisers who would rather spend their energy on mentorship and community than on spreadsheets and logistics. Universities, companies and community organisers use it for hackathons, capstone expos and pitch competitions.

This hackathon is part of Spark Festival - Australia's largest grassroots startup festival.