Build archive
Ideas built under a deadline.
Notes from hackathons, builder tracks, and short experiments—what we tried, what changed, and what was worth carrying forward.
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2026
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UmmahHacks
Community Invest
MVP ShippedHackathon · Civic Tech · 3 builders
Problem
Online charity often struggles with a trust problem because donors cannot easily verify whether urgent requests are legitimate or whether their money reached the intended outcome.
Build
We built Community Invest, a neighborhood safety-net platform where residents can submit utility invoices, OCR and AI help risk-score each request, admins verify the bill, Stripe pays the utility directly, and receipts are posted so donors can see confirmed impact instead of trusting blindly.
Takeaways
- Trust improves when donations are tied to verifiable payments instead of direct cash transfers.
- Combining OCR, AI checks, and human review created a stronger fraud-prevention flow than relying on any single layer alone.
- Shipping an MVP during the event mattered more than waiting for a perfect pitch or polished finish.