How selling event tickets is helping bring CS education to schools around the world
Getting a digital ticket for an anticipated live event can be equal parts thrilling and frustrating. What if there were only the upsides to booking tickets, instead of being constantly and helplessly annoyed at the exorbitant fees and poor customer experience? What if there was a ticketing company where the booking fee profits actually go towards improving the lives of people around the world instead of making shareholders rich? That’s what high school friends Josh Ross, a hedge fund analyst, and Adam McCurdie, an engineer, had in mind when they founded the event ticketing platform Humanitix.
Getting started
Growing up in Australia, they decided that a technology-focused social enterprise structured as a charity with some of the world’s most disadvantaged children as its shareholders was a great way to try to solve social problems. They chose to target the ticketing industry as it was ripe for reinvention and started Humanitix at a kitchen table conversation in 2016.
Six years later, Humanitix is a leading tech-driven ticketing platform in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.K., selling millions of tickets a year and competing with the largest ticketing services in the world. Its unique point of difference is that instead of reinvesting or handing money back to shareholders, Humanitix devotes 100% of its profits to fund education projects that support disadvantaged children worldwide.
A new partnership
Humanitix selected Code.org as one of the global organizations they support, helping fund Code.org’s work to raise global awareness around the need for computer science education and enabling our work of translating and localizing Code.org content to make it available to students around the world. Humanitix team members also volunteered in classrooms during Computer Science Education Week as students engaged in an Hour of Code.
“Interest in Computer Science education is growing worldwide, with over 70 countries already offering mandatory or optional CS courses in primary, secondary education or both,” says Leonardo Ortiz Villacorta, Vice President of Development and International at Code.org. “There is consensus among education, government, civil society, and industry leaders about the foundational nature of CS to ensure that students understand how the world works and acquire skills that will be critical for their success in the future.”
Adam McCurdie, co-founder and co-CEO of Humanitix, says, “Computer Science education has become a fundamental part of education along with math and literacy. Humanitix is focused on providing quality education to every child on the planet, no matter their background, and we are thrilled to be partnered with Code.org to achieve our mission.”
Code.org is proud to collaborate with Humanitix as a key impact partner and changemaker. The funds accrued by Humanitix and donated to Code.org will help shape the future of society and the economy. Our partnership brings together two tech-focused charities that are changing the world and shifting the trajectory of the lives of over 65 million students. We’ll continue to strive towards moving millions of kids towards economic opportunity through the wonders of computer science.
Get involved and learn more about Humanitix’s impact by visiting their website here.
—David Bernier, Code.org
Code.org is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to every student having the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K-12 education. We are publicly funded by people like you. If you would like to join our commitment to computer science education by making a donation today, please click here. For questions, please contact Development at giving@code.org or (206) 593–5521. Thank you.
