Love Blue Partners with Rutgers Hack4Impact to Revolutionize the Cleanup Experience

Love Blue Inc. is proud to announce a new partnership with Rutgers Hack4Impact for the 2026–2027 academic year.

As Love Blue continues to grow from a local beach cleanup initiative into a national network of students, volunteers, community members, and partner organizations, we are constantly asking ourselves one question:

How can we make it easier for people to get involved, make an impact, and see the difference we're creating together?

This year, we're taking a major step toward answering that question.

Building the Future of Environmental Service

Hack4Impact is a largely student-run 501(c)(3) organization that builds free software for nonprofits and other socially responsible organizations. With chapters across the country and partnerships with more than 50 nonprofits, Hack4Impact works to provide organizations with technology that helps them better achieve their missions.

The Rutgers University–New Brunswick chapter is bringing a team of approximately 25 students together for the 2026–2027 academic year to work alongside Love Blue throughout a two-semester development process.

Their goal is simple: build technology that creates meaningful impact.

For Love Blue, this partnership represents an opportunity to rethink how we organize, document, and connect our growing network.

From Google Forms to Something Built for Love Blue

For years, much of Love Blue's cleanup and volunteer information has been collected through individual Google Forms, spreadsheets, documents, and other systems. As a small organization that has grown significantly over the years, those systems have helped us get to where we are today, but our growth has made it clear that we need something built specifically for the way Love Blue operates.

Our new partnership with Rutgers Hack4Impact will allow us to begin building that next generation of infrastructure.

The goal isn't simply to create another app.

We want to revolutionize the cleanup experience.

We're working toward a centralized platform that can help connect our members and chapters, make participation easier to track, bring our impact into one place, and give our growing network better access to the information and resources they need.

Most importantly, the technology will be designed around the people who make Love Blue possible: our volunteers, chapter leaders, students, community members, and partners.

Technology With a Purpose

One of the most exciting parts of this partnership is that the people building the technology are students themselves.

The Rutgers Hack4Impact team will spend the academic year learning about Love Blue's operations, understanding the needs of our chapters and members, and developing a product specifically around those needs.

That means this isn't simply a technology project.

It's a collaboration between two student-driven organizations working toward a shared goal: using innovation to make it easier for people to create positive change in their communities.

As Love Blue continues to expand, having the right technology behind our movement will allow us to spend less time managing disconnected systems and more time doing what we do best, getting people outside, building leaders, strengthening communities, and protecting the places we love.

What's Next?

Development will take place throughout the Fall 2026–Spring 2027 academic year, with the Rutgers Hack4Impact team working closely with Love Blue along the way.

We're excited to share pieces of the journey as the project develops, but we'll be keeping some of the details under wraps for now.

Let's just say..we're building something we believe can change the way Love Blue cleans up, connects, and grows.

We are incredibly grateful to the Rutgers Hack4Impact team for choosing to partner with Love Blue and for investing their time, talent, and creativity into our mission.

The next chapter of Love Blue is being built right now.

And we're just getting started.

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About Rutgers Hack4Impact

Rutgers Hack4Impact is a student-led chapter of Hack4Impact, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that builds free software for nonprofits and socially responsible organizations. The organization partners with nonprofits to develop technology that helps them more effectively pursue their missions.

About Love Blue Inc.

Love Blue Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that mobilizes communities to protect oceans and waterways through hands-on action, leadership development, and education. What began as a local beach cleanup effort has grown into a network of chapters, students, volunteers, and community partners working to create cleaner communities and develop the next generation of environmental stewards.