Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

Collaborationware CEO tried to smooth things over, but Hack Club now plans a strategy shift

Slack sent a nonprofit hacking club for teens a demand for $50,000, payable within a week, and threatened to delete the club’s message archive if it did not pay.

That horror scenario came to light in a Thursday post by Mahad Kalam, who helps out at Hack Club, a nonprofit that works to run coding clubs at high schools.

Slack is an integral part of the org’s offline community.

“Coding doesn’t have to be a solitary activity,” states a blurb on its home page. “At Hack Club, we make remarkable things together, and in our Slack you’ll find awesome people to hang out with too. Code together, find your programming community, dream up something wild, or just #lounge.”

According to Kalam’s post, “A few years ago, when Slack transitioned us from their free nonprofit plan to a $5,000/year arrangement, we happily paid. It was reasonable, and we valued the service they provided to our community.”

On Tuesday, Slack stopped being reasonable.

“However, two days ago, Slack reached out to us and said that if we don’t agree to pay an extra $50k this week and $200k a year, they’ll deactivate our Slack workspace and delete all of our message history,” Kalam wrote.

“One could argue that Slack is free to stop providing us the nonprofit offer at any time, but in my opinion, a six month grace period is the bare minimum for a massive hike like this, if not more,” he added, before offering the following observation:

Essentially, Salesforce (a $230 billion company) is strong-arming a small nonprofit for teens, by providing less than a week to pony up a pretty massive sum of money, or risk cutting off all our communications. That’s absurd.

Hack Club decided to move to a rival open source platform called Mattermost

The rush job to make that possible was daunting.

“The small amount of notice has also been catastrophic for the programs that we run,” Kalam wrote. “Dozens of our staff and volunteers are now scrambling to update systems, rebuild integrations and migrate years of institutional knowledge. The opportunity cost of this forced migration is simply staggering.”

“This experience has taught us that owning your data is incredibly important, and if you’re a small business especially, then I’d advise you move away too,” he added.

The post understandably gathered a lot of attention, including from Slack CEO Denise Dresser, who Kalam says “got in contact with us and offered to put things right (I can’t exactly say what it is, but it’s better than the plan we were on previously!)”

But even with that new deal on offer, Kala said Hack Club is rethinking its vendor relationships.

“This ordeal has made us think more deeply about entrusting data with external SaaSes and ensuring that we own our data is definitely going to be a very big priority going forward. I’d encourage you to think the same way!” ®