To put it straight, your leadership team is the most important part of your club. Clubs are nothing more than the people they consist of and, as a result, the people doing the organizing determine whether you succeed or die.

We strongly recommend having a leadership team of 2-3 co-founders. This article has a good overview of general good practices when picking co-founders (it's written for people starting companies, but applies to Hack Clubs).

On top of that, we have a few recommendations specifically for Hack Club co-founders:

• Not everyone needs to be technical
  • There will be a ton of non-technical work. One of Reddit's two co-founders didn't know how to program.
• Your team should be representative
  • Diversity in tech sucks. At nearly every Hack Club, the demographics of the members matches the demographics of the leaders – having a gender ratio on the leadership team that representative of the gender ratio at the school is the most effective method we've found for making sure Hack Clubs are inclusive to all.
• You want at least one super technical co-founder
  • No explanation needed
• You want at least one super charismatic co-founder
  • The quality of your club doesn't matter if nobody shows up. You need at least one co-founder that's extremely charismatic and can get people excited about what you're doing.
• You should be wary of democracy
  • A common pitfall is to create a democratic selection process where everyone has an equal vote on decisions. We've found that this tends not to work because it makes it too easy for less-active leaders to override decisions of the club president. People can have a say, but make sure your team can act and make decisions without being blocked.

Can I Lead The Club Myself?

You may—it's your club. That said, what if you're

• sick / studying / traveling and can't lead meetings
• graduating and haven't decided who will lead next year
• stressed out by the amount of work it takes to lead your club

It's tough to lead a good club by yourself and you are much more likely to succeed with a co-leader or two. Nearly all our best clubs have more than one leader, so applications with co-leaders will have an advantage over solo-leaders.