It was February 2nd, 2018 at 2 PM when I got a call from Jake Reilly, the founder of Kapaa High School’s Hack Club, our first chapter in Hawaii.

As the director of Hack Club, a non-profit network of high school computer science clubs, I regularly field calls from club leaders, helping them organize and promote their events. But, this time was different — Jake was frantic. “They won’t let us spend the money,” he said.

They had spent months securing $10,000 in donations to bring their club on a trip to the Bay Area. They had their spots confirmed at a hackathon led by a fellow Hack Club, they had already secured commitments from Facebook, Google, Sourcegraph, and others for office tours, and they even got written up in the local newspaper, but now it wasn’t clear if the event was going to happen at all.

The only person who had access to the bank account was the principal, but nobody knew where he was. 24 hours later, Jake and I were on the phone with the vice principal who was also left in the dark. A week later, the principal showed up in Tokyo and the money was still completely restricted. They missed the deadline for purchasing the flights and the trip was cancelled. What the hell happened?