Stakeholder
A real person or institution whose situation will be different after a hackathon ends — better if the work succeeds, unchanged if it doesn't. The stakeholder requirement is what makes a hackathon's goal operational rather than aspirational.
A stakeholder is a real person or institution whose situation will be different after a hackathon ends — better if the work succeeds, unchanged if it doesn't. The test is whether the stakeholder will still care about the answer six weeks after the closing ceremony. NASA Subject Matter Experts who co-author Space Apps Challenge Statements are stakeholders. Indian Ministries that publish problem statements through Smart India Hackathon are stakeholders. Student teams writing about their own communities through the Google Solution Challenge are stakeholders. See the-goal.
A stakeholder is not a sponsor logo on a banner, and it is not the organizer themselves wearing a different hat. The stakeholder requirement is what makes a hackathon's goal operational rather than aspirational, and the artifact discipline of problem statements depends on real stakeholder ownership for the artifact to be worth the participants' weekend. See problem-statements and outcome.