For Teachers: Computer Donations

[RUDisney]

Our district budgeted $4,000 for technology for grades K-12. I found this out because I went into the computer lab at the elementary school on meet the teachers night and was shocked and taken aback that they have a room full of mostly iMacs and some Macs that date back to 1989. The computer teacher was having a conversation with someone else wondering how they could ever get donated funds to buy PCs or get PCs donated. I walked in and offered to donate at least 30 PCs to the school as my business was upgrading next year. She said that the district didn't want them to solicit any businesses for donations or even "hand-me-downs" but because I was offering, they would love to have them.

So far, we've taken 27 monitors to them and as the new year starts and our upgrades start, we'll take the CPUs to them. These will be at least 1.5 GHz machines with XP and Office on them.

So, the moral to my story is that if you ask a company for a donation, you might be pleasantly surprised about what you can get from them. While we don't want publicity for this donation, because everyone will come asking and expecting things from us, we are happy to give to those who come looking, or to those we stumble upon, as I did in this case. What's the worst thing that could happen? They could say, "no." Doesn't cost anything to ask.

BTW, I work for a community bank. This will look good with the examiners, too, as an added benefit for us, while the kids will actually learn on PCs like they have at home.

 

[bicker]

We've got the opposite problem around here: Our schools, libraries, community center, etc., have no interest in any computers older that three years old, and our town charges us for the privilege of throwing them out -- $25 for CRTs and $35 for computers (they're treated as hazardous waste, because of the heavy metals).

 

[pjlla]

The company my DH works for will not donate used electronic equipment.... they have gotten burned in the past. They have had the government come back to them after the next "owners" of the equipment dump it improperly... the serial numbers are traced back to DH's company and they got fined.... even though they had donated them to another company. Lesson learned............P

 

[RUDisney]

I guess our receipt that we get as acknowledgement for the donation should include serial numbers, etc. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[golfgal]

When DH's old company upgraded their computers the school asked for the old ones and they wouldn't donate them because they didn't want the chance that someone could get confidential information off the hard drive and it was too costly to scrub them, so they said. They are sitting in a storage closet in the office.

 

[ahutton]

If you find you have computers you can't get a public school to take, check and see if there are any group homes for kids in your area. They are usually starving for equipment, and since many of the kids are coming out of horrible home environments these kids are usually not ready for a public school for a while. Especially true if the school has kids with learning disabilities or sight/hearing problems as they components will often run on a system that is very out of date for an average office.

 

[KathyFP]

Non profits often only get donated computers.

 

[Cindy B]

My DH tried to donate a bunch of computers to my kids school as well, and they wouldn't let us.

It had something to do with the technology agreement and such like that. The tech guys in thoery didn't know what to do. My DH was willing to donate his time to install/rewire (he's a computer pro for over 20 years) but the union wouldn't let him. -- (because he would do a much better job than the union computer guys but that is another story for another time)