SCN: Computer donations

Wed Jan 9 09:00:14 PST 2002

x-no-archive: yes

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Charities Say No to Obsolete Crap 

(Jenn Shreve, Wired Digital)---Tucked into corners and collecting 
dust in the closets of nonprofits worldwide, you'll find them: stacks 
of ancient computers, cracked monitors, tangled cords and drives 
without floppies. 

The hardware comes from well-meaning donors who hope their 
castoffs can do others some good. But while secondhand 
technology is indeed a blessing for some struggling agencies, for 
most it's quickly becoming a costly curse. 

Although most charities still welcome the gift of hardware, they are 
becoming more particular about what they will and won't accept. 
They are evaluating their needs and creating technology plans 
first, then looking over donations to find the gift that best meets 
their needs and wont cost them a small fortune in repairs, 
upgrades and software licenses. 

In the United States alone, 53 million desktop computers are 
expected to become obsolete, according to an oft-cited 1999 report 
by the National Safety Council. Currently, 80 percent of discarded 
computers head straight to landfill. A few will make their way to 
recycling and refurbishing centers. Others are donated to charities. 

In three years, computers donated to Goodwill Industries have 
spiked from 50,000 per year to 150,000. Those that can't be sold 
in stores or used in the company's technology centers have to be 
disposed of, at a cost to the organization. 

"Every dollar we spend on disposing of unusable donations is a 
dollar we don't have to spend on our career and other support 
services," said Christine Nyirjesy Bragale, a spokeswoman for 
Goodwill Industries International. 

"It's not uncommon that a nonprofit gets a donation, finds out that 
the computer is not going to work for them, then they're stuck with 
the cost of recycling the computer. It can end up hurting them," 
said Joan Fanning, executive director of NPower, which provides 
low-cost, onsite IT support and training to nonprofits. 

Law firms and banks often strip their hard drives bare before 
donating them, taking out the OS in the process. 

"For the nonprofit, the amount of money they can actually make 
from a computer is drastically impacted if the computer doesn't 
have an operating system. Then it's a fancy doorstop," says Cathy 
MacCaul, communications manager of Microsoft's Community 
Affairs program, which manages the software giant's corporate 
philanthropy programs. 

If the equipment is up to date (defined by most organizations as 
Pentium-level or higher) and comes with a licensed operating 
system and peripherals such as monitor, keyboard and mouse, 
then the agency might be able to sell it or put it to work. Alas, this 
is rarely the case -- and an old OS isn't much better than none at 
all, because it won't run current software. 

Even nonprofits in developing nations are turning away donated 
computers. Bill Threlkeld, administrator of the Washington, D.C., 
nonprofit Native Lands, used to funnel donated computers to 
offices of nonprofits in the poor countries that his organization 
advocates on behalf of. But in recent years, he's found they're not 
interested. 

"Those organizations have to be able to compete pretty much like 
everybody else is, at least with being able to dial up, have an 
Internet connection, send documents in the latest Word program or 
other software. They have to have a fairly up-to-date computer to 
do that. No one, as far as I know, is interested in getting 
secondhand computers," Threlkeld said. 

If new software needs to be bought, then that's yet another 
expense, one that frustrates Cyan Callihan, CTO of the Oakland, 
California, nonprofit WEAP (The Women's Economic Agenda 
Project). 

"Sometimes I'm up against the wall explaining that we can't pay 
$1,000 a license for software we need," Callihan said. 

One option, which Goodwill employs, is relying on application 
service providers (ASPs) rather than buying licenses to software 
outright. 

Figuring out what to do with donated equipment is one piece in the 
larger puzzle of bringing nonprofits into the technological era. 

Charities and grassroots organizations were notable as early 
adopters of the Internet. Now that they're using computers for 
everything from managing donor databases to job training and 
internal operations, their technology costs have billowed out of 
control. For smaller agencies, especially, the burden of maintaining 
networks and staying free of viruses can be a huge burden. 

Native Lands, with four full-time employees, recently began 
spending $600 a month to have someone fix their network, protect 
them from viruses, and provide other key IT services for two hours 
every week. Callihan said that the rates for Telcom support -- 
anywhere from $100 to $200 an hour -- are another cost that's 
difficult to keep up with. 

Nonprofit technology organizations such as NPower and 
Compumentor are expanding to meet growing demand for 
affordable software, consulting and related costs in the sector. 

Numerous technology companies -- including 3Com, Compaq, HP 
and IBM -- have in-house programs aimed at making technology 
more affordable to the nonprofit sector. In late December, 
Compumentor teamed up with Microsoft to launch a public 
awareness campaign to educate consumers and nonprofits about 
the proper way to donate a used computer. 

Tom Dawson, a program manager at Compumentor, advises the 
nonprofits he works with to develop technology plans, assess their 
needs regularly, and then decide whether they are best served 
accepting donations or buying new equipment. 

"Nonprofits are going to have to be a bit more sophisticated in their 
use of technology. A few years back, groups would have taken 
donations without flinching," Dawson explains. "That's the nature 
of the sector, to accept gifts and do what you can with that." 

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