Convincing Companies into Donating Old Computers? 16
tevk asks: "I work at a large corporation, and today I noticed the sysadmin was throwing a bunch of machines out. When I asked if I could take one, he said it was against company policy. When I asked if we could donate them to a school where my mother works, he said he would love to, but the red tape is almost impossible to work through. Apparently, due to legal concerns, it's easier just to throw the machines out! Does anyone know of any activism sites that might have tips on how to convince the company I work for to donate machines? Failing that, does anyone know any organizations who donate to schools? My mom's school is in rural Maine, so money is tight, and they don't see much in the way of Silicon Valley castoffs."
hey (Score:3, Informative)
The only way to do this seems to be this : Let them throw the computers out, officialy(ie put them in a box on the outside of the building) and just pick them up later.
It's not the cleanest way of doing thigs but it worked for me...
BTW I think the "red-tape" has a lot to do with tax issues, I don't know too much about it but that's what I've understood of the whole thing...
hope this helps!
Just take them (Score:4, Informative)
If they're disposing of them, load them into your car. It'll save them money on their waste disposal.
The problem I'm facing is that my company has piles of computers they're not using, but are less than 5 years old. They're hanging on to them for the depreciation on their taxes. They won't even sell them for less than the depreciated value (I don't blame them). I imagine plenty of other companies do the same thing. There's some talk about letting companies deduct the expense of PCs all in the first year. If that changes, it should be easier to find donations of 3-5 year old boxes.
Company Policies (Score:2)
It's interesting, but true, that most companies have policies such that they can't give their old equipment away easily. This is especially true of some of the larger companies.
What most interesting still, is that almost no companies are against "dumpster diving". You can't do it while you're on company time or during regular business hours (for fear of a client seeing a marketing guy in the dumpster), but if you come back that evening and root through the trash it's all yours. Heck, I've done this several times myself. I usually ask the guy that's throwing them out to be "careful" and let him know what I'm planning on doing. Sometimes I even offer to give him anything of his choice--as a form of payment. Never had someone toss the monitors or hard drives yet.
Once you've got the equipment--you can do whatever you want with it. Just make sure you peel off any company identification logos. As an added bonus, if you donate them to a school you can get the tax benefit :)
Make friends with the security guards (Score:2)
Enviormental? (Score:2)
How are they disposing of these machines? You cannot take them to a landfill. Donating them to someone who will use them (and presumably dispose of them properly in a few years when they are useless is a good way around that. If they are not donating them to a good cause, and not getting them properly disposed of they are due for a hefty enviormental fine.
If they are not disposing of these machines properly warn them first, and keep records of who and when. If the policy doesn't change asap, call athorities. Your records of the warnins above are in case they decide to fire you as the whistle blower, you then have more evidence that can be useful in court.
Call the EPA - computers should NOT be in trash! (Score:4, Informative)
Once you point this out - and the fact that superfund sites have established the precedence that the government can, and will, go after pollution sources years after the fact, you can point out that anyone who takes a donated computer both saves them a recycling fee and gives them a charitable write-off. I doubt this alone will have much of an effect (see other posts), but it's worth a shot.
And keeping heavy metals out of the ecosystem is a good idea in any case.
Wait until they're officially "thrown out" (Score:2, Funny)
At my company, it's different. A while back we did a partial company upgrade to Dell PIII's from old P166's and 200's. The older computers were raffled off and given to the lucky winners. Another day, the network room was being cleaned out and they put a bunch of old parts and systems outside the door. An email went out effectively saying "come and get it!!!" Since my office is just a few feet from the network room, I had an early Christmas
(1) Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more.
Problems with donations (Score:3, Insightful)
One issue is software licenses. Many corporations have site licenses for software which wouldn't apply once the machine is donated. This may include the operating system.
Another issue is support. It may sound incredible, but there have been situations where a donated computer breaks and the school has called the donating company for support. That alone has stopped many a donation.
Re:Problems with donations (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft is a *huge* roadblock (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, every company I deal with has told me that Microsoft is essentially trying to shut down the used computer market. They claim that the used corporate computers which are the backbone of this business (since consumers generally hold onto their computers too long) are almost always covered by site licenses that prohibit resale. Unless the company can provide an original Windows disc and certificate for each and every system, the reseller has to purchase a new copy. Not OEM copy, a retail version. And of course we're talking about a retail version of the latest OS, not the OS suitable for the hardware.
So a $250 used computer is suddenly $500 and a dog because of the bloated OS. A new computer, which can actually run the bloatware, is only a few hundred dollars more... plus you get a subscription to MSN for the next few years! No conflict of interest here, nope, none at all! And of course the people who really need cheap computers don't realize that the real price is much higher but MS has essentially given them a high interest loan with repayment through their MSN fees.
You would think that charities and schools would have exceptions, with Microsoft writing off the cost of the unsold licenses as a charitable deduction, but you would be wrong. Microsoft has been cracking down on school systems - damn it, Bill needs a new BMW more than those inner city kids need a good education!
*We* can take a bare system and install Linux or *BSD on it, but most people can't. And the software Gestapo, since it hasn't actually been hauled in the court to challenge their increasingly outrageous statements, has actually convinced some PHBs that they'll somehow be held responsible if their old systems are reused by someone else without a proper license ("since they should have known of the inevitable infraction") that they'll figure it's better to trash the systems than risk an enforcement action.
So the bottom line is that before you ask your employer to donate old computers, you need to do some research and figure out how you will get licenses for these computers. If you can show that you'll take responsibility for keeping the Gestapo away, for wiping the disks of any OS and company data, etc., then you might be able to make a deal where you pick up the computers instead of a disposal company. (See other comment about why the computers shouldn't just be dumped in the trash.) But without that, don't expect to get very far.
Computer charities? (Score:2)
Re:Computer charities? (Score:2, Informative)
TechSoup is also attempting to push open source solutions as a low cost alternative for non profits. They currently have links to the StarOffice download on the front page as well as an open source message board. Unfortunately, for many of the same reasons as threads on Slashdot have mentioned, it's not a great solution for most non profits yet.
CompuMentor [compumentor.org] (who run TechSoup) also offer Microsoft software to non-profits at low rates through their software [compumentor.org] program. There are some restrictions (3 products, 10 license limit per fiscal year, some broad restrictions on limits). But if you know a small non-profit struggling for MS software forward the link.
Safety issues/warranties (Score:2)
A broken computer is less of an issue as I'm sure your mom's school would be happy to get 10 working computers out of a batch of 20 if they got them for free!
Perhaps a motivation for companies would be to maintain a log (ie, a web page) of who donates computers to schools/charities etc and those who refuse. The bad press associated with the non-donating companies ought to persuade a few to at least look into donations.
Older "Ask Slashdot" might help (Score:2, Informative)
KidA
Reasons are many and varied... (Score:2)
By throwing it away, they obtain a tax writeoff, the same as they get write offs for depreciation if they simply store them in a big warehouse until they throw them away.
If they give them away or sell them they cannot obtain that writoff. If they give them away to a charity, they can obtain a bigger writeoff, but only if it is a registered charity, and if they fill out lots of paperwork and set themselves up for much larger audit problems than throwing them away.
Liability issues are also a big reason to not donate.
Lastly, licensing and security issues are time consuming to wrangle with. Sure, we can donate a computer, but actively erasing each hard drive takes take and energy, more than what would be gained by donating them to a real charity, and most charities do NOT want computers that come without software. Enterprise sized companies buy per seat licenses, and many licenses are payed yearly. If they no longer use a computer, they cannot transfer the license to the software loaded on it, since the license is part of a bulk of licenses and cannot be seperated out.
While I am all for giving old computer equipment away, it is a sticky situation. My company has a dozen or so 486 and low end pentium systems we would love to give away, but who wants them? You should be going after computers from smaller companies, where such problems are not as big an issue. While I worked for a contracter who had me working at Ford (dearborn, MI) I was told of huge warehouses of old computer equipment. They can't throw it away because of environmental issues, they can't give it away because of the effort needed to catalog and erase all the hardware. They had to replace x number of machines around dearborn per day, and it costs less to buy a computer, do a 15 minute install, and toss the old one on a pallet for storage than it does to do the same thing including a full HD erasure and paperwork to give the machine away. Then the computers can depreciate away, and eventually they will pay some computer scrap dealer to haul it all away, and they will grind everything up, seperate the bits, and sell the gold and other metal slag for a profit.
Everyone wants to save money now, and leave the problems for later. You try to go to your manager with a solution where you pay more now and have less of a problem later. You'll get much further if you make a way to put the problem on the back burner with little up front cost, and gloss over the fact that it'll cost more later.
-Adam