Re: BLU Charity?

["Tom Metro-12" <user=71@nabble.blu.org>]

 [hidden email] wrote: 
> After my post on what to do with old computers, it occurs to me that maybe 
> "BLU" as an organization could do some charity work. 

I had the same thought while reading through the Free Geek 
(http://www.freegeek.org/) site mentioned a couple of times in the other 
thread. 

However, the operation Free Geek has isn't trivial, by the looks of it. 
They have a store front, corporate sponsors, require cash donations for 
some items (to cover recycling and refurbishing costs), and request cash 
donations for everything else, teach classes on computer refurbishing, 
and by the sounds of it have a sizable staff of volunteers. 

So the first thing I'd wonder is whether BLU could run an effective 
operation at a smaller scale. Where would materials be stored? Would 
there be enough volunteers? Who pays for disposal costs for items that 
can't be reused? 


Bill Horne wrote: 
> In general, you'll find that all charitable organizations are 
> delighted to accept gifts of substantial value which don't require 
> upkeep (land, copyrights, inheritance rights, etc.), but very leery 
> of things that they must spend money to keep (commercial property, 
> vehicles, computers, hardware, literature, etc.)... 

One remedy to that problem might be to bundle donated computers with a 
certain amount of donated labor to maintain them. If we're talking about 
Linux boxes, most of that maintenance can be done remotely. But this 
would still put more burden on the BLU volunteers and limit the volume 
of hardware that could be donated. 


[hidden email] wrote: 
> A common distribution...a minimum computer spec.... 

If maintenance services are bundled, making the donated hardware as 
uniform and interchangeable as possible would help, as would a 
consistent software environment. 

But achieving that goal ends up being less than ideal from a recycling 
perspective, as you would discard or need to find yet another use for a 
lot of the donated equipment. 

  -Tom 

-- 
Tom Metro 
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA 
"Enterprise solutions through open source." 
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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