SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » Don't Just Dump Old PCs: Donate

August 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Don't Just Dump Old PCs: Donate

TAGS: SMB business

You can call it any number of things: "equipment lifecycle", "asset turnover" or even just "Hey, get rid of the crappy old thing already." But the upshot is the same, clearing desk and rack space of old equipment to make room for sparkling new hardware.

There are several ways to handle this. A popular one is to lease equipment instead of purchasing it outright. End of lease rolls around and you simply roll over the old equipment for new stuff. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for all types of equipment or even all kinds of business situations.

So there are still plenty of SMBs who purchase hardware outright -- and that hardware eventually gets old and needs to be moved on out. Fortunately, there are more places to put that old stuff besides the dumpster out back. Key among these is donation. Not only do you get the fuzzy good samaritan feeling, you can also get a tax write-off. Here's some basic steps to giving your hardware away.

1. Don't bother with the really old stuff. The equipment you're donating is going to schools, non-profits and similar organizations. These folks still need to use this stuff to do real work in the real world. So if you've got a closet full of Pentium 66s, go ahead and ask the org you'd like to donate to if they're interested, but don't be offended if they're not. Besides, even if they did take them, they wouldn't be worth more than $20-$40 each as a tax write-off.

To make the donation process as good for you as for your chosen donatee, time your product cycles accordingly. Stick to equipment that's around three to five years old (tops), plan your new product purchases accordingly and make sure that the tax value is understood by both parties.

2. Speaking of that, don't just donate equipment and wait for a receipt. Send along an inventory of what you're donating, indicate current value, make sure you get back a copy of that inventory with some signature showing that the receiver agreed with your assessment, and then get a donation receipt on top of that. Never hurts to be careful or cover your booty, especially if you're donating a lot of stuff.

3. Clean your equipment. Yeah, I'm talking about wiping it down and dusting the interior; but I'm also talking about being very careful to clean your data. Wiping hard disks of all donated servers should be a careful process with more than one set of hands making sure each disk gets wiped clean. But don't stop merely with hard disks. Make sure to set everything back to defaults. Just think how much information can be contained in a network switch, for example, should it fall into the hands of someone looking to hack in later. Checklist:
a. Clean equipment. Use handy wipes & compressed air. No need to hand off dirty stuff.
b. Wipe all hard disks. Don't just hit . A low-level format is probably enough, but you can also use wiping utilities like WipeDrive, Disk Redactor or Acronis Drive Cleanser. There are any number of other similar applications.
c. Set all other equipment back to factory defaults. Most switches, routers, modems and similar products have provisions to return the box's settings to factory defaults. Way better than leaving user names, passwords and IP addressing schemes exposed.
d. Remove attached devices. Not just big stuff like printers, but smaller things you might miss: PC Cards, memory sticks, SD Cards, etc. If the device needs those to work, make sure propreitary data is wiped off.

4. Make sure everything's working. Don't donate broken equipment unless both you and the receiver know that the equipment is defective. Gets you a bad rep fast.

5. Look for local donation points first. Donating good stuff doesn't just give you a tax break. It also creates good will. No point squandering that on an outfit that's located in the distant land of Mordor. Expecially when there are so many equally deserving local organizations. In the new York Area, a quick Web search came up with New York Cares and Big Brother Big Sister New York. And that's not counting my local contacts which include friends and relatives who work for public schools, state universities, and the local Red Cross chapter.

6. If these local options don't work for you, then go national. Some popular choices include:

Digital Aid
Share The Technology
TechSoup
Youth For Technology

Posted by Oliver Rist on August 1, 2006 10:58 AM

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