Freegeek.org in Portland, Oregon is a non-proift community resource for all things linux that accepts corporation, small business and individual donations (for a fee since everything that is disposed of in that state costs money). They recycle every thing that is donated, and since 2009 are an Estandards recycler. The majority of their operating income comes from recycling. Although the Thrift Store brings in solid income for this non-profit as well. Since the variety of equipment donated is especially interesting, one can find or request any conceivable part or component even switches, telephone, satellite, radio ham or otherwise. DD-wrt, cable DOCSIS 3.0 (in comcast land), asterisk, analog phone and serial link robots programming kits, tools and accessories are available. Freegeek also provides advanced community classes including php/python, etc.
Machine donatons are refurbished, and everything from motherboards, memory to disk drives are tested and built into machines; whereupon a standard systems box build is created for each type of user.
Freegeek.org used to remaster their own distro, called the Freakbox, but now use a specially built version of Ubuntu. Freegeek distributes these systems to tindividuals via a Build or "Adoption" volunteer program. Anyone needing a computer could volunteer for 24 hours and then attend a class on basic Linux use with the Freakbox before taking it home.
Freegeek also served non-profits, including halfway houses, group-homes, deaf and blind accessibility programs with hardware grants.
The following volunteer internships are available (or filled, but might be available soon) at Freegeek:
Currently Available
Currently Unavailable
Freegeek is run by a board of directors:
Freegeek.org operates on a variety of levels, including a Community Council that governs via a consensus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making; a Board of Driectors.
Freegeek staff are known for their extensive contributions to wikipedia and Defcon and exist as the lowest paid linux systems professionals in the world.
While it would be wonderful to have a Freegeek.org here, unfortunately the city recycling programs are significantly different.
I am not sure but I believe you can still dump an old CRT lead based monitor in the dumpster here?
Did I mention that freegeek.org is magical? Well it is.
Maybe a linux based organization could work here, instead of using hardware for operating income we could use wetware? Farming of human minds seems to work for University of Phoenix, ITT, DeVry, etc? We could still accept donations, (once we have a non-profit status): However, we could only accept a certain list of items, but the companies donating them would, we assume rather get a tax write off than not? However, with
freegeek.org, the costs people pay to their facilites FOR accepting the equipment pays for some of the expenses of recycling it to the most environmently safe sources.
I am not sure Arizona corporations would pay us to take their equipment?
A freegeek.org-TYPE linux centric non-profit here would provide:
1) Imaging services both at cost and non-profit (with a hardware grant)
2) Training sessions and certiciations for build, systems administration, programming, security
3) Hardware store, for donations.
4) Internship programs to Colleges, Universities.
5) Interns to businesses, and contract work, picking up bids that are otherwise going to out of the country based headhunters (Dubai, Sri Lanka, India).
More.....
That really sounds like something for which we would want to get non-profit status?