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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 won't 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."
