FreeIT - Stafford.

FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Our new flyers are ready for print :)

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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
For only £15 a month, we'll splash your company logo in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of eyes!
Our refurbished equipment ends up in many public access venues - churches, community centres, youth clubs, and more.
Your pledge will pay for our replacement parts and running expenses, we'll share our accounts with you, and you'll be able to boast your support for our great cause
🙂

Drop us a line to join in
🙂


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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Since January 2021 we've rehomed, for free:
- 308 laptops, netbooks, macbooks
- 212 towers, desktops, all-in-ones, iMacs
- 90 Android tablets and iPads

175 of those are now in use at local primary and specialist schools, and the rest in churches, community centres, charities, volunteer and community groups, and also by clients of those who've been identified as digitally isolated :)
We couldn't do this without you all :)
To be involved check out the "Donate" and "Sponsors" pages on our website!

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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Huge thanks to all of our sponsors and one-off donors, these are a few of the bits and bobs you've allowed us to buy this month, to restore defective equipment back to former glory for the new owners
🙂


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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Mahoosive thanks to our long term volunteer and Apple guru, Tim "The Tech Guy" Brighton. We're blessed to be associated with this flourishing local business, and we highly recommend his talents!

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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
We have a heap of monitors which are missing their stands and we'd really like to put them to use, so we're on the hunt for any universal VESA mount desktop monitor stands that you may have spare, or perhaps you have a monitor with a broken screen which we can pilfer the stand from :)

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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Our biggest cost with donated laptops is dead batteries. In some cases having a dead or missing battery will prevent the device from turning on at all.
We'll always replace these before we gift the laptop forward, but even though we do keep a small stock of good batteries that we've recovered from scrap devices, batteries tend to be a unique fitment specific to one laptop, and we usually can't escape paying for the new part.
On average a battery can cost anything from £10 to £50, depending on capacity, the age of the laptop, etc. However, as they are such a common fail point, it's often the only missing part of the puzzle, and since most are a 30 second swap, it makes for a really fast turnaround.
We thank our sponsors and our one-off donors for helping us fund these parts, but we can always do more, and there are other parts we still need to buy. If you too can help by funding a battery, or a charge port, or a screen, or even a single missing screw, we welcome all contributions no matter how small, to our parts pot at www.paypal.me/freeitstafford
 

FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
A selection of the great causes and community projects that you lovely people have enabled us to help!
Your donations are allowing us to create these vital links and drive our mission against digital poverty :)

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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
Please don't include us on your Xmas card list!
While we appreciate the sentiments, they ultimately end up as waste paper, so we'd much prefer you drop your £1 into a charity tub
🙂

If you really can't resist, there are services online such as Kisseo, where you can send an e-card for free to any email address

https://www.kisseo.com/ecard/christmas
 

FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
As we "wrap" up for the festivities, we just owe a massive round of thanks to everyone who we've worked with and who have supported us in our second year. Next April we will close our year 2 accounts and begin our year 3, and there's simply no way we could have made it this far without you all
🙂

We're roughly half way to proving the annual income we need to become a registered charity, and if we can raise a few more sponsorships then who knows, maybe we'll be applying for that in 2023
😉

Thank you everyone, and whatever your beliefs, we hope you enjoy the break
🙂
 
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FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
We have a huge ask...
We're keen to communicate with potential sponsors who'll pay a pledge solely and specifically towards our primary ongoing cost - secure storage.
As we've steadily grown from one man's hobby, into a highly demanded almost-a-charity with over 650 rehomed devices under our belt over the last two years, we've expanded way past the point where our combined sheds and dining rooms already were barely ample for the space we've come to need. The recent large donation of equipment alone, that we've mentioned previously, itself stands to be a concern for the foreseeable future as we work our way through those refurbishments.
The sting in the tail of the popularity of our scheme is that this expansion will cost us almost the entirety of our existing monthly sponsorships, and we're starting to have to scrimp on some of the other bits and pieces we need to buy to repair the more broken of those donated gadgets.
And of course, as a result of this too, the repair pile is becoming an increasing proportion of those storage needs. We can't afford to fix stuff, because we're spending the money instead on storing the stuff that needs fixing... :/
As mentioned, this is a huge ask. Our storage cost will sit in the region of £150 a month from next month onwards, and we know that's not a small sum.
If you can help, and boast your support for our project while also helping us towards our income threshold to properly register as a charity, please drop us a line
🙂
 
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