Hardware grant plan

This is a draft of a new or in-progress document, and is likely to have a few people specifically working on it. You may wish to check in on the discussion page to see what the purpose of the document is and who's working on it; then feel free to give this article love and attention if have extra of those things.

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Intro

How will Free Geek's Hardware Grants Program change over the next 3-5 years so that Free Geek can better fulfill its mission and live up to its principles?

State of the program

Currently, the HWG program is run by staff, with the help of some volunteers. Members review the RT HWG page monthly and fulfill grants that are local or have a local contact. Some hardware grant requests are rejected because of distance to intended recipient without having a local contact, or for not being an actual organisation.

Current and past issues

Issues involve having volunteers take on grants and shepherd them through, the time it takes to fulfill some grants, and the trend torward requests for laptops.

Trends and predictions

More requests for laptops. Less requests for desktops and CRTs.

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths: Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek. (Good things we do.)	Weaknesses: Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek. (Things we do poorly or not at all.)
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities: Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek. (Good things that will or could happen to us.)	Threats: Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.)