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 enough volunteers take on grants and shepherd them through, or reject them with an email back, the time it takes to fulfill some grants, and the trend torward more requests for only laptops.

Trends and predictions

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

SWOT

Please define a goal for this SWOT

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths: Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things we do.) We WANT to reuse the equipment and make an effort to get it out in to the community. We have plenty of computers on the shelf. We have good will in the community.	Weaknesses: Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Things we do poorly or not at all.) time commitment to fulfill grants successfully not enough laptops to fulfill every grant request burn out of volunteers and staff
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities: Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek and helpful to achieving the objective. (Good things that will or could happen to us.) reuse of donated equipment is high	Threats: Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek and harmful to achieving the objective. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.) change in donation stream because of eWaste legislation

See also Trends and Attributes | What do we want to do?