Institutional Outreach Plan

Mission and Values

Free Geek's mission is to recycle technology and provide access to computers, the internet, education and job skills in exchange for community service.

Although this is the statement listed on our IRS forms, all members of the Free Geek community would agree that Free Geek upholds many values not explicit in our mission statement. While not everyone might agree on what those values are, how high of a priority they are, or whether they best serve the organization, it is undeniable that our programs and services support an unstated or opaque ethos. Some of those values include:

• Reuse: arguably, everything that comes in the door at Free Geek is eventually reused; we just have to strip some of it down to bare components before it can be. Repurposing donations, however, is a fundamental part of our organization, from the Build Program to the Thrift Store. It is an example of one of the things we do best; neither rejecting technology as a toxic evil nor embracing it blindly as an unmitigated good, but seeking another path forward.
• Environment: Concern for the environmental impact of technology was one of the principles that gave birth to Free Geek. However, environmental consciousness impacts aspects of the organization as diverse as the soap in our dispensers to the fuel in our truck.
• Access: Technology is endemically institutionalized in the modern world, but unequally distributed. We seek to create a link between those with too much technology and those without, increasing the voices in the marketplace of ideas and providing tools for self-betterment and communication to those who would not have it otherwise.
• Education: The advent of the personal computer was brokered by companies more interested in protecting their bottom line than in sharing the intricate and fascinating world that lies inside circuitry and code. We believe in the computer as a tool that serves people, not an incomprehensible necessity. By educating people on computer hardware and software, we empower them to engage technology with intelligence and critical thought.
• Open Source: The open source philosophy is characterized by mutual assistance and freedom. We deliberately choose software tools that are committed to that philosophy, and in turn apply those values to our style of work through transparency, open communication, and collaboration.

Vision Statement

By the end of 2012, Free Geek is the go-to destination for e-waste disposal in Portland. Corporations feel secure in donating complete systems to Free Geek, and take additional value from the good they are doing for the environment and the community. Donors will be more engaged in Free Geek's structure, with annual donor celebrations and at least one regular donor serving on Free Geek's Board of Directors.

Readiness Assessment

The purpose of this effort is to increase the number and quality of our corporate donations, particularly donations of laptops and LCD monitors. In 2010, we received 4420 non-Macintosh laptops, and either sold or disbursed approximately 25% of those laptops through hardware grants and our store. As of October 2011, we have already received 4696 laptops, largely due to increased corporate outreach. This document seeks to articulate a long-term strategy for continuing that increase, as well as to identify challenges to both increasing donations and to reaching the goal of disbursing laptops to volunteers through a value-adding program.

History of Institutional Outreach at Free Geek

Free Geek's history with corporate donors began in the opposite direction; large donors would find Free Geek through word-of-mouth or media reports and bring computers to us. This situation continued largely until the mid-2000s, with sporadic efforts made to reach out to business; however, with no dedicated staff member handling these relationships, they were largely ad-hoc. Around 2008, an Outreach Coordinator was brought on board. Around the same time, we landed a contract with the City of Portland, guaranteeing regular pickups on average once per week. Also in 2008, Free Geek was awarded a grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust for the purchase of a box truck, enabling the organization to compete with commercial recyclers in terms of convenience and volume.

Little information is available as to the mechanisms by which our largest donors have found us and chosen to remain loyal. One of the goals of this plan is to institutionalize these mechanisms in an inheritable and transparent fashion.

Internal Analysis

A full-time staff person is now on board, committed to maintaining our existing relationships with large donors and to seeking out new ones. This investment has resulted in an increase over the previous year of high-end, reusable items; the occasional addition of an extra day for pickups; fewer hardware shortages; more continuity in communication with donors; new donors; stronger investment from existing donors; and more publicity for Free Geek as a whole.

Simultaneously, Free Geek's existing systems are insufficient for the purpose of maintaining inheritable knowledge and analyzing the effectiveness of our approach. While the additional staff person has clearly had an impact on the number of high-end donations, the mechanisms of this impact remain largely inscrutable. One purpose of this effort is to develop systems that will clarify these mechanisms and further position Free Geek to build on previous successes and learn from failures.

Stakeholders

Institutional Outreach has a stake in every aspect of Free Geek, and the reciprocal is true as well. Primary internal stakeholders include:

• Reuse Department: What we can refurbish is dependent on what walks in the door. Large or corporate donors tend to have the same model of computer across their organization, making the build process easier to streamline and execute.
• Thrift Store: Higher quality donations means more regular production, which translates in to consistent inventory with lower return rates and higher profits.
• Receiving: We do very well with the initial processing of incoming donations. With limited space and staffing, however, large and sudden donations can place a large burden on receiving staff. Increasing the number of donations will directly impact the function of this department, possibly necessitating a new space for incoming donations, or a separate space for individual donations vs. corporate donations.
• Warehouse: When a sudden rush of donations arrives, the warehouse is often the place where the excess is stored. This limits space for the mission-critical goal of recycling computers and providing good work for the volunteers in that area. As desktops become obsolete and more donations of reusable gizmos arrive, the warehouse will need to adjust its programs to ensure that volunteer needs are being met.

Distinctive Competencies

A distinctive competency is defined here as a capability, action or strategy at which we are particularly good and that is difficult for others to replicate, thus serving as an enduring organizational advantage. Some of these include:

• Build Program: Very few commercial e-cyclers have a reuse program. Those that do reuse at a rate of about 3%. Because we are structured as a non-profit, we are able to use volunteer labor to refurbish systems, saving on costs while simultaneously providing a meaningful experience to our Build Volunteers.
• Volunteer Attraction: Through a magical and mystical process that no one quite understands, Free Geek is a byword throughout Portland (a recent blog in the Oregonian about breweries in SE PDX referenced one as “close to Free Geek”).
• Government Relationships: We have positive contractual relationships with government institutions like the City of Portland. Additionally, we have and have exercised our “seat at the table” with policy discussion regarding e-waste. This has directly impacted legislation in Oregon in a way that is friendly to reuse-driven organizations like ours (Washington State's e-waste laws serve as an example of what might have been had we not).

Barriers to Success

There are many barriers, internal and external, that impact Free Geek's ability to perform high-level outreach to the business community. Some of the courses of action explored in this document would confront these barriers; however, it is my belief that tackling these issues simultaneously is neither desirable nor effective. Some of these barriers are self-determined mandates, and arise from principles that are either implicit or explicit to Free Geek the Organization, Free Geek the Staff, Free Geek the Volunteers, or some other part of our community. Any course of action will have some kind of impact on these stakeholders. We must ask ourselves whether the changes incurred would bring us closer to our mission, or further from it.

• Data Security: Free Geek cannot issue Certificates of Destruction for the hard drives it receives for several reasons. The National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) requires drug testing, staff-only handling of sensitive data, uniforms, extra insurance, and total physical destruction of the drives. While some institutional changes could be made to meet these requirements, meeting all of them would ultimately change the volunteer-driven nature of our programs.
• Contact Management: Free Geek's current technology set up is not designed for contact management. This, in addition to high staff turnover, means that the good efforts of current and past staff members may yield success or failure, but the mechanism by which they did so is obscured.
• Time: We currently schedule pickup shifts once per week, and occasionally twice if necessitated. Because of limited staffing, a maximum of four pickups can be done in one shift. While there are four staff members insured to drive the truck, only one has time to do so regularly, and when unavailable, pickups are usually postponed. Our organizational schedule of Tuesday through Saturday leaves only four regular business days to engage donors with a more regular work week.
• Convenience: Tied in with a four day availability is our competition with organizations who provide data grinding services with maximal security. Our donors are required to either invest time to wipe their own drives, or have faith that our process is secure enough to protect them. Many large companies are unwilling or legally unable to take on the extra burden.
• Staff Turnover: This year has seen an unprecedented number of staff members departing. This creates a largely internal focus that exacerbates a lack of focus on strategic thinking, in addition to limiting resources as we work harder just to stay in place. We also lose valuable institutional knowledge about our past, which inhibits our ability to develop a long-term vision.
• Space: We have maximized the space available to us in this building, unless some very clever re-engineering is done. There are currently brand new LCDs and many high-end machines waiting in the warehouse for production and testing backlogs to clear up, or for increased sales to necessitate producing them. More systems means more storage, and more storage means drastically rethinking the way we are currently using our space.

External Analysis

External Stakeholders

• Build Volunteers: Builders come to our program predominately for the acquisition of knowledge about computer (specifically desktop) hardware. Many builder choose not to take their sixth computer home, indicating that computer acquisition is not their primary motive. Regular corporate donations mean that builders have systems to triage and build at all stages of the process, and that the incoming machines have a regularity which makes the build process easier.
  • Laptop Builders: Free Geek's regular laptop build volunteers are dedicated and savvy. Production remains slow, however, due to several factors:
    • Model Irregularity: Different models of laptops require different methodology in a way that desktops do not. Thus, the education process for refurbishing a laptop is far more involved and time consumptive than desktop build.
    • Incomplete donations: Many companies pull batteries and/or power cords from their laptops before donating them to Free Geek. This necessitates waiting for the right piece of equipment to be donated, or purchasing the appropriate equipment, which can be costly.
    • Difficulty: Laptops are smaller and more difficult to work with. While most volunteers can be taught how to refurbish any desktop, not all volunteers will have the manual dexterity and critical thinking abilities required to be successful laptop builders.
    • Staffing: With fewer staff available to coordinate laptops, there is less time to provide quality education and to document best practices, ultimately forcing us to function “as best we can” rather than anticipating future trends and addressing them.
    • Lack of Volunteers: We have yet to fully institutionalize the process by which volunteers move from Desktop Build to Laptop Build. This is in progress, but production will remain slow as the kinks in this system are ironed out.
  • Server Builders: While we regularly receive donations of servers, we have fewer volunteers interested in engaging this area. Documentation remains low, and we struggle to match our need for volunteers to their motives for being at Free Geek. Additionally, servers have even more irregularity in terms of what is donated than laptops; we often receive the servers without the racks, or without hard drives, or without rails, meaning we can't package an entire server for sale or disbursement.
  • Mac Builders: These volunteers seem to be highly self-motivated and self-guided... which is good, because it's not an area with much potential for expansion in the short term, and we haven't had anyone coordinating the area for over a month. We do receive fairly large volume of Mac donations from Reed College specifically; however, it is unlikely that we will ever be positioned to produce and grant Macs with the regularity and equality.
• Adoption Volunteers:
  • Adopters: The primary motives for adopters are earning a free computer and participating in a valuable, earth-friendly experience; institutional outreach more directly affects the former. We currently grant desktops with CRT monitors, which are largely obsolete and undesirable. Changing to LCD monitors will improve our adopters' experience, but only in the short term. In the long term, we need to ensure that our product remains relevant to the times: either granting laptops or other mobile devices, or moving our focus toward education as our primary product.
    • Community Service Adopters: CS volunteers will likely continue to choose Free Geek as long as our doors our open, and regardless of the programs we offer.
• Interns: Our interns across the board are motivated to acquire job experience and/or a job. We do an adequate but not exemplary job of meeting this need. Improving our interns' experience at Free Geek by initial goal setting, documenting acquired skills, and following the progress of former interns will create a higher level of satisfaction with the positions we offer, and build commitment among our interns to apply their skills more directly to Free Geek's benefit.
• Hardware Grantees: High quality donations means fewer returns and happier, more productive non-profits, which in turn means (ideally) a better world.
• Potential Donors: Free Geek has a powerful mission and message that resonates with the Portland community. What we don't have is any systemic data on how our message has been successful or otherwise. This plan will recommend that Free Geek invest time in creating a Marketing Plan as part of its overarching strategy for 2012.

Hardware Grantees: High quality donations means fewer returns and happier, more productive non-profits, which in turn means (ideally) a better world. Potential Donors: Free Geek has a powerful mission and message that resonates with the Portland community. What we don't have is any systemic data on how our message has been successful or otherwise. This plan will recommend that Free Geek invest time in creating a Marketing Plan as part of its overarching strategy for 2012.

Action Plan

Toutable Data Security

• Develop mobile wiping station
• Find a second garage location specifically for off-loading and wiping corporate drives
• Explore bonding for at least one staff member

Rigorous Contact Management

• Implement and utilize a CRM system
• Increase Pickup Staffing
  • Add additional driver
  • Add additional pickup day
  • Add receiving staff members

Marketing

• Build one year marketing plan
• Publicize pickups
• Improve website and website accessibility
• Google Ad Campaign
• Billboards and buses
• Tap community partners for promotion

Incentivize Relationships

• Standardized contract language
• Donor party once/year
• Provide estimates to donors of pounds of e-waste diverted
• Award certificates
• HTML code to advertise relationship on donor's website
• Profile corporate partners to our community

Costs

There are several costs associated with increasing our high-end gizmo flow.

• Truck Costs: Maintenance, gas, and staff time will all increase with more pickups.
• Overall Staffing: We are only just able to handle the donations we currently receive, and at a significant burden to existing staff. Many parts of this plan may require additional oversight by staff, which must come at either price of an existing program, or the price of an additional staff member – neither of which is insignificant.

Benefits

• Giving out more relevant technology to volunteers will increase our profile and keep us current with the community's needs
• Higher-end donations could translate in to higher sales.
• Regularity in donations may allow us to develop something that resembles a work-flow plan.
• Regularity also makes the build process easier and more communicable, which in turn allows us to tailor our programs more individually to volunteers.