Programs and Activities

This is the scheme Free Geek uses to calculate how much time, space, and money are dedicated to what kind of activity when reporting how much of these resources go into program related and other activities.

Program Related Activities

Free Geek runs many programs, and sometimes we loosely refer to our activities as programs in an unstructured way. However, in order to analyze how well we are doing things, we often need to have a more formal definition. This page breaks down Free Geek's activities in a structured way

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

Let's break that down in a structured way:

To ...

1. recycle used technology, and
2. provide access to X in exchange for community service.
3. computers,
4. internet
5. education,
6. job skills training.

Some notes and definitions:

• From line 1, we assume these activities fall under the broad definition of the word "recycle"
  • reuse, re-using an item as is, in its current working state
  • refurbishment, re-using an item after repairing or upgrading it
  • recycling (more narrowly defined), re-using items as scrap materials, rather than as useful working components
• Line 2 contains an X. We can swap the items on lines 3, 4, 5, and 6 into that X to create a complete phrase, for example swapping in line 5 gives us "provide access to education in exchange for community service."

This then breaks downs to these phrases, which are grouped here with the activities that support each. Many of these activities fall into more than one category.

recycle used technology

recycling, printers, build, laptops, macs, thrift store, A/V, servers, prebuild, testing

provide access to computers in exchange for community service.

build, thrift store, adoption, hardware grants, laptops, macs, prebuild, testing

provide access to internet in exchange for community service.

gap, adoption, build, thrift store, drop in access, support

provide access to education in exchange for community service.

classes, build, library, tours, prebuild, support

provide access to job skills training in exchange for community service.

internships, build, prebuild, testing, support

Administrative Activities

The IRS is interested in two other types of activities, both of which support program related activities, but more indirectly. These are fundraising activities and other administrative activities. For example running to the store to purchase paper clips is a necessary activity that can't be assigned to any of the mission related program areas listed above, but is nevertheless a necessary support activity. This would fall under the administration category. The fundraising category speaks for itself.