Talk:Mission Statement

General Comments

Uh oh...this link was empty! Seems like if there is an official mission statement, it should be clearly stated somewhere in the wiki. I took this from the web page's "About Free Geek" page. Is this the definitive mission statement? Can somebody verify?

--Pete 12:29, 25 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Doug and I went to the meeting tonight. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the mission statement. I believe that we gave it a very worthy effort. What is the next step to confirming what we decided for the mission statement?

-- 13 Nov 2005 (PDT)

What meeting was that? If there are more like it, I'd be interested in attending.

--Pete 17:05, 4 Dec 2005 (PST)

I deleted the references to "slogans" from this site because slogans are a pr tool used to communicate what it is we do, and a mission statement is a core-level, sudo-privilege kinda thing that should be much more difficult to alter. The two are easily confused, which is the inherent problem; but I feel it is critical to keep them absolutely separate. They should be in concert, but they are discrete things.

-- Tonyc 03:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I recovered the slogans and moved them to Free Geek Slogans. And I also protected the page so people won't casually change the thing.

-- RfS 15:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

It was my intent to place the slogans onto their own page, but rfs beat me to it. I created the page Slogans this morning and placed them there, then noticed it was redundant. We could kill either one of these, since they're identical.

I don't see why it's necessary to protect this page. It's a wiki. you can't break it if you try and enough people are watching it to keep it honest. If I'd placed the slogans on their own page right away, it might have looked less haphazard. But I don't feel my edit was casual at all. Tonyc 18:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

It's protected because ...

... it's an actual official state approved thing (like our bylaws). In the past people have come to the mission statement as if it were a marketing slogan, thinking we could tweak it willy nilly to suit our purposes. (That would be true in a for profit business, but not in our case.) The bylaws and our articles of incorporation are also protected pages as well.

Tony's edit was not casual, not what triggered the protection of the page. It should've been protected all along.

RfS 21:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Tony was being hypersensitive. I'd insert an emoticon here, but with wiki text it would probably reformat something. Thinking about creating a link to slogans from this page. Tonyc 00:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Old Mission (Overview) page

See Mission Statement page. This page could be incorporated into that one.

RfS 04:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Updated! --Ideath 23:44, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

http://freegeek.org/mission.php

MISSION AND OVERVIEW

Let's start with the formalities. Here's our Official Mission Statement:

  FREE GEEK is a 501(c)(3) not for profit community organization that recycles 
  used technology to provide computers, education, internet access and 
  job skills training to those in need in exchange for community service.

It's a mission that's worked for us through our many changes since our founding in February 2000. For all those years, we've taken tired, poor, wretched, homeless, tempest-tossed and arguably obsolete electronic materials from all over the Portland area and beyond. Believing firmly that reuse is the highest and best form of recycling, we refurbish as much of that stuff as we can and send it back out into the community with a new lease on life. The stuff that doesn't make the grade is not banished to landfills to leach toxics into the water table. Nor is it sent to developing nations to be disassembled by small children. We do our very best to make sure that all electronic materials we don't reuse are [responsibly recycled] within North America. Free Geek recycles approximately 500 tons of scrap per year and puts thousands of refurbished computers back into the hands of people who will use them.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of Free Geek. At any given time, about 500 are active, greeting donors, processing the aforementioned electronics, teaching classes, and generally running the place. The "job skills training" and "community service" mentioned above? They're often the same thing, as volunteers learn while doing. One of our most popular programs is our [build program], in which volunteers learn about computer hardware, troubleshooting skills, and eventually put together the computers we give out. We don't require any prior knowledge to volunteer at Free Geek. If you're interested in serving the community or just having fun as a Free Geek volunteer, [check out this page].

We are proud of being a democratically-run organization, and use consensus to make our decisions. Our [structure] is fairly unusual because we want all levels of decision-making to be open to community of volunteers.

If you want to learn more about FREE GEEK, please join one of the informative tours we offer at noon and 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday. [ Find Us ]

We were the first, but there are other Free Geeks. To find out if there's one in your area, check out [this page].

Wanted

• update
• get involved with link to volunteer page
• link to structure page instead of individual links at bottom

ok?