Editing Donations

Noisebridge loves donations!  But we don't love all donations.  We can't use everything, and some things take up lots of space and/or cost us lots of money to get rid of.  Which results in Noisebridge being poorer than if we never got the donation in the firstplace.

Also, if you donate a resource and do not guide its use, then it is possible that it may get turned into a ROBOT. Yes, a ROBOT: a lifeless husk of wood and plastic.

= How to Donate to Noisebridge =

# Check to see if what you'd like to donate is listed below as something we definitely don't want.  If we don't want it, please don't bring it to Noisebridge.  We won't change our mind, we promise.
# If it's something that's big, and you have any doubt that we might want it, send an email to noisebridge-discuss@lists.noisebridge.net before you plan to bring it in, and we can give you a sense of whether we'd like it or not.
# Bring it in!  You can leave your donation on the incoming donations table just to the left of the elevator gate.  We'll go through it and incorporate the stuff that's useful into the right place in the space, and properly dispose of what we can't use.
# Ask a NB voluteer to write down what you donated, and your name+address, and email it to treasurer@noisebridge.net.
# Our awesome treasurer emails them a PDF receipt.  NOTE: We can't provide valuation information on the receipt. The receipt will simply list the items you donated and it's up to you to provide a value if you want to claim a charitable donation for tax purposes.

= Donations we definitely don't want =

* CRT Monitors - please only bring CRTs if you intend to use the parts for anything other than a normal monitor. We prefer LCD's. Why? CRTs are large, put out a lot of heat, and are difficult to dispose of. We can't accept donations of CRTs unless they're very special-purpose, because e-waste disposal of CRTs is very expensive in California.  The exception is for unique devices, for example the slow-scan CRT in the [[SEM]] or the vector CRT in an old arcade stand-up console.  A special-purpose but uninteresting CRT, like from a commercial security system, would probably not qualify.
* PCs older than Core 2 Duo
* Car batteries
* Servers

= Donations we'll take, but will probably take apart for parts even if they work =

* Printers
* Scanners
* Interesting appliances (icemakers, keurig coffee machines, etc)

= Donations we especially want =

* Development boards
* Electronic components
* Awesome, funky old things
* Robots
* Motors
* ????? Put stuff you want here

= Processing Donations =

# Check the black donations table in the hackitorium next to the elevator gate for incoming donations, and route things accordingly:
## Hack shelf and component donations on the donation shelves below the turing classroom window, to the left of the hack shelves.
## Sewing supplies: ???
## Books: ???
## Tools: ???
## Raw materials: ???
# When we have sufficient hack shelf/component donations that need processing, a small group of people meet on Thursday nights at 7pm to go through the donations together.


== How to Handle Common Things We Receive == 

=== PCs ===

Keep anything intact that has a Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) or newer.  Anything older, take apart for parts.  We generally keep memory, power supplies, PCI cards, and drives, and ewaste the rest.  PCs, even with some parts removed, can be used to pay ewaste recyclers for taking the rest of our crap.

=== Monitors ===

We don't want CRTs - they're large, put out a lot of heat, and are difficult to dispose of.

LCD monitors should be tested to see if they're working, and then labeled with a peice of a tape and a sharpie with the date they were tested, and whether they work or not.

=== Commodity appliances ===

Ie, scanners, printers, ice makers, coffee machines, etc.

Unless it has obvious direct utility in the space (and we don't already have a better one), then we generally take these apart for parts/useful subsystems for people to use in projects.  Usually only a few parts or subsystems are of any use, which make up a small fraction of the overall bulk of the appliance.  We generally take them apart and remove the useful bits, and ewaste the rest.

= E-Waste disposal =

If 4 computers are amongst things we're recycling, they'll take the rest for free. We keep a rack of computers we don't want by the elevator to pay them with.

There are people that we've used in the past here: https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Resources/House_Keeping#E-waste  [TODO: not sure how up to date this is]