We're about ready to end our hiatus. We've learned a lot of lessons in the past couple of years and are looking forward to getting back into action. That being said, there’s a couple of things that need to be addressed.
A problem that we consistently encounter is that we can sometimes have too much support but not the type that is currently needed. Nearly every person we meet responds with, "I have plenty of hardware to donate!" While it is appreciated, the result is that we have more hardware than we know what to do with. Until we get the funds to provide dedicated storage (or if someone would like to donate some space) the result is a lot of the donated hardware will be taken to the recycling center.
Going forward we will be much clearer about what help is required. Currently we do not need hardware donations. What we do need are skilled volunteers capable of building and repairing computers. We also need volunteers who are experienced with Linux. We are always, of course, willing to teach these skills to anyone who wants to learn them. For our upcoming project we will also need monetary donations to purchase the specialized hardware that people are unlikely to donate. We will be posting about our future project ideas very soon so stay tuned!
Speaking of money, we don't want to rely solely on donations to fund our ideas for projects. In the near future we would like to take an idea from FreeGeek Chicago and start selling computers that run Linux at an extremely cheap price to make use of the continuous hardware surplus. Hopefully this will help Caring Compy to become more self sustainable.
