How you can help CFA

Empty Ink Cartridge Donations
We will take all cartridges just email us at Computers@computers4all.org Place "Cartridges" in the subject and tell use where to pick them up and who to contact in the body of the email.  Please collect four or more cartridges before asking for pickup.

Donate your old Computers
To give away computers we need usable computers if you have one or more computers or computer parts contact us with a list of what you wish to donate. We are not recyclers so we can not take in all computer equipment. We can only accept donations that we find usable. Below is a description of the equipment we can use.

First all Equipment must be in basic working order - We do not take dead monitors or computers – Monitors must turn on and have a usable screen image. Computers must at the very least show the boot ROM message when powered up. We do not require that they boot up. On some lose parts we will take your word on the fact that the part was working at last use.

We ask that computers be at least 400mhz, with two USB ports and have either CD ROM drive or a place to mount a standard drive.  As a rule all computers must have a hard drive!!! We cannot use computers without hard drives and yes we know that to comply with Windows licensing you usually cannot give away or sell your computers with Windows still installed and that you may wish to keep business and personal information private.  Removing all data from your hard drive is really quite easy - you may do this yourself with Derik's Boot and Nuke which is a free download. We will also contract with you for a small amount to do this work for you. Remember, We use our own software so We do not need any software from you and will always remove your old system to install ours.  We may take in a few very high end computers or computers with special extras without hard drives for their parts.  While we will take hard drives down to 6gb we prefer 10gb or more. 

CRT Monitors must be at least 17” and show true colors. We do not accept monitors that are off in color display and have no use for small monitors. We will accept LCD monitors down to 14” as we have special use for these units.

We will accept only working printers (though we will refuse some older “Winprinters”) Keyboards and mice must be PS2 or USB and in good condition to be accepted. We accept any power cord and most printer cables and 10/100baseT networking cables.

We generally do not accept large commercial printers or copiers as these are too expensive to maintain for most individuals. However, if you do have a large printer or copier in good working condition contact us and we will pass the word among other non-profits to see if one of them needs it.

For other computer and electronic items contact us - we may not be interested by can pass the word as see what comes of it.


Donate your time and Knowledge
 There is lots of work to be done in refurbishing and giving away old computers. First we must move the computers from the donor to a storage area – then we must work them over – then someone needs to sit with the recipient and show then how to use it. While we have been able to cut the total time involved drastically Someone must still put in time for each giveaway.

Some people have give as little as an hour or two to help move computers others have given hundreds of hours to do all of the needed activities. All are very much appreciated. So even if you only have an hour or two and no special tech skills we can use your help! If you wish to donate some of your time send us an email at computers@computers4all.org – and give use your contact information and someone will be in touch.


Use our web Site
 By coming to our website before going to shop on-line you raise money for Computers for All, Inc. and it cost you nothing.

We have placed links to various web based merchants on our site. When you use one of these to access the website of the merchant your computer is handed a “cookie” indicating that we sent you to them. Now when you make a purchase from this merchant – we get a small fee for providing the customer. This is how web advertising is done, in fact whenever you click on a link on some website that sends you to another website to make the purchase this is what is happening. This is basically how Google and Yahoo make their money.

So you can support us using our Market Links page or our new Home page to connect to on line merchants. We do investigate the merchants before adding to our links page to insure that they are reputable. However, we cannot guarantee the outcome of every transaction. If you do have problems with a merchant we want to hear about it and if we discover that a merchant we are linked to is not being a good business partner we will remove the link.

So Bookmark our “Market Links” page or make your home page our “Special Home Page” and when you wish to obtain something on line click on the link on one of these pages.

Report feedback on how the merchants perform to us at reports@computers4all.org. We truly want to know both the good and the bad.



Switch to using OS software
 We supply Open Source software on all the computers we give out. You can help by just using this software yourself as much as possible. This builds a larger base for this software there by making it more popular and insures that web designers and support techs will find it necessary to extend support to it as a matter of doing business.

This is the one place that when you are helping us you are helping yourself. Many of these programs are as good as or better than their proprietary counter parts and they all are only a free down load away. So go to our Free Links page and start using this software and do us both a favor.