This week we’d like to introduce you to a unique TechSoup Refurbished Computer Initiative partner, InterConnection, a nonprofit computer refurbisher in Seattle. What, you may ask, makes InterConnection unique?

I’m so glad you asked. InterConnection is a nonprofit refurbisher that has figured out how to do two things very, very well. It refurbishes IT equipment to very high standards with a largely volunteer workforce, and it is a model program for responsible export of refurbished IT equipment in to developing countries.

Global Impact of InterConnection's Programs

The program was started in 1999 by Charles Brennick, who still runs the organization. To date, InterConnection has shipped over 20,000 computers and monitors to organizations around the world and properly recycled nearly 100,000 computers. They do this work so capably that Microsoft Community Affairs has commissioned them on multiple occasions to refurbish and send their computer donations to NGOs and schools all over the world.

InterConnection has also worked with the U.S. Peace Corp numerous times. I was going to list all the countries where they send computers, but it’s just too long. During the past few years, InterConnection has also participated in supplying badly needed IT equipment to disaster stricken areas like Chile, Haiti and Pakistan, and Japan. Suffice to say that they’re a leader in the U.S. on responsible export of refurbished computers to the developing world.

In the course of doing this work, InterConnection also trains people to learn how to do IT repair work at no cost to the trainees and trainees also receive a free computer upon successful completion of their course.

To date, more than 1,000 people have participated in this social enterprise at InterConnection’s Computer Reuse Center. Most of the computers that the organization works on are donated by local companies and residents.

Building Quality Refurbished Computers with Volunteers

We got to know Charles Brennick much better in the course of working together on a Microsoft IT equipment donation to NGOs in Romania a couple of years ago. Matthew Halden of TechSoup and I visited his Computer Reuse Center in Seattle and were very impressed at how InterConnection manages to employ a staff of professionals and volunteers to produce top-grade refurbished equipment.

The quality control systems that Charles and his team have created so that people who are learning on the job can produce grade-A refurbished equipment is pretty astonishing.

In seeing that nonprofit refurbishment can produce results as good as commercial refurbishment, we approached Charles about participating as a refurbishment partner with our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI). We’re now working together on another large Microsoft donation of IT equipment going to the Czech Republic for people with disabilities.

InterConnection now supplies RCI with warrantied laptops and desktop computers that go to nonprofits and libraries in the United States. InterConnection also runs a free RCI end-of-life Take Back Program, in which nonprofits and libraries that receive RCI computers can have them responsibly recycled at no cost.

It is truly an honor for us to have the chance to work with a place like Interconnection.

Photos: InterConnection.org