Laptop Donations

Coronavirus threw the digital divide into stark relief with many vulnerable families and young people excluded from education, and social support, due to a lack of suitable equipment at home. The ongoing cost of living crisis continues to exclude many young people from online educational support.

We now working in partnership with DonateIT to accept laptops for marginalised young people that are digitally excluded. Donate IT is a charity and CIC based in Somerset that refurbishes locally donated devices.

Together we have already gifted over 4,000 devices to people that cannot afford them, particularly to children who need them for their schoolwork and young people looking for work.

We are hugely grateful to everyone that has been able to donate a laptop so far, if you would like to join them in supporting vulnerable families in your neighbourhood we would love to accept any working laptop in good condition with a power cable.

How to donate

You can donate your laptop following the procedure below:

• Please ensure the laptop is fully turned off (not in sleep mode),
• Place the laptop in a clear plastic bag with a competed donation form available here.
• Take the donation to one of the many local collection points listed below. Unfortunately we can’t pay for collection from you directly.

Where to donate

You can donate your laptop at any of the DonateIT collection points on their map. You can also donate at a DigiLocal partner site, listed below.

What to donate

Thanks to our partnership with DonateIT, we can now accept a wider range of equipment; Laptops PC’s, towers, mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, kindle’s/e-readers, game consoles, digital cameras, smart watches, cables & accessories. We can also now accept iPads, iPhones, and Apple devices (please remove your apple device from your account settings, so they can be re-used),

We cannot accept: Printers, monitors, mice, keyboards

A completed donation form. You can download a donation form here. This form is important as it confirms that you have donated the equipment and that we are allowed to re-purpose it and donate onward to disadvantaged young people and families.

What we do with your donated laptop

• Make a note that you donated it – please include a completed donation form;
  • We will not use your details for any purpose other than proving the device was received in good faith
  • our Data Policy can be found here
• PAT check for electrical safety (Portable Appliance Test)
• Wipe all data from the laptop;
  • Make sure you have any data you want on a back up before handing the device over
  • If the device is an ex-corporate laptop, please make sure you have complied with your organisation’s Data Protection Policy on erasing sensitive data from the laptop before you bring it to us
  • We are not able to issue verification certificates of data sanitation, please use a properly certified organisation / software product if this applies to you (National Centre for Cyber Security list of certified data sanitisers)
• Install a new operating system, usually the free and open source Ubuntu 24.04LTS (Long Term Support)
• Install new software packages (Chrome, Firefox, LibreOffice, Zoom, etc)
• Distribute it to vulnerable young people and families via our trusted community anchor organisations

Please note:

• Laptops cannot be returned to you, they are being donated in good faith to vulnerable young people and families
• We cannot accept equipment that is broken, or damaged, or unsafe
• We cannot accept laptops without power leads
• If you have set the BIOS password, we will need that also (this is mainly for ex-corporate laptops; if you’re not sure what a BIOS password is, you should be ok)
• If you are donating an Apple device, please remove your apple device from your account settings, so they can be re-used.

Thank you so much for your support.