to donate a cell phone?

[sandy]

I have a new cell phone, which means I now have an "old" cell phone.

Is there somewhere I can send my old phone so the Preeclampsia Foundation can benefit?

Thank you.

[Dawn D]

Hi Sandy, what a generous idea. I've done some quick research on recycling for charity and it appears that the most effective way for us (or any charity) to DIRECTLY benefit from this is to organize an actual "Recycling Drive" (phones,ink cartridges, etc). However, I'm not sure how the donation of one phone could help.....but fill me in on any ideas you know of!!


If in your local area you might be intersted in coordinating such a fundraiser, I'm available to talk further about the feasability of such a project to benefit PF - and the possibilties of approval for officially registering our charity with an organization that supports these projects (at no cost to our Foundation). Thanks.

[kara]

Denise from Wisconsin has looked into this....I'll let her know this post is here!!

[mommy1st]

I have a couple old cell phones I would love to donate to PF. I know you can do this for March of dimes also.

[missgamecock]

If PF can't take them, Verizon takes old cell phones, refurbishes them, and gives them to abused women for domestic violence. They also give you a thing for your taxes.

[denise]

http://www.preeclampsia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18637&SearchTerms=,cell,phone,recycling

Above is the original post I had made asking about cell phone recycling. When I had looked into there were a few difference places that offered this. You do need to have a bunch of phones to get some money for them. Sabrina is right, many women's shelters take these phones as donations to use as 911 phones for their clients. The only thing is that we'd get 15 phones at a time, and we wouldn't have 15 clients to hand them out to. So the agency that I worked for would send them to the Shelter Alliance company.

I think this would be a worthy project as long as we spread the word out. The WAT came to mind as it's a large gathering of PF supporters anyway that could just bring their old phones. Rather than sending them to someone within the organization for collection. Many people just have their old phones laying around, at least around here. The cell phone companies are not too pushy when it comes to recycling phones here.

[taras mom]

Collective Good (www.collectivegood.com) allows you to designate a charity from its list to receive a donation for every phone you send, and you get a tax deduction for the donation (phones can be sent individually, so there's no need to do a collection drive). They pay for shipping, and the phones are refurbished for use in developing countries if possible (or recycled if not). I assume the donation per phone is not huge, so the question is whether it would be worth the PF's effort to get its name on the list.

[rosemary]

I am on a campaign to raise funds for a child who needs a heart-transplant. One of the ways that we were raising money was recycling cell phones. When we started I was really doubtful about the amount of phones that we would received. Well, I can tell you that in a two to three months time, I handled over 500 cell phones. Honestly, it was just a few of us collecting phones and I was totally surprised by the number of cell phones available/donated.

In my opinion, after reading the site listed above, I think it would be worthwhile. The site notes that you can drop off phones at any Staples store, which would certainly make is easy. Many companies are also willing to donate obsolete phones in bulk too.

[annegarrett]

Interesting idea. I have a couple sitting around my house (washed phones, driven over phones, dog chewed phones). I would love to learn more about this!

[Dawn D]

I have put in a call and email to the Collective Good organization to find out more!