January 9, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
TechSoup has added new products to its DiscounTech online store to benefit small and medium-size nonprofit organizations. TechSoup is a technology Web site for nonprofit groups that is run by CompuMentor, a San Francisco charity that provides technology assistance to other nonprofit organizations.
Discounted networking equipment donated by Cisco Systems, in San Jose, Calif., is now available through DiscounTech to charities that have annual budgets of less than $10-million and operate in fewer than 20 locations.
The equipment is available in six bundled sets, which the company is calling Internet Starter Kits. Depending on their intended use, the kits contain routers, switches, access points, and other equipment. Each kit costs $199, which is approximately 90 percent off the retail price. Individual networking components are also available.
When Cisco was working with TechSoup to set up the donation program — an expansion of one that the company used to run in-house — the company wanted to make sure that charities understand upfront what is involved in building and maintaining a network and how they can best put the Cisco equipment to use, says Gayle Carpentier, business development director for TechSoup.
With that in mind, DiscounTech refers interested customers to educational material, such as networking guides and detailed product descriptions, as part of the purchasing process. TechSoup also has on its staff a trained Cisco specialist who is available to answer customers’ questions. Cisco has included a one-year customer-support contract with the networking bundles, which charities are required to renew in subsequent years for as long as they own the equipment.
In addition, a CD-ROM toolkit designed to help nonprofit organizations make better use of technology in their work is available free to some charities through DiscounTech.
The toolkit was created by NPower, a network of organizations that provide technology assistance to other charities, with a grant from the SBC Foundation. It is available free to nonprofit groups with annual budgets under $1.5-million in the 13 states in which the San Antonio company provides telecommunications services: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Among the topics covered on the CD-ROM: writing grant proposals to pay for technology programs, diagnosing and solving common computer problems, and designing a technology-training program for staff members.
Nonprofit organizations outside of the 13 states in which SBC operates can request a copy of the CD-ROM by sending an e-mail message to sbcexcelerator@npower.org.
To get there: Go to http://www.techsoup.org/discountech.
