pretty sure you can go on craigslist and get nearly free stuff if you are in desperate need of a computer or phone.

Let's look at phoenix craigslist.

* Here's a guy who looks like he stole a truck carrying Dell Optiplexes, buried them in his backyard, and has now dug them up to sell for $40 each. He's got 50 of them! https://phoenix.craigslist.org/cph/sys/d/laveen-dell-optiple...

* Here's a Dell Inspiron for $35 ($20 without charger) https://tucson.craigslist.org/sys/d/tucson-dell-inspiron-146...

* Here's a Lenovo xc10 laptop for $95. Not a bad deal. https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/sys/d/sun-city-west-lenov...

* Dell Latitude for $90 https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/sys/d/sun-city-west-dell-...

Bottom line, if you are willing to use an old computer, you can get one for less than the price of dinner for two at Applebee's.

To be honest, I'm more interested in donating to an organization that targets people who need electronics, but don't have them or are underserved by the electronics they do have. Listing stuff on Craigslist or Ebay is going to filter for people or businesses who have the means to check the sites regularly, and the funds ready to purchase things on them.

That's fine if you're local but I hang out on the vintagecomputing subreddit and about once a week you see a horror story of a collector getting something from ebay and it's delivered essentially destroyed.

Oh, I believe that. I once ordered a rare book that was destroyed in shipping. It was terrible.

But with cragslist, you usually pick things up from the seller, as it's local. Ebay is a bit dicier.

This exists locally to me, you might have something similar near you:

https://www.freegeektwincities.org/

They've been great for both buying and selling. They take old cables that don't even work any more and recycle them for scrap.

I see a lot of people give these kinds of things out via online marketplaces either for free or for cheap prices now. In Ontario it seems like the popular sites for this are Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace.

it's more work, but pretty much any old laptop or phone you can sell on eBay. You can donate the proceeds if you wish.

Note that Goodwill is a charity in the same way that IKEA is a nonprofit. They take your stuff for free, and give you a tax receipt, but they don’t give any of it away. They sell it for as much money as they can in their stores. The “charity” part is that they provide jobs and job training … to the people who work there.

Goodwill is simply a way to launder your possessions to feel like you’re doing good, instead of throwing them in a wastebin.

To be more positive, look for organizations like local churches/synagogues/mosques, community centers or homeless organizations that will give your donations directly to people in need. This works well for clothes and home goods, not as well for e-gadgets. For those, you might consider selling them on EBay and donating the proceeds to a charity.

You have made a lot of repeat comments about this and a lot of it isn’t true.

Do they make a profit? If so, where does the money go?

Nonprofits can actually make a profit, they just can’t distribute it to its owners (usually the board of directors) as a dividend. Goodwill pays its executives well, roughly $1MM to many of its regional executives. Its primary charitable work is claimed to be hiring people who are otherwise unemployable, often paying them below minimum wage. Some of this is discussed on the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries

Not saying your larger point is wrong, but this schtick ("Goodwill pays its executives well, roughly $1MM to many of its regional executives") always annoys me. Goodwill is a large organization, and large organizations require experience and talent to run.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a large corporation, a government, an army, a charity, or even a church. It's not going to be possible to find people to manage it properly for $50K a year. Cutting corners when it comes to attracting and retaining qualified management leads to even greater waste in the big picture.

Agree 100%. You are 100% right, and I don’t think their executives are “stealing” money. I am the first to jump in and defend charities, like the Mozilla Foundation, or even Goodwill, who pay their CEO’s appropriately. So perhaps that part of my comment is a red herring. It’s just that Goodwill is extremely odd in that the business IS the charity. Most people don’t put a lot of thought into it, and assume that they are somehow giving all of the junk we drop off on their doorstep to needy people - they aren’t. Or that their thrift stores are earning them money off our junk to fund relief programs and feed the needy - they don’t do that. Their charity is … to pay people (generally not very well) to sort and clean all of our junk, put it on display in stores, and take our money for it when we buy it back. It’s just … weird. It does beg the question of where all the money goes.