The ones that still work should go to someone who needs them
Retired computers reach our bench every week from businesses, clinics, banks, and school districts. A good share of them still have years of work left. Those get refurbished, wiped to the federal standard, and given to people and organizations across Northeast Arkansas at no charge. If your group can put machines in the right hands, we would like to hear from you.
Why we have machines to give
Our main work is retiring IT equipment. An organization replaces forty workstations, we collect all forty, and every drive is serialized and sanitized on our own engine so the client gets a certificate they can verify. Some of those units are genuinely finished. Many are not: they are four years old, they were replaced on a schedule rather than because anything failed, and with a solid state drive and a current operating system they are perfectly good machines for school work, a job search, or running a small nonprofit office.
Selling those on is the ordinary outcome in this industry. Giving some of them away is a better one, and because we wrote our own sanitization engine there is no per-drive licence sitting between a working computer and the person who needs it. The cost of preparing one is our time.
Who these are for
Households
A student with no computer at home, a family working from a phone, an adult retraining for a different job. One machine, set up and ready to turn on.
- Desktop or laptop with a current operating system
- Set up before it leaves us
- No charge and no invoice
Nonprofits and ministries
Small organizations running on whatever hardware was donated last. Front desk machines, volunteer stations, a computer for the office that does not crash during a grant deadline.
- Several machines where we have them
- Matched to what your work actually needs
- Certificate for every drive, on file
Classrooms and youth programs
After school programs, church youth groups, and teachers who need more stations than the budget allows.
- Batches when supply allows
- Consistent configuration across a set
- We can deliver and set up on site
Libraries and community centers
Places that already teach people to use a computer and have nothing to send them home with.
- Machines for patrons who finish a class
- Handover on site if that helps
- Bilingual setup available on request
How it works
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Tell us what you need
Call dispatch or send the request form. One machine for a household, or a number and a date if you are an organization placing several. There is no application fee and no means test we administer ourselves.
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We pull from what came in
Machines are matched to the need from whatever the retirement program has recovered recently. Supply moves with what our clients retire, so we will tell you honestly what we have and when.
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Sanitized and rebuilt
Every drive is wiped to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 on the Oblitero bench, the same process a bank gets, and the machine is rebuilt with a current operating system and tested before it moves.
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Handed over with its record
The machine comes with a serialized Certificate of Data Sanitization for the drive inside it, checkable on our verification page. Nothing from the previous owner survives, and you can prove it.
You decide who gets them, we handle the machines
We are an IT company, not a social services agency. We are not the right people to judge who most needs a computer, and we would rather not try. Organizations across Northeast Arkansas already do that every day and already know the households.
So the offer to any nonprofit, school, library, church, shelter, food pantry, or workforce program in our service area is simple. You tell us how many machines you can place and roughly when. We refurbish, sanitize, certify, and deliver them. You choose the recipients by whatever standard your own program uses. No charge, no invoice, and no requirement that you promote us.
- Standing quarterly allocation or a one-time batch, whichever suits your program
- Certificate of sanitization for every drive, so a machine can sit near client records safely
- Delivery and on-site setup across our twelve county Arkansas service area and the Missouri Bootheel
- Consultation costs nothing, as it does for every service we offer
What we can and cannot promise
Supply depends on what our clients retire, so we will not quote a number of machines per month until the bench has run long enough for us to know the real yield. If you ask for twenty and we have six, we will say six.
NEA IT Services is a business, not a registered charity, so we cannot issue a tax deductible donation receipt. If that matters to your organization, talk to your accountant about how a donated asset should be recorded.
We are also not the first to do this in Arkansas. Programs in other parts of the state have refurbished and placed computers for years, and a distribution in Jonesboro in December 2025 put over a hundred laptops in students’ hands. If you need a computer sooner than we can supply one, the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library has more than twenty public machines free to any card holder, along with drop-in tech help and one-on-one sessions.
Questions about the community machines
Is it actually free?
Yes. There is no charge, no deposit, and no invoice at any stage, the same as the community pickup route and the same as every consultation we offer.
What condition are these in?
Working order, tested before they leave. Most are business class desktops and laptops that were replaced on a refresh schedule rather than because they failed. Cosmetic wear is normal. Anything that does not pass testing is stripped for parts and recycled instead of given away.
Could the previous owner's data still be on it?
No. Every drive is sanitized to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 on our own engine before a machine is rebuilt, and each one carries a serialized certificate you can check on the verification page. That process is the same one our corporate and healthcare clients rely on.
Can my organization receive several at once?
Where supply allows, yes, and we would rather work through organizations than one household at a time. Tell dispatch how many you can place and when, and we will tell you what we have.
Can I donate my own old computer to this?
Yes. Residents and small offices in Craighead and Greene counties can book a free community pickup, and anything still usable goes into this program rather than straight to recycling.
Do you take retired machines from businesses for this?
That is where most of them come from. If your organization is retiring hardware and would like the working units to stay in the community instead of going to a parts buyer, say so when you book the pickup and we will note where they went.
If your organization can place machines, call us
Dispatch answers at (870) 617-0131 during business hours, and the request form reaches the same inbox any time. Tell us what your program does and roughly how many computers it could put to work, and we will tell you what we have on the bench.