PH Kothegr

Addresses to Send To

Now that you know what is going on, who we are , what the money is being raised for and all of those good things, here are the addresses to send your used ink jet cartridges to:

In the USA.
PO Box " Cartridge " Daggett CA 92327

In the UK.
56 Swallands Road.
Bellingham
London SE6 3JA

In Portugal or Spain.
Apartado 2185
Cascais 2750
Portugal.

We'll do all the rest, sorting through them, selling them and passing the money along to the charities.

Basic Idea

Here is a candidate for the next step of fundraising for Spirit of America and similar organisations. Please skim through the whole site and have a ponder on what it says here. Essentially, the two of us here at PH Kothegr have the infrastructure to sort and sell used ink jet cartridges. We would do this at no profit. All the various bloggers would need to do is point out to their readers that if they send their used ink jets to us, then the money goes to Spirit of America and other charities.
There's a whole host of other issues, which is what the rest of the site is about.
If you have questions, please use the comments sections. This way I should need to answer each question once.
What I'm really trying to find out is whether anyone thinks this is a good idea, and if it is, will they support it by telling their readers ?
Also, this site makes most sense by starting at the bottom.

Cell Phones

Cell Phones can also be collected and sold to recyclers. There's a few more issues, like the fact that most batteries are considered toxic. Also, we don't know as much about them as we do ink jets.
So at present I'm just treating Cell Phones as something that we can ask for in the future if we wish to.

Tax Credits and the Legal Situation

This is something I don't really know about. American tax law. My reading of it is that if we end up raising $ 10k or $ 15k then no one is going to worry very much. We'll be treated like a glorified bake sale or something.
However, if this story has legs and we start to get significant numbers, we'll have to register as a charity ourselves. We can't simply send ink jets off to recyclers and then get the money sent direct to the charity. On a large scale, there will be costs associated with sorting. Not just wages for sorters and things like packaging material, but also disposal costs of those ink jets that are worth nothing. On a small scale this doesn't matter, but on a large scale, we would have to pay disposal fees.
So money would have to roll from buyer to us, then minus costs to the charity.
Also, if we are actually registered then we can issue the tax receipts ourselves, and our basic software system is 90 % of the way towards being able to track that anyway.
Fortunately that's a problem we don't have to worry about yet.

Which Charities ?

One thing that needs to be sorted out is exactly which charities we are going to actually send money to. In the US , Spirit of America is the most obvious. But should we also plan on making a percentage of funds available for Operation Give? For Chief Wiggles ? For other things? Pizza for the IDF ? I think we need to decide before we start exactly where the money is going to go, and then if we decide to change that in the future, make sure that we tell donors before they donate of the change. But it is for the US participants to decide on which US charities get the money.
I think that money raised in one area should be given to charities associated with that area. So, for example, any money raised in the UK would be spent on an English equivalent of Spirit of America. If we can't find one, then The Royal British Legion would be the default : they take care of crippled and aged servicemen ( we have no equivalent of the VA in the UK ).
Anything that comes in via Spain and Portugal ? I don't know at present. Probably little will , so I doubt it will be a great problem ( although that might change if Iberian Notes and HisperLibertas join in and translate the offer ).

Places

We have three places that can be used as sorting centres.
1) Daggett California. Greg owns a large warehouse. We have all the infrastructure in place, including an eager workforce of high school kids.
2) A small place in the UK. We don't expect much from the UK to begin with but it might take off there.
3) Spain and Portugal. I already have a small network set up in Portugal . People in Iberia can simply send to my post box.

People

Who is it that is actually proposing to do this ?
1) Tim Worstall. English, currently live in Portugal, have lived and worked in the UK, Russia and the US. Run a small business dealing with truly weird and exotic metals. I have a lot of experience of the scrap metal business and 6 months or so in recycling of ink jets and mobile/ cell phones.
I will be responsible for pushing forward web design, teaching people how to sort and pack ink jets and also for all sales and interaction with wholesale buyers. Plus whatever comes into the UK or Portugal.
2 Greg Vose. Major, California National Guard. Runs own small business providing and repairing Russian military equipment for the US Army. Owns a tank repair shop in Daggett which will be used as sorting centre. Lives 4 miles from Camp Pendelton so can drop in on Spirit of America team anytime.
Greg will be responsible for day to day oversight of the sorting and packaging operation in the US.

Web Site Developments

Obviously this blog is set up more as a discussion forum.
We have in the background a server already rented and the bare bones of a proper system. Things like links into the USPS system for calculating mailing costs ( and the ability to pay them centrally ) , multiple accounts, so that people can say they want it to go to " this charity " or that they are sending it on behalf of " that blog" ( so making teams possible ) and also price lists so that people can see the value of what they are contributing. These are already implemented. So the basis for being able to issue tax credits is also there.
So we can make the operation a lot more slick. However, I don't really want to spend more money on this until we can see what the level of response is going to be like. I want to know what you all think about this as an idea, and perhaps see some packages coming in before we get all fancy with the mechanisms.

The Ruling Council

I think it's worth having a group of bloggers that oversee us in this work.
There are two main decisions for the Concil.
1) Exactly which charities are we raising money for. Spirit of America ? Operation Give ? Chief Wiggles ? All of them ? More? How are we going to divide funds ? Who gets how much ?
That is best decided as a collective decision.
2) If this works really well then we'll have to move to a more structured basis. Perhaps a beancounter, a manager, real professional staff.
Who would be on the Council ?
Your thoughts are required.

Are we Doing this for Profit ?

Greg and I were thinking of setting up a collection scheme for ink jets in order to profit from it. We've not done so because we couldn't work out how to get the word out. There will be the obvious suspicion that we are going to try and make money out of this.
No.
We are not doing this for profit.
We are offering to put in out time and knowledge for nothing. As volunteers. We're also adding the overheads and infrastructure to make it work. The sites where we can sort and repack ink jets, these we already own and will not charge for.
There are two things we will charge for, to be taken from funds raised.
1) Direct costs. Boring things like cardboard boxes, masking tape ( I think you Americans call it duct tape ), blah blah. Trivia. There is also a possibly larger cost. If this becomes successful we are going to have to hire some high school kids to do the actual grunt work of sorting through the pieces. And we would have to pay them wages. These would come out of funds raised. Yes, it would be nice not to have to do that but I'm afraid we are not rich enough to carry that cost ourselves.
2) After we've done this for 90 days we may want to extend it. If it's something that chunters along in the background then great, we will. If , however, it is very successful then we will need to rethink. It might be necessary to hire professional staff to keep the system running properly, and they will of course want to get paid.
Whether we could do that, and how much we could do that with is something which would be decided by the "Ruling Council". Of which more in another post.