Prefer to send a check, set up a recurring gift, or donate stock? Email hi@techempower.org.
Thank you.
Or give gear instead
💻🔋🛴🤖🚗
Donate your old electronics
If it plugs in, charges up, or ever did — we want it. Working or dead, ancient or brand new, one phone or a barn full. We’re a repair-and-reuse shop, not a recycler: working gear gets wiped, refurbished, and handed to a family that needs it; broken gear gets fixed, or becomes the parts that fix the next one. Only what’s truly left over gets recycled, properly. Nothing goes to the landfill.
🖥️Screens & TVsMonitors, flat-screen TVs, projectors. Yes, even the old tube kind.
🔌Cables, chargers & gadgetsRouters, printers, speakers, cameras, keyboards, that drawer of cords.
🤖Robots, drones & toysGame consoles, robot vacuums, drones, RC cars, anything with a battery inside.
🛴E-bikes, scooters & hoverboardsThe whole ride or just the battery pack. Dead packs too.
🔋Lithium batteries — every kindPhone, laptop, power-tool and e-bike packs, portable chargers, loose lithium cells, dead or alive. No alkaline, NiCad, NiMH or lead-acid, please.
⚡Solar & power gearPanels, inverters, portable power stations, UPS backups, generators.
🔧Wire, electrical & lightingCopper wire, electrical panels, breakers, conduit, enclosures, switches, outlets and other electrical supplies, motors, smart bulbs and LED fixtures. No fluorescent tubes or CFLs, please.
🛠️Tools of all kindsPower tools and their batteries, hand tools, meters and test gear, shop equipment. Working or not.
💿Software, media & accountsLicense keys, boxed software, CDs, DVDs, floppies, tape, transferable subscriptions and accounts, domains, cloud credits. If it helps a family or our shop, why not?
🚗Electric vehiclesCars, golf carts, mobility scooters. Running or not — we handle the DMV and IRS paperwork.
Not sure if something counts? It probably does. Ask.
How it works
Tell us what you’ve got. One email is plenty — a rough list and a photo if it’s easy.
We arrange a drop-off or a free pickup anywhere in Nevada County. Larger loads and vehicles are always picked up.
You get a written receipt for your taxes, and we get to work repairing.
Back up anything you want to keep. We wipe every drive and phone before reuse and can send you a data-destruction confirmation on request — but once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Sign out of your accounts. On iPhones and iPads, turn off Find My; on Android, remove your Google account; on Macs and Windows PCs, sign out of iCloud or Microsoft. A locked device can’t be reused for anyone.
Pull SIM cards and memory cards if you want them. Chargers and cables are a huge help — toss them in.
🔋 Battery safety
Never put a lithium battery in the trash or recycling bin. It’s illegal in California and it starts truck and landfill fires.
Tape over the terminals of loose batteries (or drop each one in its own zip bag) and keep them out of a jumbled pile of metal.
Swollen, leaking, crushed, or burned batteries: don’t bring those to us. Set the item on concrete away from anything flammable and take it to the McCourtney Road Transfer Station household hazardous waste drop-off (14741 Wolf Mountain Rd, Grass Valley). Free for households; call (530) 274-3090 to confirm hours before you go.
Your tax receipt
TechEMPOWER.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 92-2581940). We’ll give you a written acknowledgment describing what you donated. The IRS has you, the donor, set the value — what it would sell for used today. A few thresholds worth knowing:
Over $500 in donated items for the year: attach IRS Form 8283 to your return.
A single item or group over $5,000: you need a qualified appraisal, and we sign Section B of your 8283.
Vehicles (cars, golf carts, anything titled): we send you IRS Form 1098-C within 30 days, and we walk you through the DMV release of liability so the car is fully off your hands.
🏢 Businesses, schools, offices & agencies
Clearing out a closet of old laptops or a fleet of monitors? We’ll pick up in bulk, provide an itemized receipt, and certify NIST 800-88 data destruction for every drive and SSD — serial numbers listed, certificate of destruction included. Email hi@techempower.org.
🛍️ Thrift stores & fellow nonprofits
Electronics pile up in the back room: untested, unwiped, and illegal to toss if there’s a battery inside. We’ll pick them up on a regular run, test and wipe the ones you can sell, and repair or reuse the rest — free. Email hi@techempower.org to set up a pickup schedule.
All of it is made in our own shop — printed, engraved, or, in the case of the bottle and the power bank, rescued outright from something somebody had already written off. The same ROBOT RESCUE drawing turns up on most of it, address and all. Gear earns them too. If money is tight but the closet isn’t, you are still a donor here.
ROBOT RESCUE stickers
The robots-in-a-truck artwork, with techempower.org right on it, in two sizes — small enough for a phone case, big enough for a laptop lid. Put one somewhere people will read it: every sticker is a person finding out this exists.
💵Any gift, any amount.
🔌Any drop-off, however small.
ROBOT RESCUE iron-on
The same artwork as a heat transfer, for a jacket, a tote, or a shop apron — or as a peel-and-stick DTF transfer if you would rather not find the iron. It carries the techempower.org address too.
💵Any gift, any amount.
🔌Any drop-off, however small.
🧢
ROBOT RESCUE cap
The badge on a cap, printed to order and shipped straight to you. Wear it somewhere people ask about it.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
🧲
ROBOT RESCUE magnet
For the fridge, the toolbox, or the side of the server rack. Printed to order and shipped to you.
💵Any gift, any amount.
🔌Any drop-off, however small.
☕
ROBOT RESCUE mug
The badge wrapped around a mug, printed to order and shipped straight to you. Holds coffee. Also holds up.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
🖼️
A custom print
Send us a photo and we will print it for you, in your choice of three sizes. A dog, a grandchild, a truck you used to own — we are not precious about it. Same press as everything else here; we just point it at something of yours instead of our logo.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
The ROBOT RESCUE bottle
A rescued glass bottle, cleaned, re-capped, and wearing the same ROBOT RESCUE artwork. It was on its way to a recycling bin; now it holds water. That is roughly the whole philosophy in one object.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
🧩
A custom 3D print
We run an Ender 3. Tell us the small thing you need — the knob that snapped off the stove, a stand for the phone you just got from us, a bracket nobody sells anymore — and we will print it. Small parts, plain materials, no promises on anything load-bearing.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
🪵
Engraved in wood
We have a laser engraver and a weakness for putting names on things. Tell us the words — a name, a date, a line somebody used to say — and we will burn them into wood for you. Ask what the shop has on hand; it changes with what comes through the door.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
💳
NFC supporter card
Double-sided print under a holographic protective layer, with an NFC tag inside. Tap it to a phone and it opens techempower.org — hand it to someone who says "wait, I might qualify for that" instead of trying to spell the URL at them.
💵A gift of $55 or more.
🔌A box of gear or more — or one laptop, phone, or battery pack.
🔦
Reclaimed-cell power banklimited
A modular USB flashlight and power bank running on an 18650 lithium cell pulled from a donated laptop, tested and reconditioned. Enough charge for a phone, or several hours of light. Each one is built by hand from whatever came through the door, so no two are quite the same.
💵A gift of $55 or more — ask, and we will tell you what is currently built.
🔌Donate a laptop, or any lithium pack we can reclaim cells from.
See what else comes out of the shop at jewelrycycle.com — a personal portfolio of upcycled work by our founder. Nothing there is for sale; donations and perk claims happen here.
