Devices, Donation and the Digital Divide: Notes from a Recent Donate IT Session
Tech4Good South West recently welcomed Simon Barfoot, Founder and Head Trustee of Donate IT, to demystify device donation and share the model behind one of the South West's most quietly impactful charities. Here's what we heard.
The problem in plain terms
Simon opened with a framing that set the tone for the whole session. Digital exclusion, he said, is one of the biggest barriers people face today - and it's often invisible. On the ground, Donate IT sees families sharing a single device, households with nothing at all, and people making do with broken or outdated kit. Meanwhile businesses and households are sitting on surplus equipment, or sending it to recycling before its useful life is actually over.
The numbers behind this are sobering. The Digital Poverty Alliance estimates that 15% of adults and 20% of children experience digital poverty every day. "In a Western society, that is just shocking," Simon said, "when you consider the amount of equipment that is going through the hands of those that were the first owners." In rural parts of the South West, where you can't just walk to a digital cafe or a library, it's even harder.
For Simon, this is fundamentally a coordination gap, not a broken system. "The digital exclusion problem is not a broken system. It's literally just one that isn't joined up yet."
Three pillars, one gateway
Simon described digital inclusion as resting on three essential pillars: connectivity (Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G), a service or support that meets the person's need, and a device. "You have to have all three of these. Having two or one of them is useless. You cannot apply for a job, access healthcare, or do online learning without a device. The device is the gateway."
How Donate IT works
Formed in May 2021, Donate IT is a volunteer-led, self-funding CIO based in Wincanton, Somerset. Equipment comes in through three routes: around 60 drop-off points across the region, tech amnesty events run in partnership with town councils, universities, football clubs and community organisations, and donations from larger corporates and councils - which Simon described as the best flow of equipment, typically better quality, better maintained, and often refreshed before the end of their genuine useful life.
Donate IT distributes to schools, charities, NHS departments, job centres, Citizens Advice bureaus, homeless charities, elderly and isolated groups, crisis centres and more. They've now passed 3,000 devices donated - and Natalie Luckham from Wiltshire and Bath Digital Drives, who joined the session, has reached 4,500 through a parallel model. Between them, around 7,500 people across the region have been helped.
And it's not just laptops. Phones, tablets, cameras, projectors, Bluetooth speakers - if it has a second life, Donate IT will try to find one for it.
The human factor
Some of the most powerful moments in the session were the individual stories. A Syrian girl in Year 7, new to the country and still learning English, had been using her school lunch break to do homework in the library because she had no device at home. A donated laptop moved the homework home - and gave her her lunchtimes back to make friends. A child with Type 1 diabetes whose family couldn't afford the connectivity needed to link her NHS-fitted glucose monitor to her clinical team. A man called Tony, moved into a care home after a fall, who just wanted to watch Midsomer Murders - and got a tablet with an Amazon account so he could.
"Every device you hear about is a life change. It's not just a piece of kit."
Simon also made a point that often gets missed: for a displaced person arriving with trauma and trust issues, being told "here's a phone and a laptop, no conditions, nothing to sign, they're yours" changes the relationship with the support worker entirely. Devices can open doors - and make people more able to engage with the help already available to them.
The data question
One of the most common blockers to corporate device donation is data security - and Simon addressed it directly. Through its partnership with Blackmore UK, which holds ADISA 8.0 certification (the current UK standard, approved by the UKSA and ICO), Donate IT can guarantee a fully auditable, reverse-provable chain of data destruction. "Anyone can run a wipe tool, but very few can prove it was done properly."
With ICO fines now reaching £17.5m or 4% of turnover, and the regulator actively using its powers, Simon's message was clear: "Data wiping isn't a technical detail - it's a business risk decision." Done properly, it removes the barrier to donation entirely.
The circular economy angle
Reuse is always the preference - but what can't be reused still has value. Around 70% of Donate IT's income comes from the responsible recycling of unusable kit, which is what makes the self-funding model work. Donate IT works with the Royal Mint's Reformation Metals operation on low-energy metal recovery - gold, copper, and lithium that's already in its elemental form in old devices and far less energy-intensive to recover than mining it from scratch.
The uncomfortable flip side: an estimated 99% of UK circuit boards currently leave Britain to be smelted in Europe or Asia, generating thousands of waste miles and significant carbon emissions. Every device reused locally is a small step against that.
The vision
Simon closed with a clear picture of where he wants to get to: a VCSE sector properly joined up so charities can access devices quickly and consistently; reuse as the default; and a South West where no one is held back by the lack of a device and no usable tech goes to waste. "The connections already exist. The equipment already exists. The solution providers already exist."
Donate IT is now working with three universities - Bournemouth on the model and media side, Exeter on the circular economy, and Bristol on micro-campus skills projects - and the momentum is clearly building.
Get involved
If your organisation has surplus IT equipment, or you work with people who need a device, visit donateit.co.uk. Slides from the session are available - get in touch and we'll share them.
Donate IT is a member of Tech4Good South West.
