“Donations can be helpful in that they provide for a need that we wouldn’t be able to afford. However, as you suggest, large scale donations such as major network infrastructure require funds and personnel to install and make use of the equipment,¨ said Triton’s Superintendent. “If we lose personnel, we lose opportunities!” Those opportunities are taken from students and staff, as servers and switches that have been donated increase the speed of and the areas connected to WiFi in the buildings. 

Battery Ventures, a global, technology-focused investment firm, is donating to Triton School’s, through the conduit of Dataflow Management. This relationship is symbiotic, as Battery Ventures can use the donations as a tax deductible donation, while Triton deploys these donations to their schools, aiding the student’s learning environment, while costing taxpayers nothing. 

“Many times, due to the changing nature of our business and our evolving IT needs, we end up with good, working network and infrastructure equipment that is fully functional but of no use to us. In the past, Dataflow has helped us manage some of these IT changes…,” said Matt Penney, Vice President of IT at Battery Ventures.

Tom Marsh is a former member of the Triton Technology Committee and of the Triton Superintendent’s Advisory Council. He is President of Dataflow Management, which is an infrastructure consultancy assisting both enterprises and service providers. Dataflow has offices in Massachusetts and Hong Kong and helps clients around the world with projects large and small.

“Given Tom’s involvement as a volunteer on the schools technology committee, he connected us with the appropriate people at Triton Regional School District years ago, and there was interest in some of the gear (network equipment, servers, printers, etc) that we were phasing out, and it just made sense to donate to them. They are now on a very short list of organizations that we reach out to when we have equipment to donate,” Penney said.

Additionally, these donations serve as an environmentally-friendly means of disposal. Rather than having to dispose of this infrastructure in an electronics disposal dumpster, they are being re-purposed.

“Unfortunately, when we have nobody available to donate equipment to, we are usually forced to dispose of it,” Penney said. “There is a Boston technology recycling company that we work with (The Green Network Exchange) that disposed of old equipment in the most environmentally friendly means possible, but going that route doesn’t help anybody because equipment that is still functional is destroyed when there are non profit groups out there that could use it. We strongly prefer to donate when possible.”

“Dataflow is gratified that we can periodically help place some of the hardware with worthy entities that can make use of it,” Marsh said. “Mr. Forget, dating back to his days as Assistant Superintendent, has always been enthusiastic about donations of worthwhile product of value.”

These donations do not only benefit Triton. They can become a symbiotic relationship between the business that is donating and the school.

“Donations made to a government or non-profit organization are write offs for taxes,” said Triton Superintendent Brian Forget. “That means that the person or company making the donation can deduct the total value of the donation from their total wages or earnings. Lowering wages/earnings reduces the amount of taxes owed!”

There are some parameters for what and who can donate to the school.

“The School Committee has set a policy for donations,” said Forget. “The decision to accept a donation is more about the donation than the donor. The only restriction would be in regards to expectations in return for a donation. A donation needs to be completely clear and clean of any expectations other than a letter to be used as a tax write off.”

“Large scale donations are accepted by the Committee, and smaller ones are accepted by me, and I notify the Committee. As a general rule, we take donations that will add value to what we do,” Forget said.

“If is is dollars/funding, we can always use that,” Forget said. “If it is new technology or equipment, we can always use that. In regards to used equipment, we have to first assess whether the equipment is better than what we have, and then also assess what the cost would be to install or replace what we have. It becomes very case specific.”

While Forget aims to encourage and welcome donations of any kind, Matt Laicos, Triton Network and Information Systems Administrator, has another view.

“We typically don’t see many donations that we can utilize. The biggest and most important variable is the age of the device. So if the donation is from a different manufacturer than what we already have in place, it will not be deployed,” Laicos said.

“We simply cannot keep up with the technology requirements of a school district of our size and make Triton technically relevant with the budget that is allocated to technology by the school committee,” Laicos said.

“Donations are always welcome, however the best donation is always cold hard cash.  That way those funds can be spent on devices we actually need and those that will match devices we already have in our schools, rather than having to accommodate devices that may not be a perfect fit simply because they were donated. We do not see many at the middle-high school level.”

Although Laicos states that not many donations are seen at the middle-high school level, Battery Ventures alone has donated several batches of donations.

“We’ve coordinated several rounds of donations to Triton over the past eight years, and there is another tranche of enterprise Ethernet switching product that will be provided in the upcoming weeks,” Marsh said.

These donations will increase the speed of the WiFi connectivity in the Triton buildings, as well as the areas that are connected to WiFi. This leads to a better user experience for students and staff, and ultimately, allows for more efficiency on the part of both parties.

“We are building out new office space in California next month, and as a result, phasing out some network equipment that is still functional, yet over-sized for our new office location,” Penney said. “We are going to donate some of that equipment to Triton.”