We cannot give free laptops.We need the hardware you no longer use.
Every Install Party runs on donated machines. The laptop someone walks out with was a laptop someone else stopped using. What Big Tech calls end-of-life, we call a first computer. Give hardware if you have it. Give cash if you don't. Both extend the loop.
Not a charity model.A closed loop.
One you were going to retire. One the corporation already wrote off.
Free room. Free instruction. Free machine for anyone who shows up without one.
for the first time. They follow the Roadmap. They learn the terminal. They stop renting their data.
They find their city. They run their own Exodus. They put out the call for hardware.
The loop restarts. No central org required. The Vanguard in the city is TFM in that city.
One donated laptop can travel through all four levels of the Roadmap before it retires. That is the return on a machine you were going to throw away.
The machine you are done with is someone's first one.
A ThinkPad from 2015 runs Linux beautifully. The corporation that retired it never knew that. It was going to a landfill. Instead it goes to a person who has never owned a machine that was actually theirs.
Giving it to TFM is a vote against three things at once: planned obsolescence, surveillance capitalism, and the idea that ordinary people cannot own their tools.
Hardware fills the room. Cash makes the room possible.
Money funds the USB drives loaded with Linux installers, the printed Roadmap cards handed out at every event, the room rental when a church cannot host for free, and the shipping when hardware needs to move between cities. It does not replace hardware. It makes hardware matter.
A bootable drive.Every Install Party needs USB sticks loaded with Linux installers. This is one of them. It goes in someone's hand at the door.
Give $25One event's materials.Roadmap cards, drives, printed handouts. Everything handed to every person who walks in the door.
Give $100A full event in a new city.Room, materials, and logistics for a Vanguard running their first Exodus from scratch. This is how TFM reaches a city it has never touched.
Give $500No subscriptions. No recurring charges. Give once. Give what you have. TFM is not funded by any platform it teaches people to leave.
What your money is not doing.
Give what you have.Either one reaches someone.
The machine you donate is the reason someone shows up. The cash you give is the drive in their hand when they leave. Both matter. We will not tell you which one is worth more. We already told you hardware is first.