The AV industry refreshes at speed. Many universities upgrade every five years. Corporate spaces rip and replace. Warehouses quietly fill with discontinued stock. And too often, perfectly functional equipment ends up written off.
For Ian Morrish [pictured below], managing director of GivingBack.tech, that reality became impossible to ignore.
“It’s a crime. It’s our industry crime,” he says, recalling a conversation about working kit being removed and discarded. “We all know it happens, we just sort of ignore it.”
GivingBack.tech is his attempt to offer a simple alternative: a structured online platform that connects AV donors directly with charities and community interest companies (CICs), giving equipment a second life without warehousing, refurbishment hubs or costly infrastructure.
A simple mechanic
The idea grew out of Morrish’s work with his other not-for-profit organisation Together for Cinema, a CIC that installs cinema rooms in hospices and centres caring for children with additional
needs. Acting as a conduit between the AV industry and good causes, he found himself placing “another three or four hundred thousand pounds worth of equipment to good causes” outside of the cinema projects.
That work eventually evolved into GivingBack.tech, built on a deliberately lean model: donor meets beneficiary; donor ships the product; no money changes hands beyond postage. “It’s really simple,” Morrish says. “Sometimes the simplest ideas are the very best.”
Real impact
The need is clear. Morrish points to the UK’s 170,000 good causes, around 140,000 charities and 30,000 CICs, noting that “very few of them have a fluid budget for AV equipment.”
He rejects the idea that the initiative will cannibalise sales. “I don’t think we’re taking sales away from the industry. And actually what we are doing is educating an audience that isn’t used to AV kit.”
He has already seen the difference a single device can make. A donated video conferencing unit enabled a child in a Stoke hospice with a rare terminal condition to connect with another family facing the same diagnosis. “You just know you’re making the difference,” he says.
Meanwhile, too much viable kit is still being destroyed. “This kit gets binned, gathers dust, is smashed up; so much of this kit can be used,” he says. As well as giving it a second life, donation avoids technology going into landfill.
As a CIC, GivingBack.tech has formal obligations: to be not-for-profit and to deliver community benefit. Funds from partners (Crestron was the first to sign up as a founding partner) are reinvested into developing the platform.
On the beneficiary side, there is a clear eligibility process. Applicants must register with full charity details, charity number and delivery address, which are verified before approval.
Reception, by Morrish’s account, has been unanimous. “Every single person I’ve spoken with has just said ‘this should have happened years ago.’”
Now comes the harder part: turning goodwill into listings. But with products already live on the site and Morrish targeting 300 to 400 items by the planned spring launch, momentum appears to be building.
Morrish believes the industry appetite is genuine. “There really is a desire to get involved for all the right reasons,” he says. “We’re never going to change the world with this, but we’re going to make a difference, not only sustainability wise, but socially in our community.”
Companies interested in donating surplus equipment, or charities seeking support, can register at GivingBack.tech.
Top image credit: Vinayak Jagtap/Shutterstock.com