The first time Mordechai Luchins took apart a laptop, he learned that it’s much easier to take one apart than it is to put it back together again. This first foray into the world of technology resulted in what he called a “disaster” for his personal laptop. But soon, he was taking laptops apart for fun, and in college, friends would bring him broken laptops, and he would use the parts of two of them to make a working one. This, it turns out, would be one of the earliest iterations of The Laptop Project, Luchins’s nonprofit that refurbishes laptops and other devices to donate to those who cannot afford them.
When Luchins began doing freelance tech support on top of his IT job, he stumbled upon more unwanted laptops. “I would run into a lot of customers who just had an older laptop sitting on a shelf,” he said. “I’d be like, ‘Hey, do you have any plans for that laptop?’” Often, these customers were happy for him to take the devices as long as he could remove their stored files first. Luchins would put these laptops on a shelf, sometimes ordering new parts for broken devices. “Then someone would tell me, ‘Oh, I need a laptop,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I have this laptop sitting here,’” he said. Soon, he began asking his friends if they knew anyone who had laptops they no longer needed, telling them, “I have this laptop project I sometimes do.”
This project, which he began focusing on in 2008, became The Laptop Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, in 2015, when a friend of his donated the funds to formalize the organization in memory of his niece Sarala Ginzberg, who passed away at a young age. Now, Luchins runs The Laptop Project on top of his day job in restaurant solutions.
That year was also when Luchins started keeping track of how many devices The Laptop Project had donated. Since 2015, he and his volunteers have given out 2,850 of them. Recipients are diverse: single parents, schools, refugees, housebound elderly individuals, those impacted by natural disasters… “We don’t do means testing,” he said. “If someone comes to us, they come to us.” The Laptop Project also donates laptops to organizations such as Sister to Sister, a support and resource network for Jewish divorced women, and Project Ezra, which serves elderly Jews on the Lower East Side. They have also donated technology that gemachs needed for their operations, and have even given devices to non-Jewish nonprofits. Recently, a homeless shelter in Essex County reached out looking for devices to help them start a computer lab.
Luchins is proud of how many devices The Laptop Project has donated each year, but he also wishes the figures were higher. Before 2020, they gave out roughly a couple hundred devices each year. In 2020, that number grew to 411, with the pandemic heightening the need for at-home technology. This year, they have given around 238. “Every now and then I’m like, uch, we’ve given away so few this year,” he said, before correcting himself – “That’s a lot.”
The problem isn’t that those in need aren’t reaching out to The Laptop Project. It’s that the organization simply doesn’t have enough devices to give away. “We have a constant waitlist that never seems to drop below 50 people,” said Luchins.
The organization obtains devices in a number of ways. Sometimes, volunteers who work in freelance IT will come across broken laptops. Other times, individuals and companies will donate laptops they no longer need. And occasionally, there are review units sent from people in PR. Every device that comes in has its hard drive erased, and then it is tested, labeled, and entered into a database to match with someone on the waiting list looking for that kind of device. If the device is broken and needs a part, The Laptop Project takes it from another computer or relies on cash donors to purchase it.
But The Laptop Project gets many more requests from people in need than they do donations. “This is probably the longest our waitlist has ever been,” said Luchins. Volunteers do their best to bring in donations; most people hear about The Laptop Project via word of mouth, according to Luchins, so volunteers help spread the word. He says the number of volunteers “fluctuates,” but what he calls his core group is between 12 and 15 people. Some do things like swapping out laptop batteries, while others who live in different cities in New York and New Jersey pick up the refurbished devices and deliver them. Some devices are sent beyond the tri-state area, so volunteers help box and ship them out. Most of the operation is run out of Luchins’s home, though some of the volunteers have their own workspaces.
“People are amazingly helpful,” said Luchins. But these volunteers can only do so much. “The one real challenge is we’re entirely dependent on donations of used machines, and this year, the main reason we’re as low as we are is those donations are lower,” he said. He added that people usually don’t think about donating their old electronics. “There’s a tremendous amount of e-waste (electronics waste) because everyone needs to have the latest and greatest,” he said. With Black Friday, this is especially prevalent, with people buying new electronics to take advantage of good deals. “Well, then what do they do with their old laptop? Either it sits in a drawer, or I’ve been to places where I’ve seen an almost new laptop in the trash,” he said.
This Thanksgiving, The Laptop Project tried to capitalize on this e-waste. “If you are one of those fortunate people who will be upgrading your computer, tablet, or phone on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, please keep us in mind when it is time to find a home for your used devices,” the organization wrote on Facebook.
For volunteers, seeing perfectly good devices go to waste is difficult. Paul Hurwitz has volunteered on the outreach and delivery side of The Laptop Project for around a decade, a role sparked not only by his longtime friendship with Luchins but also “knowing that there’s so much life left in devices, even after people stop using them.” He added that most people “don’t need the most powerful machines” and that even an older one will still be able to perform the functions the average person needs. “It’s a no-brainer to reuse these devices, right?” Hurwitz posts on social media for occasions like Cyber Monday and the beginning of a new school year, encouraging people to donate devices, and he often picks up and delivers these devices. One time, while in Connecticut on business, he picked up 30 laptops from a company that was replacing theirs.
Luchins, Hurwitz, and other volunteers have seen firsthand the impact these devices make in the lives of those The Laptop Project helps. Hurwitz recalled an individual who was on a ventilator and needed some kind of tablet to be able to write on to communicate with loved ones. Luchins said that after recent storms hit North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, The Laptop Project was able to send out laptops to individuals who had lost everything.
Chaim Saperstein also volunteers for The Laptop Project. The owner of The Front Page, a Jewish magazine in Monsey, Saperstein first found out about The Laptop Project when Luchins sent the magazine an ad to run. Saperstein was so impressed by the organization that he decided to run the ad whenever he had an empty spot to fill in the magazine. “Generally, whenever he runs it, we get contacted,” said Luchins.
Once, Luchins asked Saperstein if he could do a delivery, and when Saperstein began to meet the people the organization was helping, he decided to become a volunteer. The stories of the people The Laptop Project helps have moved him. One time, a woman who had been ill and out of work for a few years needed a laptop to be able to start working again. She offered to pick up the laptop that was being given to her despite the fact that she drove very infrequently because she couldn’t afford insurance. Saperstein brought it to her doorstep on erev Shabbos instead. “It struck me how this person, her need was so dire that she would risk potentially getting arrested in order to get the laptop,” he said.
Another time, a woman said she wasn’t sure if she qualified as someone in need of a laptop because her ex-husband had one, so when her children needed access to one they would spend the day with him. “This is a parent who misses out on a custodial day with a child because she doesn’t have a laptop,” Saperstein said. “This is what we’re here for. And she considered herself one of the more fortunate ones that she actually did have access.”
Luchins doesn’t want the recipients of these devices to feel indebted to him. “One of the things we are very careful with is giving tzedakah in a tznius [modest] way, in a way that never embarrasses anyone or makes anyone feel that they are obligated to do anything,” he said. He often has volunteers from the neighborhoods in which the recipients live deliver the devices to make those receiving them feel as comfortable as possible. “We want to make sure that it’s, ‘You need it, you get it.’ There should never be any busha [embarrassment]. There should never be any discomfort.”
The recipients feel this sensitivity. One woman who now volunteers for The Laptop Project first came in contact with the organization as a recipient. The woman, who asked to be identified by the name Rochel only, said she had recently left an abusive marriage, and her ex-husband had taken all of the technology out of the house. When she asked around to see if there was anywhere she could get a laptop, someone gave her Luchins’s phone number. Luchins not only had a laptop for her, but he also took her out to eat to get to know her and to ask if she would become the organization’s liaison for her neighborhood. This was empowering for her. She recalled a therapist telling her that no matter what, she shouldn’t be a victim in her own life. A few weeks later, when Luchins offered her this volunteer position, she remembered that lesson. “Part of that message came back to me, saying, I don’t want this to be completely for free, but I want to do something to pay it back,” she said. “And this was, I think, my way of paying it back, saying, ‘Hey, how can I help?’ I want to help others in my situation.”
Luchins has since become a friend of Rochel’s, and he has given her and her children more devices since, even though she said her situation has improved. “He’s not saying, ‘Oh, you’re good now, you don’t need it,’” she said. “I’m very grateful for that as well.”
Luchins sees The Laptop Project as his small way to help improve the world. He often thinks of a quote from Rav Ahron Soloveichik: “A Perfect Being created an imperfect world, and charged an imperfect man with the task of perfecting it.” The way he understands this, that means if someone has a gift and sees an opportunity to help people with it, he has a responsibility to do so. Growing up, he was taught the importance of helping the community and making sure everyone was taken care of. “I can never be a millionaire donor. I’ll never endow a yeshiva. I’ll probably never, ever see a sefer with my name on it,” he said. “But people who are writing sefarim are writing them on Laptop Project laptops.” This isn’t a cliché – he once gave a distraction-free E-ink tablet to a yeshiva bochur to use to write chidushei Torah. One of his rebbeim liked the idea so much that all of his students chipped in to buy him one as well.
Luchins wishes he could devote all of his time to The Laptop Project. He wishes they received more donations so they could help more people. He wishes they had more space to store devices and parts. Still, he knows he’s making a difference. “I know there’s people who have a parnassah because they have a laptop from us, or a desktop from us, or a tablet from us. There are kids who were able to go to school during Covid because of equipment from us,” he said, choking up a little. “And I feel a little gayvadik [haught] saying it like that, but I am definitely proud of that – and I’m proud of it for all of our volunteers and donors.”
If you know someone who needs help, if you are able to donate equipment, or just want to know more, reach out to them at info@thelaptopproject.org.