Computer Center Online

Free computers. A no-fee lending library. Skills that pay. For trans New Yorkers.

CCO takes retired equipment from NYC businesses, wipes it to federal data-destruction standards, and turns it into free hardware, borrowable gear, and hands-on training — in the Ridgewood–Bushwick–Bed-Stuy corridor.

No gatekeeping

No ID. No legal names. No means test. A chosen name is enough, everywhere at CCO.
No late fees, no collections, no police — our lending library replaces punitive systems, not recreates them.
Records too minimal to endanger anyone. We built our privacy policy so there is nothing meaningful to hand over. Read it here.

Opening this fall

Get a computer — free refurbished machines, granted outright. (Requests open this fall, when distribution begins.)
Borrow gear — laptops and cameras from the lending library.
Train with us — computer repair on one track, video and animation on the other. All free and open-source tools.

Live now

Donate hardware — retiring laptops, desktops, monitors, or cameras? Every drive is sanitized to NIST SP 800-88 standards and you get a certificate proving it.
The video house — CCO’s production crew makes visuals, music videos, and event projections. Community events pay nothing.

Who we are

Four founders, one studio, and a lineage that runs back through this domain’s earlier life as a 3D and game-creation project. About CCO →

Questions? Contact us.

About CCO

Computer Center Online is a trans-led community technology organization in Brooklyn and Queens — studio in the Bushwick/Bed-Stuy area, organizing base in Ridgewood.

What we do

We collect retired equipment from businesses and institutions, sanitize it to federal data-destruction standards, and redistribute it three ways: as no-strings hardware grants to trans people, through a free lending library of computers and cameras, and as training stock in a hands-on repair and refurbishment program.

Alongside the hardware work, we run a media production track — animation, video, live event visuals — taught entirely on free and open-source tools (Blender, Krita, DaVinci Resolve, OBS), so nobody graduates into a subscription they can’t afford. Our training crews produce visuals for queer community events at no cost: drag shows, balls, fundraisers, mutual aid. That removes a real price burden from community organizing while our people build portfolios that lead to paid work.

Why it’s built this way

Nearly everything required to change your circumstances — job applications, benefits, school, telehealth, name-change paperwork — assumes a working computer. The programs that exist to close that gap usually demand ID, legal names, and proof of poverty: exactly the documentation trans people have well-founded reasons to avoid. So we designed those requirements out, on purpose, from day one.

The skills side is the longer fight: repair, refurbishment, and media production are trades people can sell independently. The goal isn’t job placement. It’s economic self-determination.

The house

CCO’s creative side works like a house in the ballroom sense — a named unit with a shared style, internal mentorship, and a lineage: everyone who levels up teaches the level below them. Skills you build here are yours, period.

Lineage

This domain has history. Computer Center began years ago as a 3D and game-creation project — you’ll still find some of that work here, and it lives on inside our media training track. CCO is the same spirit with a bigger job.

Where we are

Four founding members. A written and adopted policy suite — privacy, conduct, data destruction — that binds founders too. Hardware distribution begins fall 2026. Fiscal sponsorship is in progress; equipment donations are open now.

Donate Your Retired Equipment

Every device your company retires is either a liability in a closet or a documented, wiped, redistributed resource. We handle the second outcome — and you get the paperwork to prove it.

What we accept

Laptops, desktops, and workstations — generally within about 7–8 years old, 64-bit multi-core, capable of running a currently-supported, security-patched OS (see note below)
Monitors, keyboards, mice, docking stations, cables, peripherals — any age, these don’t carry a security risk
Phones and tablets (removed from MDM / activation lock beforehand, where possible) — similar age guidance as computers
Servers, networking, and rack gear
Cameras, camcorders, and A/V/recording equipment — older is welcome here. Creative and training value holds up far longer than a computer’s does, and there’s no security-patch clock running on a camera.

Why the age limit on computers, plainly: every laptop we grant or lend needs to run an OS that still gets security updates — for someone doing telehealth, benefits paperwork, or job applications on it, an unpatched old machine is a bigger risk than no machine. It also burns shop hours we’d rather spend on machines that’ll last a full grant or lending cycle. Older computers you send us don’t go to waste — they’re still wiped and often become parts or training stock for the repair program — they just don’t go out the door as someone’s main computer.

Not sure something qualifies? Send a list — we’ll tell you plainly what’s useful and point you elsewhere for anything we can’t take.

What happens to your donation

Intake and asset-tagging — every device logged on arrival, date and source recorded.
Data sanitization — every storage device is wiped or physically destroyed to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard before anything else happens. Devices are never powered on for content review. Full policy here.
Certificate of Data Destruction issued to you, listing method and date per device — the document your compliance team wants on file.
Redistribution — sanitized equipment becomes a free hardware grant, joins the public lending library, or becomes training stock in our repair program.

Why donate here instead of an ITAD vendor

The same standards-aligned data destruction and certificate — plus your equipment gets a genuine second life as someone’s first computer, a lending-library laptop, or a hands-on repair lesson, instead of a line in a recycling report. A named, local cause your team can point to.

Tax deductibility — the honest answer

CCO’s fiscal sponsorship is in progress. Donations are not yet tax-deductible. When sponsorship is finalized, they will be, with standard receipts — ask for current status when you reach out, and we’ll give you a straight answer.

How to donate

Contact

Email: [EMAIL — fill in before publishing]

Prefer Signal or another channel? Say so in your first email and we’ll move there.

For equipment donors

Include a rough list of what you’re retiring and where it is. We’ll respond with what’s useful, logistics, and certificate details.

For community

Distribution, lending, and training open this fall. If you want to be told the moment they do, send a note — a chosen name and any way to reach you is all we need, per our privacy policy.

Where we are

Studio in the Bushwick/Bed-Stuy area; organizing base in Ridgewood. We don’t publish the street address — we share it when you reach out. If you know why, you know why.

Recipient Privacy Policy

What we ask, what we keep, and what we’ll never do with it. Plain language, on purpose.

Our commitment

You don’t need to prove who you are to get help here. We don’t ask for legal names, ID, or documentation of gender identity, transition status, or anything else about you. A chosen name is always enough.

What we ask, and what we don’t

We ask for: a way to reach you, if you want a dead-on-arrival swap or repair follow-up — and only if you want one.
We never ask for: legal name, ID, proof of income, proof of trans or LGBTQ status, immigration status, or any government documentation, ever, for any reason.
We sometimes ask, for grant reporting only: in general terms, and only if you choose to answer — age range, what you’ll use the device for, how you heard about us. Every question is skippable, and skipping changes nothing about what you receive.

What we collect and why

Recordkeeping exists for two reasons only: so we can honor a repair or exchange promise, and so we can tell funders in aggregate, anonymous terms how many people we’ve reached — never who, specifically. Individual answers are never shared outside CCO and are combined into totals before they leave our internal records at all.

What we never do

Sell, rent, or trade any information about recipients, to anyone, for any reason.
Share a list of recipients or their identities with any outside organization, including funders — funders receive totals, not names.
Require documentation of gender identity, transition status, or any protected characteristic as a condition of service.
Disclose anyone’s presence in our programs, or anything about them, to anyone outside CCO who asks informally — including friends, family, employers, or press.
Keep a record tied to your legal identity unless you volunteer it yourself.

How we protect what we do keep

Records are accessible only to authorized CCO members, stored on access-controlled systems, never printed and left out.
We keep the minimum needed: contact info for active follow-ups is deleted once the follow-up window closes; aggregate tallies are kept without any name or contact info attached from the start.
We do not use tracking, analytics, or monitoring software on any device we distribute or lend.

If we’re legally compelled

If CCO is served with a subpoena or court order, we will resist any request broader than what the law actually requires, and — where the law allows us to — we will try to let the person know. We can’t promise a specific outcome in every legal situation, because that depends on the law, not on our intentions. What we can promise is that we keep so little information in the first place that there is very rarely anything meaningful to hand over.

Your rights, any time

Ask what we have on file about you, in plain terms.
Ask us to delete your contact record — we will, immediately, unless we’re mid-way through a repair or exchange you’ve asked for.
Decline to answer any optional question, before, during, or after receiving a device — nothing is retroactively required.

Questions or a concern about how your information was handled? Ask any CCO member directly — you don’t need to file anything formal.

Space Code of Conduct

Applies to everyone in the space, at our events, and in our online rooms — members, volunteers, clients, and guests alike.

The point

CCO exists so trans people and our community can learn skills, get hardware, and make work in a space where nobody has to armor up first. This document is how we keep it that way. It applies to everyone equally — being senior, talented, or essential exempts no one.

Expected

Use people’s stated names and pronouns. Honest mistakes happen — correct yourself briefly and move on. Repeating the mistake after correction stops being a mistake.
Ask before touching anyone or their in-progress work, and before photographing anyone — this space includes people with real safety reasons not to appear in photos. Group shots require asking the group.
Teach without condescension; learn without shame. “I don’t know” is a normal sentence here, from trainees and seniors alike.
Respect people’s attention — headphones on means do not disturb; someone mid-solder is not available for conversation.
Leave shared tools and stations ready for the next person.

Not tolerated

Harassment of any kind: slurs, deliberate misgendering or deadnaming, unwelcome sexual attention, intimidation, stalking, following someone out, or unwanted contact after being asked to stop.
Outing anyone — disclosing someone’s trans status, sexuality, immigration status, HIV status, or presence at CCO without their explicit permission. This includes photos with identifiable people posted without consent.
Touching people or personal projects without consent.
Weapons in the space. Being visibly intoxicated to the point of being unsafe around tools.
Recruiting, proselytizing, or treating the space as a market for MLMs, landlording, or anyone’s salvation.

When something happens

If you’re comfortable, a direct “please stop” often resolves it — but you are never required to confront anyone yourself.
Bring it to any keyholder or supervising member, in the moment or later, verbally or in writing. Anonymous notes count. You choose how much detail to give and what outcome you want where possible.
The responding member’s first job is the affected person’s immediate comfort and safety — including asking someone to leave for the day while things get sorted.
Outcomes scale with the situation: a conversation, a warning, changed access, suspension, or permanent removal. Deliberate harassment, outing, or violence skips the ladder.
Whoever raises a concern hears back about the outcome. Reports are handled by the fewest people necessary, and retaliation against anyone for reporting is itself a removable offense.

On police

Consistent with our lending and community policies: we do not involve police over property, payment, or conduct disputes — those are handled by the process above. Calling emergency services is reserved for situations of imminent physical danger or medical emergency, and where a call must happen, whoever is present should do their best to inform the people in the space.

Kids and guests

Guests are welcome and are the responsibility of whoever brought them, including their conduct under this code. Minors in the shop area need a supervising adult, and tool use by minors follows the training sign-off rules — no exceptions for anyone’s kid.

This code is a living document. Members can propose changes at any meeting. Questions about a gray area? Ask — asking is always the right call.

Data Destruction Policy

Aligned to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 — this is the page for donors, IT departments, and compliance teams.

Purpose

Every storage device that enters CCO is treated as containing sensitive data until sanitized. This policy defines how data is destroyed, who may do it, how it is recorded, and what we certify to donors.

Scope

All donated, purchased, loaned-and-returned, and recycled equipment containing storage: laptops, desktops, servers, phones, tablets, cameras and memory cards, USB drives, and drives arriving loose. Lending-library devices are sanitized after every return, before the next loan.

Chain of custody

Every device is asset-tagged and logged at intake: date, source, type, serial number, and storage devices present.
Unsanitized devices are stored in a designated locked area, physically separated from sanitized stock, and are never powered on to “see what’s on them.” Browsing donor data is a removable offense.
Only trained, authorized members perform sanitization. Trainees sanitize only under direct supervision until signed off.
Each sanitization is logged: asset tag, drive serial, method, tool and version, operator, date, and verification result. Logs are retained for three years.

Sanitization methods

The method follows the media type. “It was formatted” is not sanitization and is never sufficient.

Hard drives (HDD): ATA Secure Erase (Purge), or a minimum single-pass full overwrite with verification (Clear). Drives leaving CCO in public-bound equipment receive Purge.
SSD / NVMe: built-in Secure Erase / Format NVM with crypto-erase where supported (Purge). Multi-pass overwriting is ineffective on flash and is not used as a primary method.
Phones / tablets: full-device encryption followed by factory reset, or manufacturer secure-reset; we verify no activation lock, MDM enrollment, or account lock remains. Locked devices that cannot be released are recycled as parts, never redistributed.
Memory cards / USB: full overwrite or secure format; cheap flash media with bad sectors is destroyed rather than reused.
Failed or unresponsive drives: physically destroyed — platters drilled or shredded, flash chips destroyed — and logged as Destroy. When in doubt, destroy.

Verification

After sanitization, the operator verifies per the tool’s verification pass, and a second authorized member spot-checks a random sample of at least one in ten drives per batch by attempting data-recovery reads. A failed verification returns the drive to the unsanitized queue or to physical destruction.

Certificate of Data Destruction

Corporate donors receive, by default, a certificate listing: donor name, intake date, each device and drive serial, method applied per drive (Clear / Purge / Destroy per NIST SP 800-88), sanitization date, operator, and an authorized signature.

What we ask of donors

Remove or unenroll devices from MDM, Active Directory, and activation locks before donation — locked devices can only be recycled.
We do not need, and do not want, your data. Devices are never powered on for content review; drives go straight from intake to the sanitization queue.

Lending library devices

Returned loaners are sanitized before re-shelving, without content review. Borrowers are warned in the loan agreement that data on returned devices is unrecoverable; we do not make exceptions, because an exception process would require us to read borrower data.

Donate hardware →