Digital Bridge attends AFTRR 2018 National Meeting

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Digital Bridge’s main goal is to refurbish used technology and distribute it at little to no cost to eligible individuals and nonprofits. One hurdle to accomplishing this goal is a lack of awareness among these populations—those eligible to receive the technology that Digital Bridge offers must be aware of how to access it.

That’s why Digital Bridge is a member organization of the Alliance for Technology Refurbishing and Reuse (AFTRR), a growing national alliance of nonprofit technology refurbishers. AFTRR’s mission is to “support the non-profit refurbishing and reuse community to provide low-cost or free technology to those in need.”

Jeff Hanson, Executive Director of Digital Bridge, recently traveled to Pittsburgh, PA, to attend the 2018 AFTRR National Meeting, hosted by Google Pittsburgh. This was AFTRR’s second annual event, and representatives from member organizations traveled from all around the nation to attend. For two days, Jeff and other AFTRR members discussed and learned more about working towards establishing a common national voice, increasing the availability of low-cost and no-cost technology to populations in need, and assisting one another in promoting awareness of their contributions to these populations.

A goal of the annual AFTRR National Meeting is to simply get all AFTRR members in the same room together to share strategies, common goals, and accomplishments.
A goal of the annual AFTRR National Meeting is to simply get all AFTRR members in the same room together to share strategies, common goals, and accomplishments.

“It was great to actually get to see and talk with other AFTRR members face-to-face,” says Jeff. “Everyone was very open to share their ideas. I left much more energized about the future.”

Jeff adds, “It was cool to see how far Digital Bridge has come since last year’s meeting. We didn’t have any full-time employees at that time, and now we have four! And we can mainly attribute that growth to our attendance at the conference last year. The connections I made and the resources I got access to thanks to AFTRR were invaluable to growing Digital Bridge.”

Jeff looks forward to attending the meeting next year to see how much more Digital Bridge has grown and to further discuss strategies for working towards the shared goals of Digital Bridge and AFTRR.