Relay: Corporate Laptop Partners for Free Geek Toronto

Relay turns Toronto offices into recurring laptop donors for Free Geek Toronto, growing its main revenue with verified data wiping and a QR passport for every device.

Comment

Inspiration

Free Geek Toronto turns old tech into affordable computers and jobs, and 77% of its revenue comes from device sales. But the case says it plainly: "the most valuable and most uniform devices rarely reach organizations like FGT." Businesses trade their laptops in, resell them, or leave them in a storage closet. FGT has zero corporate partners, even though it says itself that "a consistent stream of uniform laptop donations would streamline the refurbishment process." We wanted to fix that one link.

The problem

FGT's supply of uniform, high-value laptops is shrinking, and it has no corporate partners to replace it.

  • The chain: no corporate partners → no bulk, identical laptops → slower, mixed refurbishing → fewer laptops to sell.
  • Root cause: businesses have no reason to choose FGT. There's no proof of data wiping, no visible impact, no recognition, so trade-ins win.
  • Objective: grow revenue without raising prices or drifting from the mission (the case's central tension).

Why this problem, not the others

Following Hint 1, we scored every challenge in the case on three questions: does it move revenue or efficiency, does it serve the mission, and can we measure it? Unwanted household donations, customer misconceptions, the Community Hub and volunteer retention all matter, but each scored lower. Corporate laptop partners won on all three. They fix the supply behind 77% of revenue and serve two of FGT's three goals (revenue; brand and partnerships), plus UN SDGs 8, 10 and 12.

Isn't FGT short on volunteers, not laptops? It's both, and uniform batches help with both: the same volunteer hours finish more laptops.

Who it's for

Priya, office manager at a 60-person Toronto firm, retiring 20 laptops that are 4–5 years old. She needs them gone safely and quickly, worries about data breaches, and decides on data security first, then ease, then trade-in value.

Why would she donate instead of trading in? Trade-in is credit toward buying new, and it shrinks as laptops age. FGT offers free, documented data wiping and visible proof of who her laptops helped: two things a trade-in can't give her.

What Relay does

Relay is one pipeline from an office desk to a new owner:

  1. A business submits a batch. A live Batch Value Score rewards identical, recent laptops (the ones FGT refurbishes fastest), and a capacity calendar only offers weeks the bench can handle.
  2. Staff take it in. One step logs every laptop and gives each one a passport code and QR label.
  3. Volunteers refurbish. A phone-friendly checklist logs each step. The volunteer records the report ID from FGT's existing wipe software.
  4. Staff verify every wipe and issue a certificate. The PDF documents FGT's process and has a public verification QR code.
  5. Every laptop gets a Device Passport. Scanning its QR code tells its story: who donated it, who rebuilt it, when its data was wiped, and where the money goes. Priya's dashboard shows who her laptops helped and links to each passport.

Why an app, not email and spreadsheets? Spreadsheets can't cap intake to real bench capacity, keep a permanent wipe record, or put a passport on every laptop, and admin grows with every new partner.

Also included (not the core pitch): a Pay-It-Forward fund, a "Can I donate this?" household checker, volunteer skill badges, and optional paid partner tiers.

Try it out

Live app: freegeek-relay.vercel.app Code: github.com/K4RM-P/Relay

Open freegeek-relay.vercel.app/demo and sign in with one click as Partner (Priya), Staff or Volunteer. All data is fictional, so click anything.

A 3-minute tour (follow one batch end to end):

  1. Partner: start a new batch and watch the Batch Value Score update as you type. Pick a drop-off week on the capacity calendar; full weeks are locked.
  2. Staff: approve the batch, then receive all its laptops in one step. Each gets its own passport code and QR label.
  3. Volunteer: claim a laptop, work through the refurbish checklist, and enter the wipe report ID.
  4. Staff: verify the wipes (each report ID is cross-checked), then issue the partner's data-wiping certificate, a PDF with a verifiable QR code.
  5. Anyone, no login: open a laptop's Device Passport to see who donated it, who rebuilt it, when its data was wiped, and where the money goes.
  6. Partner: back on the dashboard, see who your laptops helped.

Prefer to watch? The full walkthrough is in our video.

How we built it

  • Stack: Next.js (App Router) and TypeScript, Tailwind and shadcn/ui, with our own clay-and-liquid design system built on Motion.
  • Backend: Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Storage), hosted on Vercel.
  • Security: database row-level security, so each role sees only its own data; an append-only history for every laptop; only staff can verify a wipe; serial numbers and wipe references never appear on public pages.
  • Quality: business rules (batch score, capacity, impact, device status machine) live in tested pure modules. Vitest unit tests and Playwright end-to-end tests cover the full flow.
  • Other tools: PDF certificates with @react-pdf/renderer, QR codes, and share images with next/og.
  • AI use (disclosed): we used Claude (Anthropic) and Claude Code for brainstorming, planning documents, writing code, and design and deck feedback. We directed, reviewed and tested all of it.

Business case

More laptops, not higher prices. A uniform partner laptop takes about 60 bench minutes, against about 120 for a mixed donation, and sells at the same price (about $180). Bench time is our key assumption, and the pilot measures it first.

Year-one scenario Partners Laptops Gross sales
Conservative 5 125 ~$18K
Base 10 250 ~$36K (~15% on top of ~$240K revenue)
Ambitious 20 500 ~$72K

The base case needs about 250 volunteer hours a year (about 5 a week). Even if every one of those hours comes from today's bench, they now finish about twice as many laptops, so FGT still nets about $18K more. These are estimates (25 laptops per partner, 80% sellable) to confirm with FGT. The free Community tier is the program; paid tiers are optional (~$3K at most) and never buy priority.

Implementation: cost and timeline

Cost: about $50 upfront (domain and QR label sheets) and about CAD $80 a month to run on paid Vercel and Supabase plans. Staff time is about 4 hours of setup, then 1–2 hours a week.

When Milestone
Jan 2027 Deploy Relay, train staff (~4 h)
Feb–Mar 2027 Recruit 3 pilot partners
Jun 2027 Measure real bench time per laptop; tune capacity
Dec 31, 2027 10 partners, 250 partner laptops
2028–2029 Scale with FGT's 2027–2029 strategy

SMART goal: 10 Reuse Partners and 250 partner laptops by December 31, 2027, with 3 pilot partners by March 31, 2027, tracked automatically in Relay.

Success metrics: active partners, partner laptops a year, bench time per partner laptop vs. a mixed donation, gross sales from partner laptops, partners who donate a second batch, and the share of intake arriving in uniform batches.

Risks and mitigations:

  • Trade-ins pay cash. We target older fleets and run a 3-partner pilot first.
  • The volunteer bench overloads. The capacity calendar locks full weeks.
  • A wipe fails or is disputed. Staff cross-check every report ID, and certificates state FGT's real process.
  • Maintenance. We support Relay through the pilot, then hand it to a volunteer developer, with an admin guide for staff.

Challenges we faced

  • Narrowing the scope. Our first design tried to solve five problems at once. Hint 1 pushed us to cut it down to one change and make everything else serve it.
  • Making a full build easy to judge. We simplified every screen until a first-time visitor could tell, within 5 seconds, what it is and what to do next.
  • Being honest about numbers. Every revenue figure rests on assumptions, so we labelled each one and built the pilot around measuring the most important (bench time).
  • Data-wipe proof without overclaiming. Certificates document FGT's existing process rather than claiming a standard FGT hasn't confirmed.

What we learned

A strong solution starts with a narrow, evidenced problem. A business case is more convincing when it is honest about its assumptions. And a great product makes its value obvious at a glance.

What's next

  • Run the 3-partner pilot.
  • Let staff upload the wipe software's report file to each laptop.
  • Adopt a recognized data-sanitization standard with FGT.
  • Confirm prices and bench times with FGT.

Team

Karm Patel: solution, app and demo Debashish Panchal: business case and strategy

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history