Local Government: Tuolumne County & Local Nonprofit Share Resources

by Chris Kinsella

It would have been so easy to just throw them away. It happens every day throughout the state. Organizations cleanout files, materials become obsolete, the office moves. What happened in Tuolumne County recently could have been a typical cleansing. The Department of Social Services and Welfare purged its files and ended up with 20,000 unneeded file fasteners. Employees could have just tossed them in the trash. Instead, they contacted Mark Rappaport, the county’s senior solid waste technician. Mark placed a "materials available" ad online with CalMAX.

It was not long before he received an e-mail from Solutions, a nonprofit schools reuse program. Mark was also able to provide Solutions with 1,000 file folders that had come from the Tuolumne County district attorney’s office.

Tuolumne County may not often purge tens of thousands of files, but the county will undoubtedly have materials needing new homes generated under similar circumstances in the future, and now a connection has been established between Tuolumne County and Solutions which will last a lifetime. Most importantly, it is connections like these that provide a win-win solution for local government and schools.

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Last updated: August 01, 2008