Printers are the hardest piece of home technology to give away, because the machine is worth less than the cartridges it takes and every charity that has accepted a few knows it. A working, current printer with an available cartridge still has real destinations. An old one has a free recycling route and should take it. This page separates the two so you do not waste a trip.
The most direct use. Public schools, after-school programs, community libraries, churches, and small nonprofits run on tight equipment budgets and will take a working printer, especially a laser printer whose toner is still sold. Ask the office manager or technology coordinator rather than the front desk, and lead with the model number and whether cartridges are still available, because that is the question that decides it. A printer delivered with a spare cartridge is a far easier yes than one without.
The National Cristina Foundation, whose work now runs through Digitunity, matches donated technology with pre-qualified nonprofits, schools, and agencies serving students, veterans, people with disabilities, and older adults. Donors use its locator to pick a recipient organization in their own area, and the service is free to donors and recipients alike. Its placements cover computers, monitors, printers, and peripherals. This is the route when you have a good machine and no local contact.
Organizations that set people up in new lives need printers for the paperwork that dominates those first months: job applications, benefit forms, school enrollment, immigration documents. Resettlement offices, workforce centers, and reentry programs take working printers and often lack them. A phone call is the whole process; none of these publishes a donation door for equipment.
Goodwill accepts electronics at most locations and will take a printer, though many stores put printers straight into the recycling stream rather than the sales floor, because they sell poorly and are bulky. Habitat ReStore accepts electronics under about five years old at many locations. Neither is a bad outcome, and neither is placement with someone who needs a printer. Ask at the donation door whether the store sells printers before assuming yours will be resold.
For a printer that is old, out of cartridge support, or not working, recycling is the right answer and it is free. Goodwill's partnership with Dell Reconnect accepts used computer equipment of any brand for free recycling at participating locations across most of the country; check the Reconnect locator for a store near you. Staples and Office Depot run printer and electronics recycling programs, and e-Stewards certified recyclers refurbish what they can and handle the rest responsibly. A printer is not household trash: it contains circuit boards, and inkjet models contain residual ink.
Last updated September 2026. Errors: [email protected]
Manufacturers sell printers close to cost and make the money on consumables, which means a used printer's value to a recipient is mostly a question about cartridges. A machine whose cartridges cost eighty dollars a set is not a gift to a nonprofit with no budget; a machine whose toner costs twenty and lasts a year is. Donors think in terms of what the printer cost them, and recipients think in terms of what it will cost them, and the gap explains nearly every refused printer.
Printers rarely leave alone. Computers and monitors have better destinations and higher demand, covered in where to donate computers and electronics; phones and tablets have dedicated programs in where to donate old cell phones. Office supplies and paper go to school and teacher programs, in where to donate craft supplies.