Donations to a college & Vo-Tech......

Date 09-26-2007 02:02

Hey guys/gals,
I wanted to share a very fruitful outcome regarding my initiation to donate our company's usable scrap material to the local college here in my area of SW Pa.. Mr. Richard Sharp, our company owner, was very gracious and quite pleased to donate our scrap material to an educational welding program. I called the local college to inquire the name of the instructor for the college welding program. After 3 days & 3 tries without a response, I called my school district to get info on their welding program. The local school referred me to the Vo-Tech school and after one call, I spoke to the Ass't. director and offered our scrap material to the welding program there. He was surprised, very receptive, and gratefully accepted my offer. That evening of the 3rd day, the instructor at the college, Mr. Don Howard, called me and said he just received my message. I told him since I didn't get a response from any of the college upper echelon or an indication they were interested, I made contact with the local school's Vo-Tech and they gladly accepted my offer. Don was very understanding and indicated he would also like to obtain some of our material. I told him the scrap guy was taking a half-ton each month and I would rather donate the very usable material to a welding program. Since I already gave commitment to the Vo-Tech, would he be satisfied with a load every other month so I can give to both institutions? He was quite pleased for any material. The Vo-Tech couldn't take any material till the first of Oct., so I had a load presently available I could deliver on Sat., the 22nd. We met, his students unloaded, and Don & I had a very pleasant conversation. I told him I would love to give a couple hours seminar to his students to demonstrate welding techniques using jigs & fixtures and some production design implementation. He was enthused and asked me if I would consider teaching a class on production design/welding jigs & fixtures in a production shop environment. I indicated I did not have teaching credentials or a degree in education, and he said that 40+ years of experience goes a long way to getting a teaching cert. for a class such as this and would also enhance the welding program there. Now I can only hope the college upper echelon would find favor with it. I have so much knowledge to give and no takers to date.....I can only maintain optimism.......Denny

By aevald

Date 09-26-2007 02:18

Hello Denny, I don't have time to respond right now, I will probably get on later and give a rundown on some things to suggest and also to commend you on your willingness to help out. Regards, Allan

By aevald

Date 09-26-2007 05:14

Hello again Denny, have a little more time now so I'll try to compose a reply to your post. Budgets for vo-techs, high school metals programs, and community college welding programs to name a few are heavily strapped to provide enough materials and monetary support to sustain their programs. In the state where I am located many of the programs have to purchase "all" of the materials that their students practice their welds on. If you have priced steel plate, sheet, pipe, tube, etc. lately, you can figure out real fast that a large share of a budget can be spent on this. Fortunately for my program there are many willing donors from the local industry that have stepped up to provide this type of support. Many of them do so without any expectation for return in any form, yet they are likely the recipients of skilled workers as a result of our training.
   One item that you and others may not be aware of has to do with these types of donations. Our school has a non-profit foundation that is charged with finding ways to assist the college in any number of ways, from providing assistance for students and programs, to any number of other functions related to the business of the college. Scholarships, funding matches on equipment, grants for upgrading programs, etc. are all items that the foundation helps with. The foundation also helps us to provide the necessary documentation and paperwork to allow industry donors to take tax deductable write-offs on materials that they donate, equipment that they donate, supplies, etc. In the case of scrap, the companies can write-off full value for the materials, not just the actual scrap value. So if they donated 6000 lbs. of plate that was originally purchased at $.50/lb. they can write it off for that value. I am certainly not an expert at how this works, but I can say that this is an option that many companies could take advantage of if they elected to. It amounts to a win/win situation for the educational institutions and the industries involved.
   So Denny, it's awesome that you have been able to get the ball rolling on this sort of thing and provide a very valuable resource for these folks.
   Now to the other item that you mentioned. Vocational education is somewhat different from many other types of educational systems, at least where I'm at. If you're trying to teach classes at a high school you may run into issues where they may require some sort of educational bachelors degree, on the other hand many of the vo-techs, community colleges, skills centers, and such may only require a certain amount of verifiable work in the field of training that you would be teaching. In your case, I believe 40 years speaks volumes to this sort of thing and would be welcome by anyone. I have followed enough of your posts to know how valuable you could be as a mentor and teacher for those who have an interest in pursuing the trades. I hope you pursue this and are allowed to proceed.
   I believe most of us who work in the educational system are always looking for alternative ways to get the message across in ways that will entice individuals to consider welding and it's associated branches as a lifetime career. If you are allowed to proceed with this class offering that you discussed in your post it will be a great service in the preparation process for the upstarts that you come into contact with.
   One final suggestion here, if you do get turned down on your offer by the upper college echelon consider this: possibly the college or vo-tech has a discounted class fee schedule for individuals of retirement age, meaning that you could take classes for next to nothing. If that is the case you could possibly take classes and have access to some equipment that you don't have at home and at the same time you could do some of your projects in class and have an impact on the individuals in that class by showing them the types of things that you would have if you actually had taught a class. Just a thought Denny. My classes are blessed with an individual who does something along these lines, in his case he is an artist of metal and other mediums and plys his trade in many of our classes. Please keep us posted on how this is going and if you feel the need to bounce ideas off of someone, please post them on the forum. Best regards, Allan

By aevald

Date 09-28-2007 06:44

Hello everyone, I wanted to clear a little something up here. Through the alertness of another fine member of the forum I was persuaded to dig a little deeper in regard to statements that I had made in my post to Denny and everyone else about scrap donations and how they can be used for write-off purposes. After speaking with crazydog and also talking with the folks in my own colleges foundation office this is what I was able to determine: when donations of scrap materials or any other type of donation occur where the donating entity would like to receive a tax write-off, the college or receiver of this donation will likely provide a letter or some other sort of documentation describing the nature of the donation in the way of a detailed physical description. It is then up to the donor, at their discression, to assign a monetary value to this item. Likely, when a donation of scrap materials occurs, the materials should be valued according to the current scrap price that the company would normally sell this back to a scrapper for. The benefit to a company for a donation of this sort, in this scenario, would be the ability to write off this amount and also not have to determine how to pay additional taxes from the sale of this scrap if they would have sold it themselves and then shown the sale of the scrap as a gain for the company. One other twist here would be a case where the company might donate brand new material, in this case they should be able to write off the donation for replacement cost of the materials, the reason for the difference with this scenario has to do with the costing of materials and how they are charged out. Scrap has likely been charged out on a particular job, so a break in taxes has already been realized by subtracting material costs from the moneys generated by the job. New materials have not been charged out yet and thus by valuing them fully the company isn't double dipping on the tax break. I hopefully have put this information out correctly now, in any case companies who donate should utilize their accounting staff or tax consultants to make the correct calls when looking to utilize the tax breaks. Sorry for the misinformation. Best regards, Allan

By crazydog (**)

Date 10-01-2007 22:16

Very well said!! It is always better to let the doner put their own value on the donations

By Lawrence (*****)

Date 09-26-2007 11:38

Well done Denny!

That instructor is wise to try to scoop you up.

I hope all the doors open for you here.

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 09-27-2007 21:55

Hi Allen, Larry, Denny!

As a person with intimate knowledge of this recent journey that our friend Denny has experienced, I can say without any hesitation, that if Don Howard, who happens to be the AWS District Director around our area, (South Western PA) suggests to the upper echelon that Denny is more than qualified by his tremendous amount of experience... The Powers that be, will definitely permit, even welcome Denny's contributions!!!

In fact, I have personal involvement in Denny's initial response from this Community College as I used to teach there until most recently... When he told me what happened to him initially, I made some phone calls because, I was quite frankly MAD as well you know what I mean!!!

I also made sure to emphasize to the powers that be @WCCC that they would be foolish to decline the offer of assistance from Denny so, I believe there's no doubt that they'll be very happy to accept his donations, and will offer him a part time teaching spot whereby he'll be more likely to be working with Don in order to get his presentation & demonstration skills and what not, so that Denny can have his stuff together come class start for that course.

Even though I do not work there any longer, I did not burn any bridges either when I left for another position closer to my residence (They're 45 minutes away from me in Westmoreland County while I live 5 minutes away from my new position in Allegheny county). They still respect my own opinion of vouching for Denny regarding the possibility of employing him as a part time instructor especially under the supervision of Don Howard who I've know personally since September of 2000. All the best to you Denny!!!

Any time you need some input from me, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Respectfully,
Henry

By yorkiepap (***)

Date 09-28-2007 00:10

To Allan, Lawrence, & Henry:
I want to extend my sincerest THANK YOU!!!. Your support, suggestions and optimism towards giving more knowledge has really inspired me to, hopefully, make a difference with the new "youngsters" entering the welding arena. I just want to pass on some of the "old world" techniques I learned as a youngster, as these young minds would benefit from learning processes our forefathers eagerly passed on. Each fundamental process or technique that was an improvement to existing processes of that era, led to even more advances, consistency and development to provide cost-effectiveness within the American manufacturing industry, and today, many are still in use. We Americans have proven over time, we are second to none......especially with know-how, quality, and ongoing production innovations.

Many times I ponder, and saddened a bit, the amount of knowledge that is idle in the minds of those in my age genre that could be giving some youngster hope, encouragement, and the "I can do it" attitude. You think that our educational & manufacturing entities would give some consideration to utilizing these seasoned & knowledgeable minds who made a good life in the trades.......Myself, I want to give to some of those young minds just a bit more to help them succeed.

It is those, like you and others here, who provide wisdom, opinion or suggestions, and the outlook to want to grow in knowledge to get and be better.....You are most honorable......Denny

By aevald

Date 09-28-2007 04:42

Hello Denny, it is wonderful to hear the amount of enthusiasm in your response here. Youth today can certainly be thought to be so different from us as we were young. When I really sit down and take a look at my mindset as a youngster and compare it to many of the youth that I encounter, as well as my own kids, I do come to the realization that we really aren't that much different. Yes we dressed differently, we listened to different music, we had different pastimes. Put it into perspective though, the music issue, my parents liked one thing, I liked another, just like me and my kids, I dressed one way, my parents liked to dress another, here again no different than myself and my kids, I liked to party my parents didn't, at least I thought so at the time, here once more pretty much the same story when comparing myself now and the youth of today and my kids. You will do great and I believe you will have a great time in doing so. Cheers and Kudos to you! Best regards, Allan