Anyone ever do a e-waste drop off to generate material?

I'm from Wyoming, but I've been to Montana a lot (Never done an event in that state, though). I've been doing collection events down here for two years, and can tell you pretty much anything that you would ever want to know.

First, if you don't mind me asking, what part of the state are you in? You don't have to share if you don't want to, but I can give you a lot more advice if I know. Your results will vary based on the part of the state.

In Wyoming, my events have done very well. Here's a PR photo from one of our events last year:



That was done in a town of about 5000 people. We filled the bed in that town. We've run events in a town that has about 10,000 people. For that, we used to use this truck:


That's a Ford E350 with a 15' body. I've filled it about 1/3 of the way full from events in that town. You'll notice in that photo that the truck is being dragged with a tow strap- that's it being hauled off after the engine quit one it (Nothing else worked correctly either). This is another photo from a school that we picked up from:




What you don't see is that there was another pickup truck behind that one. The Chevrolet is filled to the brim with desktops, and there's miscellaneous on the trailer. The other truck was a longbed also filled with desktop computers. That school learned of us because of the collection event we did in their neighboring town.

Events can work really well. Newspaper ads are the best- don't waste your money on radio ads, but some stations may give you on-air time or mentions during their morning shows. If so, of course you'll want to take that. Don't pay for radio ads though- they're a huge waste of money. Newspaper ads are worth it- get in all of the papers, and post flyers in the towns (For small events- you'll never canvas a larger town).

I've never done a collection event in the winter, so I don't know how they will work this time of the year. I do my first event of the year on Earth Day, and collect through the spring. You'll want at least two weeks to run the ads. I figure that you want 6 weeks of planning to make sure you have a location an aren't rushing anything.

I'll give you more tips in another post, but knowing where you are in Montana will really help there.