DurhamCares

What

Kramden Institute, Inc., is a 501(c)(3)not-for-profit charitable institution whose mission is to empower hardworking, less-advantaged students by giving them home computers, allowing them to bridge the digital divide and advance their achievement, strengthening their contribution to the community. We do this by collecting, refurbishing, and reusing computers, extending their useful lives.

Why

Our vision is that students nationwide will have access to resources they need to achieve their academic potential. Kramden Institute will serve as the innovator and teacher of a process that recycles surplus equipment to donate to less advantaged students, one community at a time.

Kramden Institute was begun as a father-son project in a basement in Durham, NC, and now has the support of over 3,000 volunteers, generous donors, and thousands of corporate and personal equipment donations.

We have created a process called the Geek-A-Thon® where 200-250 volunteers work in shifts over a weekend to refurbish approximately 200 computers. Our first Geek-A-Thon® was held in August 2005 and, to date, over 5,600 computers have been refurbished through volunteer efforts at our Geek-A-Thons and at our headquarters.

These computers are now in the hands of deserving students, known as Kramden Scholars. We are proud of the children we serve and of what they are able to achieve by crossing over the digital divide!

As we grow, we hope to bring the Geek-A-Thon® process to other communities around North Carolina and throughout the United States.

We are proud of Kramden’s Process and our Impact on our community and our environment.

Kramden Institute has a basic mission of getting as many PCs in the homes of in-need school children as possible. To do so, we have three major types of efforts:

1. Geek-a-Thons®

These one, two and three-day events allow us to prepare PCs in quantity for the kids. Typically, we can complete between 100 (1-day) and 250 (over 3 days) PCs by having our volunteers (lovingly called ‘Geeks’) work in 4-hr shifts doing many tasks including triage, software load, testing, etc, and also non-Geek-y things like cleaning monitors and keyboards.

2. Kramden Worknights.

Every Wednesday evening about 30-40 people come to Kramden’s headquarters in Durham to help… in a wide variety of ways. The atmosphere is electric and the result is more equipment readied for school give-aways, or for the kids.

3. Kramden Award Days.

Where 15-25 Kramden volunteers help up to 100 Kramden Scholars and their families get their new PCs. We help set the computers up, demonstrate briefly their use and help load them into recipients’ cars. They leave with smiles. And, with each family having no PC at home and an average of 4.2 people in the house, we estimate that we have already taken over 16,000 people across the digital divide. Some award days are held at schools. Typically our recipients are selected by their schools and teachers. We have also given out over 250 PCs to sons and daughters of American enlisted men and women out of Ft. Bragg serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, with another 250 scheduled for this summer, have made sure every Durham Habitat for Humanity home with school kids had a computer in it (91 did not), donated computers to the NC Communities in Schools learning centers in Durham and elsewhere, etc.

Kramden Institute has two full-time paid employees, a management team of professionals who donate their time to run various aspects of the program, and hundreds of volunteers every year.

Mark Dibner

Acting Executive Director

Mark, and his son Ned, founded Kramden Institute in their home in Durham, NC, in 2003 and he has led the Institute through most of its history and serves as its Board Chairman. He was founder and President of two companies, BioAbility, LLC (1994 to present) and Strategic Outcomes Services, Inc. (1998, until its sale in 2001). He served as a Fellow of the Wharton School from 1986 through 1988, and from 1986 through 1998 was an adjunct associate professor on the faculty of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he taught 1-2 courses each year in entrepreneurship and management of technology. His not-for-profit organization experience includes serving as a Vice President of the 501(c)(3) North Carolina Biotechnology Center from 1986 to 1994. Mark combines backgrounds in science and business; academia and industry. He holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology and pharmacology from Cornell University, an M.B.A. in strategic planning from Widener Univ., and a B.A. in physiological psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked as a researcher in neuropharmacology and cell biology at the Univ. of Colorado Medical School and the Univ. of California at San Diego, and later for six years as a principal scientist at E.I. DuPont and Co. Mark is the author of 13 books on technology management and biotechnology in the United States and Japan, and over 120 published articles.

Carrie Clark

Director of Operations

Carrie works closely with the Executive Director, volunteer and paid managers and Kramden partners to organize, implement and manage Kramden Institute’s day-to-day operations. Carrie is a graduate of Meredith College in Raleigh, NC and comes to us from a few well known organizations including the American Red Cross, United Way and Goodwill Industries. Carrie has a broad spectrum of experience including administration, training and development, volunteer management and fundraising.

Cari DelMariani

Volunteer and Events Coordinator

Cari is charged with overseeing Kramden’s events, volunteers and Scholar Program. Kramden welcomed Cari to the Management Team in February 2010. Following her undergraduate studies at Grand Valley State University Cari served two years as an AmeriCorps member in the communities of Elkhart Indiana and Grand Rapids Michigan. Cari continued her education at Grand Valley State University receiving her Master of Education in 2009. Cari’s graduate and professional work offers valuable experience in the areas of volunteer management, program development and grant writing.

Dave Moore

Volunteer Director of Development

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Dave moved to Cary in 2007. He works on B2B business development with Academic Benchmarks, a K12 educational technology company. He has had a long management career in U.S. and international business, most recently in U.S. ed tech, online learning, and financial services sectors. Earlier he held international Managing Director positions in Europe and Africa with Informix and Foremost-McKesson, Inc.
His non-profit experience includes being a long-time Board member of Compumentor (compumentor.org), a successful technology support organization based in San Francisco, CA, and Shelter Network (shelternetwork.org), which operates 5 homeless shelters in San Mateo, CA. He has also worked on non-profit consulting projects for the Stanford Business School Alumni Consulting Team program. He volunteered for the Technical Management Team of Kramden in September and looks forward to helping ensure the longterm growth of the organization. He is a graduate of Harvard College (BA), Stanford School of Business (MBA) and U.C. Berkeley (MS).

Michael P. Shumake

Volunteer Director of Education

Michael is working with schools and other groups to identify recipients, to help coordinate our Give-A-Thon events, and to assess the educational impact of our program. Mike is an English teacher in Wake County’s Philips High School and holds a Master’s of School Administration degree from NC State University and bachelor’s degrees in English and Secondary Education from Appalachian State University. mshumake@kramden.org

Beth Davis

Volunteer Director of Public Relations

Beth writes all of Kramden’s press releases and works to ensure there is media coverage of every Kramden event. She is currently working as Management Supervisor at MicroMass Communications. Beth holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from Kaplan University. She has over 23 years of professional experience in leadership roles in marketing, business development, sales and project management. edavis@kramden.org

Jim Whitten

Technology Team Member

Jim has been a longtime, loyal Kramden volunteer. Recently Jim took on an additional leadership role within Kramden’s newest program, Laptop University where he provides essential technical oversight and guidance. Jim has worked as a Product Manager for Cisco Systems for the last 8 years and has spent 34 years in the Data Communications and IP Networking industries specializing in Network Management Systems.

Jason Ricker

Technology Team Member

He was born and raised in Charleston, SC and has only been in Durham for a little over a year. Jason works at Avery Engineering as an IT Support Specialist, and began volunteering with Kramden 6 months ago after reading an inspiring article about KI in the Herald Sun. He holds a BS in Computer Science from College of Charleston, is an avid outdoorsman, a UNC Tarheels fan, and loves spending time with his dog “Lemur.”

Don Ward

Technology Team Member

Don has been an enthusiastic volunteer with Kramden since June 2008. He is a graduate in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech (B.E.E.) and Stanford (M.S.E.E., Ph.D.). Don spent 25 years in Silicon Valley doing scientific programming and has been working on computers since 1970. He enjoys his time at Kramden because it gives him a chance to learn more about computers and to put his skills to good use. In his spare time, Don has fun messing with shortwave radios, and repairing old tube-type radios. He and his wife are bridge players and love spending time doing genealogical research.

Kramden_1Q10_Report.pdf

Kramden_2Q10_Report.pdf

Kramden 2009 Final Report.pdf