Why was this group created?

There were several people in our section who had run into similar situations where a group member had a contact with a Governmental Unit, Commercial Company or an Individual who had the desire to make donations of surplus equipment to a specific ARES team or to an Emergency Communications Service in general.

The problem to arise was that the donor was required to donate the surplus equipment to ONLY a qualified 501(c)(3) organization.

We could have created several separate qualified 501(c)(3) organizations, one for each district or team. The issues of multiple levels of management, record keeping and organization of maintaining separate entities were discussed and it was decided that we create one entity, qualify it under current IRS regulations, manage it though the current functioning ARRL/ARES organizational structure and make it available to all emergency communications teams in the Western Washington Section.