Obama Campaign Donates Campaign Office Leftovers to Schools

Nov. 14, 2008— -- The votes have been tabulated, the acceptance speech has been given -- the election is over.

So what happens to all the election offices across the United States that Barack Obama staffers have been working out of day and night for nearly two years?

Left behind -- as sleep-deprived campaign workers vacate the buildings -- are computers, campaign signs, buttons, file cabinets -- all remnants of a campaign done and won.

So what's a campaign to do with all this ... stuff?

The Obama campaign, well before the election was over, started putting a plan in place for all its leftovers -- one that the Obama campaign says is in alignment with a priority for President-elect Obama: education.

Working in conjunction with the nonprofit corporation, iloveschools.com, the campaign has donated items from 200 campaign offices across the country to school districts in 10 states.

"Tens of thousands of dollars of resources have been put into schools across the United States in less than four days," said Valarie Swanson, marketing director for iloveschools.com. "The Obama campaign was specific that they wanted all their resources to go to schools."

Obama transition team spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the campaign partnered with the organization to "donate extra supplies and equipment in a socially responsible way."

The Obama campaign contacted Swanson's organization a couple of weeks before the election was over, with one requirement -- that 100 percent of the leftover campaign goods from specified offices would be pumped into school districts.

Iloveschools.com found schools across the U.S. that would benefit from this donation based on geography and need.

"It was like Christmas in November," Jean Schmalzried, director of federal programs for the Sto-Rox School District in Pennsylvania, said of getting a phone call the morning after the election by an Obama staffer. "This has never happened before."

Obama's Pittsburgh campaign office donated to her school district at least five flatbed trucks of office supplies, including 12 Dell computers, multiple 17-inch LCD monitors and three printers. Much of the equipment was brand new, given to the schools unopened in boxes.

The computers' files were deleted by the Obama campaign to pass along the machines in data-less condition.