News Article
How Can I Donate an Air Conditioner?
Individuals and organizations who want to make donations for air conditioning can do so following these steps. Please review this information thoroughly, and contact Auxiliary Services with any additional questions.

​​​Interested individuals and/or corporations can donate air conditioning units or funding for air conditioning units to specific schools or to the system. If you would like to make a donation to a particular school, we encourage you to contact the school’s principal. The principal will work with the appropriate HIDOE Facilities team to compile the following information (see below) to ensure the unit is a match for the school's infrastructure.
Health and safety
There are several requirements, but the most important is indoor air quality. Most residential-size window units do not have fresh air intake capabilities as this is not required in residential use. This may sound odd, but when you purchase a window air conditioning unit at a retailer and install it at home, you may have four to six people in a room at a time. Not too much of a problem if everything is closed for the six people.
However, in a classroom setting, with as many as 30 people in the room, fresh air intake is necessary to maintain adequate indoor air quality. The fresh air system is important to regulate the carbon dioxide levels so that the students are not facing a potentially hazardous situation.
Electrical systems
More than 50 percent of Hawaii’s public schools are more than 50 years old. You can go into an older classroom and see it may have only four electrical outlets.
HIDOE has been working to upgrade the electrical infrastructure particularly at our older schools. In 2015 we have more than 35 active projects to upgrade campus electrical systems across the Islands. This will increase the available power to our classrooms so that we will be able to support the increasing number of computers, tablets and other electronic devices used in educating our students, as well as possible future heat abatement measures, including air conditioning.
In some cases, individuals or third-party groups have purchased air conditioning units without the electrical capacity at the school and circuits are blown for a couple of classrooms or even whole wings of campuses. With that comes a potential fire hazard.
What types of systems are acceptable?
Basically, any new installed unit can work as long as a fresh air vent is also installed. Those would include:
  • Window units that have enough thermal output (BTUs) for the room size
  • Split AC units
  • Photovoltaic AC units
What would not work would be portable air conditioning units or used system.
What are the steps to make a donation?


AC Installation Request (Policy 6700): Looks at the specifications of the unit being installed against the proper requirements. The Facilities Maintenance Branch in OSFSS then reviews the proposed donation.​
If you are making a donation to a school, please first contact the principal of that campus to discuss the gift. If you want to make a monetary donation or a donation that does not go to a specific campus, please contact the Auxiliary Services Branch at 586-3452.​
If you make a donation to a school directly, please ask for the following form: