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I've used this adapter for drive recovery for years. Works for everything I've thrown at it, including an old 2.5in 44-pin IDE harddrive for an MS-DOS Laptop(which turned out to be blank 😅 ). Even works with Linux, now that I've ditched Windows. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHDTRJ6
That is an IDE connector, quite old. Modern interface is sata, you’re gonna need an adaptor or drive hub to connect this to any modern system. https://a.co/d/0d3APgGr I’ve bought and used this exact one and it worked perfectly
You should contact the specific company that you are going to donate these old machines to and find out exactly what they will want you to do with these old machines in order for the company to be able to accept them. Regarding the old harddrives in these machines, the easiest thing to do, would be to physically remove each drive and use a USB to harddrive adapter kit to be able to connect it to your current computer, then you simply copy/paste the important files to your computer. Here is a kind of USB to harddrive adapter that you will want to use, now while you might find other adapters that might be less expensive, you will want to make sure whatever adapter you get, includes a 12v power adapter, because some of those cheaper adapter cables do NOT include a 12v power adapter. The 12v power adapter is required for powering up 3.5inch harddrives; like what is found in most tower/desktop computers. > USB to Harddrive adapter