Freegle Board Minutes 28 January

Meeting of Directors of Freegle Limited on 28 January 2015 at 7.15 by Skype Chat

Chairman: Edward Hibbert

Directors Present

Jacky Barrett, John Carroll, Ollie Clark, Cat Fletcher, Edward Hibbert, Andy Ludlow, Alison Redwa

Apologies for Absence

None

Declarations of Interest

Edward is a Director of Recycling Lives. There are no conflicts at present. Edward has a financial interest in Careicon, a charitable fundraising venture from which Freegle benefits. He will not receive any financial benefit from donations made via this route to Freegle.

Risk Register

Edward reported:

Financial Resources

The board are discussing a budget. This is likely to exceed our regular donations. The likelihood of risk for this item has been increased.

Loss of key individuals:

Edward has very limited time at the moment, which is affecting progress on Chris’ mobile app and general responses to technical queries.

Cat has very limited time for media until she has secured paid work

Reports

Fundraising

Edward reported:

Careicon

We have raised £255 on Careicon at the moment. This will get paid gradually as funds become due 30 days after donation, and gift aid reclamation takes a while. As Careicon scales up I expect more funds to become available for us to claim. There have been a couple of complaints to the mailbox about the flow-through signup (where people didn’t read the bit that says we’d sign them up to Careicon if they clicked).

GAYL

We have benefitted from being the default charity. We continue to do poorly at converting supporters into shoppers. I’m talking to GAYL about this.

Other

In the last couple of years I have secured a £5k donation for Freegle. This is unlikely to happen this year.

Finance

John reported:

Financial Update for Freegle IPS Board

Current forecast Year to April 15 – detail Income Year to Date [YTD] - £9,853, Full year forecast – £10,278 Expenditure YTD - £8,151, Full year forecast - £9,359

Status of Funds

Freegle UK bank account currently (21/01/15) stands at - £15,227 John reported that he is:

Awaiting the HMRC response to application for Charity registration

Awaiting more Board discussion on the budget paper he has prodcued

Checking the process to move money over to the Freegle Ltd account

We agreed:

We will not open a Paypal account.

Improving user experience is our highest priority and that this should be reflected in the budget for Tech. This will enable us to make payments that will enhance Freegle Direct and our mobile app.

Cat will work on projects to enable media to be self sustaining.

John is liaising with Jane over a move towards requesting donations be made via Virgin Money Giving.

Action John’’’

Board Secretary

Alison reported

Conflict of Interest

Drafting a document for the policy sub-committee.

The procedure for appealing for Members is being finalised and we will soon be in a position to do this.

The suggestion that the role of Board Secretary should not be considered as a Director role but one that could potentially be done by a Volunteer was agreed.

She is happy at present to continue voluntarily with the role.

Company Secretary

A new mailbox has been created for the company secretary

secretary@ilovefreegle.org

Volunteer Welfare

Edward has agreed to write a job description for a paid post.

Chief Technology Officer

Edward reported:

Chris’ mobile app is progressing and should be available for wide testing in a few weeks. He is doing some changes to support him, but we will need more people to test this. We may need some help on the graphics side.

FD v2 is progressing very slowly because of constraints on his time.

Wellspring are trying to obtain funding for a food-sharing scheme and will let us know if they receive funding.
He has reviewed the CTO remit and confirms it focuses on strategy.rather than implementation.

Media

Cat reported she:

Has done 4 radio interviews since Christmas

Was nominated for the Resource Media Magazine’s 100 most influential people in Waste.

and voted no 60. She went to the House of Commons for the launch of the 2015 #Hot100.

Is assessing the impact of not doing daily updates on Facebook

Will send newly launched groups a press release in future.

Will post on Central to request help with Instagram,

Will start Twitter tutorials on Central.

There will be a feature in Elle Decoration

We agreed that Cat should produce a proposal for generating income from the newsletter. There will be agreed parameters in place for sponsorship and the income will be allocated for media work.

‘’’Action Cat’’’

Health and Safety

No report.

Policy

Jacky reported:

She is liaising with the Ombudsman (Kathy) about aspects of the Mediation and Appeals Panels documentation.

Structure are presently discussing the proposed guidelines for Paying People.

Communication between volunteers has been raised on Growth as Freespout has died with no equivalent put in place. Conversation is ongoing.

Remits for Working Groups and Teams are presently being discussed by the Board to bring them into line with how they have evolved over time and also the proposals for delegation contained in the agreed TSW Team final report.