Disaffiliation Procedure

This procedure was adopted by the Board at their meeting of 29th October 2014.
Amendments have since been adopted on 24th November 2015, 12th October 2017, 3rd August 2023, 17th October 2023 and 20th April 2024.

For Communities leaving Freegle of their own volition

If a Community decides to leave Freegle, they need to inform NGT. NGT will then:

• Notify the Board and the new groups notification list to remove them from the Freegle website, maps etc
• Give a week's grace on Central, Cafe and working groups to say their goodbyes on those groups.
• Ask them to post on Central about why they're leaving. If they don't, post on Central to say that they've left.
• Consider whether the Community leaving enables the acceptance of an application (but not sooner than 4 weeks).
• Send them a helpful goodbye mail (e.g. don't forget to leave ModTools, if you rename, please remove the logo from your Community).

If a Community leaves Freegle by disaffiliating themselves(1) but doesn't liaise with NGT, NGT will do the following:

• Contact all known Community volunteers via all known contact details to check that they wish the Community to be disaffiliated.
• If Community volunteers confirm they wish to leave, follow the procedures above.(2)
• If no Community volunteers respond within 14 days, inform the Board they are proceeding with Disaffiliation or Abandoned Group procedures, whichever are most applicable to the situation.
• When the Board confirms a procedure is acceptable, put a SN notice on Central to explain procedure being used and to continue to ask Community volunteers to contact NGT if they wish the group to remain with Freegle.
• The normal procedure for Abandoned or Disaffiliated groups will now come into force at the appropriate point in each procedure.

(1)If a Community removes all links to Freegle, renames itself to exclude Freegle without NGT liaison, or other scenario that indicates the Community volunteers wish disaffiliation.

(2)If there is disagreement amongst the Community volunteers, they will be asked to sort it out and NGT will check by emailing the owner address after 14 days. NGT will advise them on the different technical options available. If the situation is unresolved after 14 days and there is no evidence of affiliation (eg. name change, logo, links to Freegle) on the Community pages, the Community will be subject to the disaffiliation process with the discretional option for NGT to offer those in dispute to restart the Community.

(3) Ask the leaving volunteer team if they wish to have membership information to establish the community on another platform. If requested, ask the Geeks to download membership information from Modtools to pass to the leaving group. Before actioning this, written agreement will be needed that the GDPR legal basis and aims of the new community and platform will be the same as Freegle.

Failing Communities

A. Failed Community due to problems for members

We believe it is crucial that Communities affiliated to Freegle provide a good level of service so that Freeglers have a good freegling experience. If Freeglers complain about their Community, Freegle will always try to find ways to contact the local Community moderators and see if there is any help which can be provided. We would hope and expect that most problems can be resolved this way.

Occasionally, it may be that there are serious problems with the way a Community is run, which means that Freeglers will find it unusable or there are or have been circumstances which bring Freegle into disrepute. The Board should be informed by Mentors or other relevant national teams (eg. mailboxes), so they can consider what action to take (if any).

B. Failed Community due to lack of activity

There are also cases where a community is sadly failing for a number of reasons. Guidelines for a failed community are:

• One which has been open for members for longer than 12 months
• Where monthly posts by members have stopped for at least 6 months or have been less than 1 per month for 6 months
• Where the general trend does not show any increase in posts or active members over the previous 6 months.

However, this is not a straightforward decision and will depend on the level of interaction and cooperation with national support and other external factors. Given the above, we think it would be better for Freegle to delete the community. Consideration can be given to applications for a new community in that area (part or all) in the future if there is some confidence that it could succeed.

C. Action to take for a failed or failing community

Mentors or a local owner/moderator should send a report to the Board for a failing group, who will decide whether further action is required. If so:

• Every effort will be made to communicate and to provide support to the community.
• If this is unsuccessful within a reasonable and practicable timescale then consideration may be given to caretaking (for A above) or deletion (for B above).
• A minimum of 14 days notice of any deletion will be given to the community members, Freegle UK Central, NGT, Mentors, the Councils team, Media, and info & support mailboxes. These notices to be given by whichever team is tasked by the Board to action the disaffiliation.

The above can be delegated by the Board to NGT or Mentors as suitable. Any final decision will be taken by or on behalf of the Board and be eligible for the appeal procedure. NGT must be informed and agreed data supplied and retained by them for any deleted communities.

Links:

• Freegle Affiliation Application Procedures
• Contacting Groups Procedure
• New Groups Team - NGT
• Central Discussion and Working Group Membership Policy
• Appeal procedure Complaints Procedure
• AGM 2016 Polls [1] relating to possible disaffiliation for lack of representation on Central, platform choice and affiliation confirmation.
• Amendments to this procedure - refer to Document Approval Policy
• Glossary

Addition of 'failing group' definition made in October 2017, following recommendation to the Board by Development Group.