Freegle Affiliation Policy

This Policy was adopted by the Board at their meeting of 29th October 2014 and subsequently amended in February 2016 and December 2016.

The Board delegates responsibility to the New Groups Team (NGT) to handle applications and implementation of procedures for new communities that wish to affiliate to Freegle.

Local Communities

• Applications are considered from individuals who wish to affiliate a community to Freegle and who agree to run their communities to the current Group Affiliation Requirements Policy. In order to comply with these requirements when considering approval NGT defines:
  • Core Area: Communities will not be approved by NGT in the future within that area (1).
  • Catchment Area: Individual communities owners decide their own catchment areas. The catchment area is the geographic area within which a group accepts posts and members.
• Where there are gaps in provision Freegle can proactively encourage new communities to be set up in line with this policy.
• Communities should come from a local requirement for them. Our aim is to have locally run and locally promoted communitess, but there is no volunteer residency requirement or limit to the number of communities that can volunteers run, as long as the set up of each community is in the best interests of that area, the volunteers and Freegle.
• New communities will not be approved in a core area where there is an active (more than 10 posts per month) Freegle community.
• Freegle affiliated communities are not in competition with each other.

Note(1)

Freegle only affiliates one community per core area and it is highly recommended that an affiliated community operates only in that area. Freegle may approve a specialist community in the same area as a standard community.

Note (2)

Communities will tend to be more resilient and thrive better when they are rooted in the area/community and it should be the aim of every community to have at least one person on the volunteer team who is part of that area.

Note (3)

Our Aims outlines the expectations of Freegle and Volunteers.

Links:

• New Groups Team - NGT
• Affiliation Procedure
• Document Approval Policy
• Glossary
• Previous Freegle UK document - Group Affiliation Team Freegle Affiliation Policy