Glossary

Glossary of terms used in Freegle documents

A

• Admin - an email that is sent out by the volunteer team to each community's members, usually with encouragement to freegle more or hints to experience Freegle in a positive way.
• App - there are two Freegle Apps for mobiles, tablets, Android and Apple - one for users/members of communitiess, and one for volunteers to access ModTools.
• Autonomy - this is a term we use a lot in Freegle. For us, this means:
  • Advantage of being able to deal locally with local issues, adapting communities to local conditions (e.g rural or urban), and keeping our ethos of being a collective of like minded people who support grass roots initiatives in reuse of resources.
  • Local communities myst adhere to https://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Community_Affiliation_Requirements_Policy and http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Freegle_Volunteer_Agreement
  • A local membership list belongs to that local community except when the community has been abandoned as per http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Abandoned_Groups_Procedure .
  • Communities may choose to leave Freegle, or Freegle may choose to no longer be associated with a community, as per http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Disaffiliation_Procedure
  • Otherwise local communities can be run as the volunteers see best for their locality.

B

• Board - elected group of people (Directors)
• Board Discussion Group - private group, used as the working space for Directors to discuss business and hold Board meetings

C

• Candidates - nominees who have confirmed ((usually to the Returning Officer) that they are willing to stand for election as a Director.
• Caretakers/Caretaker Groups - groups which are being looked after centrally (by caretakers) until new local volunteers can be found.
• Catchment area - the area a group accepts members and posts from. This is usually a wider area than the core area and can include neighbouring group's core or catchment areas.
• Central - Freegle Central group, on Discourse http://freegle.it/Central - national forum for all volunteers.
• Central Mod Team - team of Volunteers who moderate Central
• CGA - Core Group Area
• Chairman - Chair of the Freegle Board
• Community - replacenent word used to describe local Freegle groups on the website and apps.
• Constitution - the framework of rules adopted by the old Freegle UK, which was replaced by the Rules of Freegle Ltd, (which was renamed just Freegle in 2026).
• Contact methods - when documents refer to acceptable contact methods, that includes via the group owner address, any known personal email address, any known phone number, any known social networking connection, notice to Central and other Freegle forums.
• Core area - the area agreed on affiliation that is specific to a community, and no other community will be affiliated in that core area.
• CRM - Customer Relationship Management - essentially a database which interacts with other data held (website, mailboxes etc)
• CTO - Chief Technology Officer (aka Edward)

D

• DA - Delegated Authority, as used in the Finance Sub Committee Remit
• Director - One of the elected Directors that comprise the Freegle Board
• DPA (Default Posting Area) - Freegle Direct software uses a Default Posting Area (DPA) as the technical boundary to share new members and their posts to the nearest group. The DPA should surround the core, which is the area within which another group may not start up. Cores and DPAs shouldn't overlap other groups. None of this affects the catchment area from which a group receive messages, it is just the system default, which applies when other choices have not been made by the member.

F

• FB - Facebook
• FD - Freegle Direct
• FSC - Finance Sub Committee
• Firefox - A web browser alternative to Internet Explorer (IE)
• Freegle Direct - the interface provided on the website for members of groups to use
• Freegle - the association/network of affiliated groups (not the individual groups themselves)
• Freegle Member - a voting, paid up member of Freegle Ltd
• Freegle UK - the previous unincorporated association/network of affiliated groups
• Freegle Wiki - this! http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org

G

• GAT - old name for Group Affiliation Team, the team that processed applications for affiliating groups to Freegle. Now called NGT, New Groups Team.
• GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation
• Geeks - fond and irreverent term for our brilliant IT development and management team.
• GLC - Group Launch Coordinator
• GM - Group Mentor, person appointed by GAT to assist a new group
• GO - Group Owner, someone who has full moderation privileges
• Group - in local terminology, now being slowly replaced by the word 'community' on the website and throughout Freegle.

I

• IPS - Industrial Provident Society, the organisational structure adopted by Freegle Ltd. Now known as a Registered Society for the Benefit of the Community.

M

• MT - ModTools, our software which volunteers use to moderate their communities.
• Member - paid up Member (shareholder) of Freegle, the organisation.
• member - member of a local community.
• Mod - Moderator, a volunteer who moderates a local community.
• ModTools - The facility that Volunteers can use to help run their group. There is an App version of Modtools available.

N

• NGT - New Groups Team, our lovely team that process applications for new Freegle groups
• Nominees - people put forward to stand for election to a post.
• Non Profit (nonprofit) Group - group with a not-for-profit aim to facilitate free giving and receiving items for reuse in a local community, free to use by its members.

O

• Ombudsman - one of the appointed team of two Ombudsmen who are the final arbiter in our Complaunts Procedure.
• Owner - Volunteer who takes on full responsibility for a local community, including being able to recruit and demote other Volunteers, control the membership list etc. Some communities work with just one Owner, but others choose to have a team of Owners. It is highly recommended that all communities have at least 2 owners.
• owner-address - the email address of a local Freegle moderating team.

P

• PECR - Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (which sit alongside Data Protection Act and GDPR)
• PID - Public Interest Disclosure - also known as whistleblowing
• PLI - Public Liability Insurance

R

• Reps - the elected representatives of the previous Freegle UK organisational set up
• Returning Officer/RO - one of the appointed team of two Returning Officers,who help organise AGMs and Board elections. Abbreviated sometimes to RO
• RO email address - returning_officer@ilovefreegle.org
• Rules - the primary document for running Freegle, which replaced the previous Constitution.

S

• Secretary - Society Secretary or Secretary to the Board
• Self-Nomination - volunteers nominating themselves as candidates for an elected role.
• Subject Line - A line in an e-mail or post that indicates the subject of the message.

T

• TFN - The Freecycle Network
• Treasurer - appointed position by Board, remit Finance Role Remits
• Trash Nothing/TN - different access method for people to join and use Freegle locally.

V

• Volunteer - an owner, moderator or volunteer of a group affiliated to Freegle, or a nationally recognised Volunteer

W

• Wiki - this Freegle wiki
• Working Groups / WG - previously national groups, open to all Freegle Volunteers, which discussed and organised how the Freegle organisation works. Replaced by Board Working Groups in 2026.