Borrowing or Lending

The Basic Requirements of a Freegle Group highly recommend not to allow borrowing or swapping on groups. However, the decision is up to individual groups.

Legal Liability:

In 2016, the potential of liability for lending items was researched by Dominic (Bordon, Alten, Petersfield group) and was brought to the Development group for discussion. See Lending Liability for further details of this. The Board made a strong recommendation to groups that do allow lending to inform their members of potential liability.

Disadvantages of allowing:

• There are liability issues for lending an item, which could affect the lender
• It doesn’t directly divert something from landfill
• Borrowed things can be broken, lost, not returned or cause damage, potentially leading to more problems for your moderating team to get involved in and have to deal with

Advantages of allowing:

• It could indirectly divert something from landfill by preventing the borrower from having to purchase the item and saves resources
• It could create a better sense of community

Tips:

• If you decide loans are not appropriate for your Freegle group you could refer members to your Café group if you have one
• If your Café group allows lending and borrowing, it is advisable that there is information available about the liability of lenders
• If you don't allow borrowing you could allow someone to say they only need it for a short time and then they will reoffer it on Freegle.

Links:

• Lending Liability
• sample message: Borrowing, Lending you could use to reject a post
• Specific Circumstances
• How To Deal With