Freegle Development Group Report 2016 04

 Freegle Development report
                                  April 2016
                            Group members 57

Freegle Development is a group where new policies are discussed and voted on and any changes of existing policy are discussed.

April on Development has again been busy with some very active discussions.

Task 47 – Specialist groups

First there was a continuation of the discussion on Specialist groups.. It was felt that each group would probably need contacting to see if they wished to continue. Our current view is that there is not enough activity on these groups to support them in the first version of the new platform. However if there was a strong case from the owners of the specialist groups to continue in some form, Edward said he would think again about how they could be included. They can however continue on Yahoo if they wish to.

There was a suggestion that we could fund student unions or other reuse shops, that agree to promote Freegle, with a token £20 a year. It was suggested that this could also be extended to group that are genuinely struggling to get off the ground, with advertising or leaflets for their groups.

GAT are currently contacting all of the specialist groups to see whether they wish to continue the groups or not.

This task is complete.

New platform T&Cs

We were discussing whether or not the new platform would need some terms and conditions. Edward wants to keep these short, because in reality nobody reads them and the longer they are the less likely they will be looked at. The rough idea of what the terms and conditions will be are here.

http://www.ilovefreegle.org/about/disclaimer.php

They may change slightly but as we are not a big company making lots of money we don;t need more than that. Group owners were assured that there is already an entry in the wiki about ownership of memberlists and this will still be valid when the new platform is in use.

Best Practice review 3.9 – How many potential Freeglers do you lose.

It was proposed the title of this part of the Best practice guideline be changed to ‘How welcoming is your group to new members’ There are some other changes and possible additions that are still being discussed.

Task 50 – Volunteer support

The Board have been discussing how to provide better volunteer support for moderators and groups around the country. They have suggested creating a paid position for someone who can support our current volunteers to help groups with local promotion and national volunteers from burnout as well as other tasks.

Development are currently discussing what an employed person would be able to do to improve things for us and what we should expect for our money. The position is for a year to start with so we can see by the results if it is value for money and worth continuing. Some team members feel this should be an experienced Freegle Member but others feel the person should be someone new looking at Freegle with a fresh outlook on how we function as an organisation.

It is felt that some sort of support is required, although deciding just what that support should include, is still being debated. This discussion is continuing into May.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for this discussion or any others, please join us on development. The more people’s ideas that can be included in discussions, the better it is for Freegle. https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/freegleDevelopment/info

Development Team

Links

• Development Working Group
• Previous report Development Group Report 2016 03
• Following report Development Group Report 2016 05