Glossary

Glossary of terms used in Freegle Ltd documents

A

• App - there are two Freegle Apps for mobiles and tablets, Android and Apple - one for users of groups and one for volunteers to access ModTools.
• Autonomy -
  • Advantage of being able to deal locally with local issues, adapting groups to local conditions (e.g rural or urban or innovation), and keeping our ethos of being a collective of like minded people who support grass roots initiatives in reuse of resources.
  • Local groups must work to http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Basic_Requirements_of_a_Freegle_Group and http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Freegle_Volunteer_Agreement
  • A group membership list belongs to that local group except when the group has been abandoned as per http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Abandoned_Groups_Procedure .
  • Groups may choose to leave Freegle, or Freegle may choose to no longer be associated with a group, as per http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Disaffiliation_Procedure
  • Otherwise local groups can be run as the volunteers see best for their community.

B

• Board - elected group of people (Directors)
• Board Discussion Group - Yahoo 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
• 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 will accept members and posts from. This is usually a wider area than the core area.
• Central - Freegle UK Central Yahoo group http://freegle.it/Central
• Central Mod Team - team of Volunteers who own and moderate Central
• Chairman - Chair of the Board
• Constitution - the framework of rules adopted by Freegle UK, replaced by the Rules of Freegle Ltd
• Contact methods - when documents refer to acceptable contact methods, that includes via the group owner address, any known 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 group, and no other group will be affiliated in that core area.

D

• Director - One of the elected Directors that comprise the Freegle Board
• DPA (Default Posting Area) - the area set up on Freegle Direct which decides which group a new member is offered as a first option when joining Freegle. This is a separate distinction to either Core or Catchment areas, it is purely a system setup function.

F

• FB - Facebook
• FD - Freegle Direct
• Firefox - A web browser alternative to Internet Explorer (IE) which is needed if you want to use ModTools (and is a great browser anyway!).
• Freegle - Freegle Ltd
• Freegle Direct - the interface provided on the website for members of groups to use instead of using the Yahoo groups
• Freegle Ltd - 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 - Group Affiliation Team, the team that processes applications for affiliating groups to Freegle
• 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 on Yahoo Groups (shown by a blue crown next to the person's ID in the membership list of each group)

I

• IPS - Industrial Provident Society, the organisational structure adopted by Freegle Ltd

M

• MM - Message Maker, neat addition to make it easier for group members to post messages
• MT - ModTools
• Member - paid up member of Freegle Ltd
• Mod - Moderator, someone who has moderation privileges on a Yahoo Group (shown by a green crown next the person's ID in the membership list of each group). We also use the term to include Group Owners when talking generally.
• ModTools - An 'add-on' that Volunteers can use to help run their group. It provides a layer of extra facilities on top of the basic Yahoo functions and makes it oh-so-much-easier to moderate. If the group is on Freegle Direct it is the method to moderate the group.

There is an App version of Modtools available. (ModTools replaced the Mod Plug-in after Yahoo introduced Neo groups.)

N

• Neo - an updated format for the Yahoo Groups facility, introduced Summer-Winter 2013.
• 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.
• Owner - Volunteer who takes on full responsibility for a local group, including being able to recruit and demote other Volunteers, control the membership list etc. Some groups work with just one Owner, but others choose to have a team of Owners.
• owner-address - the email address of a Yahoo Group moderating team

P

• PLI - Public Liability Insurance

R

• Reps - the elected representatives of the previous Freegle UK organisational set up
• Returning Officer - one of the appointed team of two Returning Officers, abbreviated sometimes to RO
• RO email address - returning_officer@ilovefreegle.org
• Rules - the primary document for running Freegle Ltd, which has replaced the previous Constitution

S

• Secretary - Company Secretary or Secretary to the Board
• Self-Nomination - volunteers nominating themselves as candidates
• Skype chat - online messaging system used by the Board for Board meetings
• Snaply - defunct mobile app which used to provide an access method to Freegle groups
• Society - Freegle Ltd (term used within the Rules)
• Subject Line - A line in an e-mail that indicates the subject of the message

T

• Treasurer - appointed position by Board, remit Finance Role Remits
• Trashnothing - different access method for group members to join and use a group
• Trello - online message board used by Board for action points from meetings etc - https://trello.com/

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 - Central groups, open to all Freegle Volunteers, which discuss and organise how the Freegle organisation works.