Freegle Group Membership Information Policy

This document was adopted by the Board in September 2016 and amended in December 2018, on recommendation by the Development Group. An amendment was made in April 2024 after discussion on Development Group (Task 128) and agreement by the Board.

Local membership lists are kept in several places:

• Nationally:

• • on Freegle Direct
  • via Modtools
  • on spreadsheets or similar documents as backup information.

• Freegle Volunteers:
  • On spreadsheets or similar documents as backup information
  • Within email storage, personal or shared team accounts.

• Other:
  • Trashnothing covering nearly all Freegle communities.

The right for Freegle Ltd to use the nationally kept membership lists to establish a new community will only be exercised in the following circumstances:

• With permission gained by emailing the community contact address for the community volunteer team, and acted upon with:
  • explicit permission from one Volunteer, and
  • implicit permission from other Volunteers, i.e. assume consent if no conflicting replies are received within 3 weeks (reminder sent after 2 weeks within that period).
• Or
  • Implicit permission through lack of constructive communication from community Volunteers during the Abandoned Groups Procedure.

For membership lists kept elsewhere:

• Freegle will not ask for copies of membership lists from Trashnothing, they are the responsibility of that organisation.
• Individual volunteers are responsible for the information they keep personally or as a team outside Freegle Direct and Modtools, this isn’t the responsibility of Freegle Ltd.

Notes:

• Volunteers for a particular community are assumed to be those who receive emails to the contact address for that community volunteer team.

• This procedure includes communities which have chosen to leave Freegle or been disaffiliated, or are abandoned.

• As Freegle is the current legal custodian for membership data, membership data may only be released to a departing community once it has been determined that there is legal basis to do so. See Data protection [Data Protection Act], and our Data Protection Policy with links to related procedures.

• If member information kept by Trashnothing is offered to Freegle to set up a freestanding Freegle Direct community or communities, the Board can accept if satisfied that GDPR adherence has been or will be applied.

Links:

• Disaffiliation Procedure
• Abandoned Groups Procedure
• Amendments: Document Approval Policy
• Data Protection Policy

Previous document

• Freegle_Direct_Information_Policy