Potted History

Once upon a time (2003)........ a great idea was developed by Deron Beal: 'why not use the internet as a way of putting people in touch with other to pass on items they don't want anymore?'. Yahoo! had a great facility (Yahoo! Groups) which was free to use and provided a lovely platform for people to place messages advertising stuff to give away. Freecycle was born, the first group opened by Deron in Tucson, Arizona. Then the idea spread.

Skip forward a few years and The Freecycle Network (TFN) has turned into a worldwide movement with groups everywhere, volunteers of every nationality and millions of members. Outside of the US, Freecycle is particularly successful in the UK. But there was a bit of a problem. In 2009 conflicts arose between a newly formed UK Independent Association of Freecycle Moderators and the US-based founders of the company. It was all about the lack of freedom for UK-based Freecycle groups to develop local initiatives and features, and also how volunteers were treated. This culminated in the UK Director Neil Morris and at least 20 local group owners and moderators being dismissed and replaced with US-based counterparts.

A huge amount of emails and a remarkably short time later, Freegle was born in September 2009 and UK Freecycle groups started to join our new network. After the experience of Freecycle, the volunteers who joined together to make Freegle were clear that the new network needed to be democratic, transparent and that groups should retain their autonomy. Those principles are still a bedrock of the Freegle ethos.

The legacy of using the Yahoo! Groups facility as the main platform for running a Freegle group still continues, although Freegle is happy to consider other platforms if new groups wish to affiliate, but new facilities have been developed 'in-house' so that groups can offer a wider range of opportunities to members to be involved (Facebook, Freegle Direct etc).

Freegle is an umbrella organisation for lots of independent groups. It continues to develop itself and all Volunteers are equal members of the organisation. Although some Volunteers are able to offer more time and different sets of skills to help make it all work, everyone is encouraged to pitch in and help make it happen.

Back to First Steps