Fair offer policy

Some members prefer to wait at least 24 hours to see who responds to an offer. Reasons to do this include:

• The first person to reply isn't always the most reliable.
• The delay gives a fair chance to people who receive notifications in daily emails (What's New summaries), or who don't have continual internet access.
• It may give a choice of potential recipients, and careful selection could help avoid no-shows.

Freegle used to have an optional tickbox on offers to mark them as "Fair offer policy", meaning the above would apply. This was withdrawn around 2020, mainly because the wording was often misunderstood as asking for payment.

Trash Nothing still has an option to prompt members to include this as a footer line on Offers. In August 2025, this was changed to "Fair Chance Policy: I'll wait before choosing a recipient to give more people a chance to reply."

Volunteers can disable this for their community in TN settings. (For convenience, there's a link to your community's TN settings at the top of ModTools Settings: Community.)

Even if this is switched off, some members may still type "Fair Offer Policy" or something similar into their own description when offering an item.

If this causes misunderstandings, you could suggest they use a different expression or explain more fully, e.g. "This is a Fair Chance offer - I will allow time for more members to reply before I decide who to give this to."