Freegle Reps Report 2013-01-31: Difference between revisions

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http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Contact_Details
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[[Category:Freegle Reps Reports]]
[[Category:Freegle Reps Reports]]

Latest revision as of 17:03, 7 February 2013

This Report covers the period from mid December 2012 to end January 2013.

STRATEGY

Simplifying Reuse

We are discussing a paper prepared by Cat and Edward. It is a development of the proof of concept for a website that is is aimed at being a single point of contact for participating organisations for a wide range of reuse options.

REPS ELECTION

The annual Reps election was held between 11 December 2012 and 20 December 2012. Sian and Ollie stood down, Cat and Edward stood again and were re-elected. Sheila and Tina filled the vacant positions. http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Freegle_Reps

Sian and Ollie were both signatories for the Freegle bank account and the nominated postholders for HMRC registration. Following the requirements of Unity Bank we convened a meeting of the Reps on 23 January 2013 at which all the Reps were in attendance. We formally resolved that there will be 4 signatories in total to this account – Edward Hibbert, Jane Loveday, Jacky Barrett and Tina Willcox.

Jane (Treasurer) will have View and Submit internet access, Edward, Jacky and Tina - View, Submit and Authorise access and Ray (Auditor) View only. We have removed Jean's (previous Auditor) view access.

PUBLICITY

Cat, Queen of Freebies, the Human Womble

At the beginning of the year we received an enormous boost to our publicity with Daily Mail articles.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255831/Mother-Cat-Fletcher-saves-20-000-filling-home-online-cast-offs-Freegle-website.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2258234/The-human-womble-From-oven-sideboards--woman-furnished-home-FREE-peoples-rubbish.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2258234/The-human-womble-From-oven-sideboards--woman-furnished-home-FREE-peoples-rubbish.html

Freegle made the no 1 UK search on Google and received 50 times our usual website traffic and groups benefited with large increases to membership. Cat prepared a press release for local groups to send out and this resulted in some excellent media coverage in the way of newpaper articles and radio and TV interviews.

This welcome publicity also resulted in a substantially increased workload, for example Edward and Cat were doing 20 hour days for a week or so to keep the IT and Media stuff going. It also had knock on effects for the Mailbox, GAT and other areas as more interest was generated. It’s great to get this kind of publicity boost, but this is more evidence that our current structure is not tenable longer term - we’d like to be dealing with an event like this every month, and it’s clear that we just couldn’t handle it.

Wastebuster

We will be included on this site and in their schools programme in the future

http://www.wastebuster.co.uk/

We can follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

https://www.facebook.com/Wastebuster

@Wastebuster

B&Q

We now have a very good link on their website

http://www.diy.com/content/marketing/one_planet_home/reuse.jsp?menu=eco

Their Facebook page is

https://www.facebook.com/bandq

and they can be followed as well on Twitter @BandQ

Galaxy Warmheart Promotion

Sheila has entered Freegle for this. There is £300 prize money.

http://www.hotgalaxywarmheart.com/

We agreed to send a bulk email to groups to use to send out to members asking for their support.

WRAP

Cat attended the WRAP Reuse Action Group Meeting on 16 January. Cat explained the business plan outlined in Simplyfying Reuse and they expressed interest in hearing more about this. She updated us on the forthcoming launch of communications that are being published to promote reuse which we will be able to make use of.

Ecobuild

Cat is working on the team building a waste totem pole at http://www.ecobuild.co.uk/ it's probably the biggest sustainable construction exhibition in the(the? Saira) world with over 50K attendees 5-7 March at ExCel in docklands area London

Follow on Twitter @Ecobuild_Now

Woman’s Own

We have a feature article in this magazine at the end of the month.

https://www.facebook.com/womansownmagazine

@WomansOwn

Business Cards

Sian let us know that she has continued to send out business cards to the New Groups Launch Coordinator and to groups who have already received cards but requested more

FINANCE

http://freegle.it/accounts

We proposed to Central changes to the Financial Management and Controls document

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreegleUK-Central/message/33941

These were subsequently adopted on 30th January 2013.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreegleUK-Central/message/35452.

The wiki has been amended.

http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Financial_Management_and_Controls.

We are discussing the budget for 2013/2014.

OTHER

Bring and Take Events

We were contacted by a local Trading Standards Officer with respect to offering electrical items at Give and Take Events. Current advice to volunteers on running Bring and Take events can be found on the wiki page

http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Give_and_Take

Bulk Mailing of Local Group Admins

We discussed the pros and cons of sending suggested admins/press releases to local groups for them to send out as admins on local groups by bulk mail. We decided to test whether this is worth doing by sending out an admin to all groups with a link to the press release about Cat’s articles in the Daily Mail. Groups were also asked to add their publicity contacts to a database via a link in the mail:

http://freegle.it/MediaContacts

Mobile App

Edward is having very promising discussions with a mobile app developer.

Delisting Brackley Freegle

We went through the agreed disaffiliation process and gave 7 days notice on Central Reluctantly we have now written to Brackley Freegle letting them know that they have been delisted.

IT

As a result of the Daily Mail article Edward added daily nodes temporarily. He also improved our ability to cope with the extra traffic by splitting ilovefreegle.org and direct.ilovefreegle.org on to different hosts.

We reviewed the volunteers who are able to edit our website and removed some who are no longer active. and added Jacky and Ray to allow them to send bulk emails for FreeSpOut.

Website Hosting - VPS

We have agreed with VPS that they may add a link to us on their website in return for a testimonial and case study.

Group Affiliation Team

We agreed that Andy (Oxford), Lori (Cherwell Valley), Teresa (Sandy and Biggleswade) and Christian (Wilmslow) will join the Team and that Sheila will be the Rep Observer on GAT.

USEFUL CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR FREEGLE

can be found on this wiki page http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Contact_Details


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