Norfolk Freegle: Difference between revisions
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*£5,000 - South Norfolk District Council Greenest Communities Competition | *£5,000 - South Norfolk District Council Greenest Communities Competition | ||
*£1,994 - Saffron Community Foundation | *£1,994 - Saffron Community Foundation | ||
*£1,000 from 3 individual Waveney | *£1,000 from 3 individual Waveney Councillor grants from Suffolk County Council | ||
*£500 from the Co-operative Bank | *£500 from the Co-operative Bank | ||
*Heaser Business Consulting Ltd provided website development and support (partly funded by the above grants and partly given as in-kind support) | *Heaser Business Consulting Ltd provided website development and support (partly funded by the above grants and partly given as in-kind support) | ||
*Computer Service Centre provided hosting for the website as in-kind support | *Computer Service Centre provided hosting for the website as in-kind support | ||
====Key Features of System==== | ====Key Features of System==== | ||
Revision as of 19:48, 14 July 2012
The Norfolk Freegle groups have always worked closely together and they decided in 2010 to raise funds to commission their own platform. Waveney Freegle (bordering Norfolk in north Suffolk) also joined the project.
The reasoning behind doing this was that the moderators spent a significant amount of time helping new (and some not so new) members to use the system, because Yahoo! Groups was not designed for Freegle purposes. They felt strongly that Freegle's use and growth had become increasingly limited by this, so they wanted to develop a customised online re-use system for Norfolk and Waveney.
The local team of moderators had been working together for a long time, with an active and supportive local mods group and also meeting up in person on a regular basis. They produced a written case for the development, adopted a constitution, opened a bank account, obtained charitable status for tax purposes from the HMRC and registered for VAT.
On the basis of being a properly constituted group and in support of a better platform than Yahoo, Norfolk County Council promised £2000 to get the project underway, with a letter of recommendation that the group could use to support other grant applications.
Whilst Norfolk was commissioning, testing and implementing the system, Freegle was nationally developing the Freegle Direct interface which has allowed all groups to have similar facilities to the Norfolk system (although still being reliant on the Yahoo Groups facility).
Funding
- £10,000 - Awards for All programme run by the Big Lottery Fund
- £2,000 - Norfolk County Council
- £5,000 - South Norfolk District Council Greenest Communities Competition
- £1,994 - Saffron Community Foundation
- £1,000 from 3 individual Waveney Councillor grants from Suffolk County Council
- £500 from the Co-operative Bank
- Heaser Business Consulting Ltd provided website development and support (partly funded by the above grants and partly given as in-kind support)
- Computer Service Centre provided hosting for the website as in-kind support
Key Features of System
- Easy to join
- Clear help at every stage of using the system
- Smart categorisation and location awareness allows matching of requests and offers
- Underlying Norfolk and Waveney wide system, but with localised home pages gives flexibiity and sense of community
- Events and local recycling/reuse information facility
- Positive feedback system for transactions
- All transactions take place within the system
- Statistics can be produced to demonstrate reuse
Link
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