Freegle Reps Report 2013-09-30

This Report covers the period between 1 August and 30 September 2013

STRATEGY/STRUCTURE

Paying Volunteers

http://freegle.in/accounts

We have spent a considerable amount of time discussing:

• The tasks/roles for which we should offer payment and their priorities.
• How we should decide who is offered payment.
• What basis we should use for deciding how much to pay.
• The way in which payments should be made to volunteers.
• Whether specific roles or tasks need to be defined and if so who should do this.
• If we need reporting for paid tasks and if so what type.
• How to use the £5,500 donation made specifically for making Freegle sustainable.

We have agreed to:

• The following areas being the priority for offering payment:
  • FD maintenance and FD development
  • Geeks
  • Media
  • Fundraising
  • Mobile application
  • Mod plug in re-write

• Allocate up to £3,000 for the migration from VPS to more robust servers and agreed to pay Paul and *Edward to do this work (based on 15 days at £200 per day).
• Allocate up to £1,000 for consolidating media/forums/campaign contact and status information into a database for the Reps/Board to help ensure sustainability of successful/ongoing PR and media efforts. (based on 5 days at £200 per day)
• Allocate £500 to a mobile app.
• Continue to reimburse Cat for all of her mobile broadband costs, and 95% of her mobile phone costs for the 2013/14 financial year.
• Keep 3 months running costs (£1,000) in reserve, out of unrestricted funds.
• Allocate £1,000 out of the sustainability fund to turning Freegle into an Industrial and Provident Society, to cover costs not covered by the Co-op.
• Defer deciding whether to allocate £1,000 for a physical meeting of a new Board of Directors until we have more information.
• Not use money from funds for work already completed.
• Pay for tasks which fall within our criteria for paying for work and make it clear to the people with the relevant skills that payment is available, and give the task to the most suitable person, or ask them to work together, even if it means one is paid and one is not.
• Contribute $500 to the crowdfunding run by Edward for the replacement Mod plug-in, which gives us the perk of free use of the new moderation tools for three years for Freegle groups which are on a centrally held list.
• Not to give Cat a media budget of £1K and let her decide how to spend it.
• Not to immediately cease accepting donations on the basis that we cannot decide how to spend the funds we already have.
• Not to return to the donor any of the sustainability fund left unspent after a year i.e. on 20th January 2014.

Edward and Cat have abstained on polls relating to payments to them.

In future Edward will abstain from all polls on financial issues and will not accept payment from Freegle.

Cat has said that she is not automatically available to do work for Freegle, but will tender for media work decided upon by Reps.

We are now discussing the issues that we have had in trying to get agreement and how they might be resolved if the proposal to become an Industrial and Provident Society is approved.

CAFS/Sustain Eden Project

Chris submitted a report to us for the second quarter. We were very pleased to read of the progress.

IT

Bytemark We have agreed with the recommendation made by the Geeks to accept the very generous offer made to us via Simon, Dartmoor by Bytemark. They have offered us free hosting, worth several thousand pounds a year in exchange for shared publicity and a website badge.

Yahoo Changes and ModTools

Yahoo have introduced the neo look to Groups. This means the mod plug-in will become unusable. Moderation will become much harder and some of the synchronisation between FD and Yahoo is not possible.

Edward has raised some funds via a crowdfunder and is producing a replacement mod tools app.

http://modtools.org/

We made a contribution of $500 to the crowdfunding, following Edward’s offer of the perk of free use of the new moderation tools for three years for Freegle groups which are on a centrally held list and have caretaker owners who are seeking local owners or have caretaker mods with absent owners. He has also added an acknowledgement and link to Freegle on the home page.

Mentors are coordinating the caretaker mod list which can be added to from here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WJoGZ6v7aWYh8QeYZ3hXe0fqoWNMmSbmU3aQ9wnz2vI/viewform

A very good summary and help for the Yahoo changes is to be found here:

http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/68466246/Yahoo%20Groups%20Neo

Server

We agreed to Edward’s recommendation to add two extra nodes until we migrate. This helps deal with spikes in website usage.

MEDIA

BBC Radio Humberside

Cat did a 7 minute interview promoting Freegle in response to comments made by Lord De Mauley on cutting waste.

Festival of Thrift 21 and 22 September, Darlington

Alison from Middlesborough and Theo from Gateshead ran the Give and Take stand and Cat gave two seminar talks about waste and Freegle.

http://festivalofthrift.co.uk/2013/09/cat-fletcher-freegle/

The Festival had about 20K unique visitors. It was a very successful event and Freegle had a mention by the Guardian in their report on the Festival. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/sep/28/festival-thrift-austerity-chic-real-help

Clean Bin Project

We recommended to Central that a logo link be placed on our website to a film promoting the Clean Bin Tour in August. Freegle Brighton launched the UK film tour by running a 'rubbish movie night'

G4G

Central was asked to publicise the G4G fundraiser by special notices on local groups and via an opt-out popup on FD with three days notice on Central for people to opt-out.

GAYL

We have accepted their offer to put together a PR and fundraising plan to increase our publicity and increase our funds.

FUNDRAISING

Rep Fundraising Coordinator

Jacky has agreed to coordinate and maintain records on all fundraising applications for Freegle. Full details of the role and remit are here: http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Rep_Individual_Roles#Fundraising_Coordinator

Waitrose

We’re grateful to Jon and Sian, Woking Freegle for arranging to send out emails to local groups giving details of how to apply to Waitrose for local funding.

Potato Feast

Ellen of Stirling raised an impressive £400 for Freegle by organising a potato feast. We’re very grateful and Ellen has kindly passed on the details of how anyone can do this -

http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Fundraising_Ideas

Help group for local fundraising

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freegle-Local-Funding/

OTHER

Mailbox Remit

Jacky, Kylie and Susan sent us a mailbox report. We are very grateful to them for their ongoing work and in particular replying to every message within 24 hours, the vast majority receiving replies within 12 hours.

Delisting

After following the disaffiliation procedure we’re sorry to report that Barrow Freegle has now been disaffiliated from Freegle.

http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Disaffiliation

Public Liability Insurance

We have renewed our policy for the next year with Naturesave.

Back to: Freegle_Reps_Report_2013-07-31, forwards to Freegle Reps Report 2013-10-31