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 others to pass on items they don't want anymore?'. Yahoo! had a great facility (Yahoo! Groups) which was free to use and provided a 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 thousands of groups, 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 UK Freecycle moderators and the US-based founders of the company. It centered around the lack of freedom for UK 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 number of emails and a remarkably short time later, Freegle was born in September 2009 and UK Freecycle groups started to join our new network. The Freegle name and logo were devised by those first volunteers and voted to be adopted, the website was put together and the first set of guidelines for affiliation started to be drawn up. 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 Freegle, which has since developed a Constitution, got itself a bank account and works collaboratively with all its volunteers to provide support for the network of groups.

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 (see Norfolk Freegle), but exciting 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. We continue to develop ourselves 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.

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