Freegle Board Minutes 24 June

Minutes of the Meeting of Directors of Freegle Limited held on 24 June at 7.15 by Skype Chat

DIRECTORS PRESENT

Edward Hibbert, John Carroll, Ollie Clark, Cat Fletcher, Alison Redway

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

Tina Willcox

Chairman: Edward Hibbert

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Edward has a number of relevant interests;

Director of Recycling Lives
A financial interest in Careicon, a charitable fundraising venture from which Freegle benefits. He will not receive any financial benefit from Careicon for donations made via this route to Freegle.
Trustee of Volunteer Centre Edinburgh.
(New) Trustee of the Congenital Anaemia Network.

This section should be moved into a separate document with additions for other Board members. Action on Edward.

RISK REGISTER

Three changes:

Alison, Jacky and Tina have decided not to stand in the Director election. This raises the likelihood of loss of key personnel from 4 to 5.
Financial Resources has been lowered from 5 to 4, as our issue is spending money rather than raising it at present.
Vulnerability of technical infrastructure increased from 3 to 4, to reflect discussions on Central about dependence on Yahoo.

AGM

The Board discussed the disappointingly slow progress of the election. We have asked the Returning Officer to make a further request for candidates to avoid a reduced Board. We may also have to look at recruiting external Board members.

The Board expressed its thanks to Alison, Jacky and Tina for their work, and their hope that they will remain involved at a national level.

REPORTS

Fundraising

Edward met the main guy behind The Giving Machine recently, and will investigate whether there is any opportunity there.

If we are serious about reducing our dependency on Yahoo, we will need to raise significantly more funds. This would require commitment from volunteers generally to help raise this.

Finance

We voted to approve the Tech and Media budgets.

It is unclear whether we can deliver the proposed Volunteer Support budget without Tina and Jacky, who were leading on this. We will consider our options.

Transfer of funds to the new IPS is ongoing.

Board Secretary

Edward took the minutes of this meeting.

Company Secretary

No report as Andy was absent.

We will need to remove Alison’s address as registered office.

We discussed whether we could provide a free reward for members to encourage uptake. It may be possible to do something with Nimber. Action on Cat.

Chef Technology Officer

The Central discussion shows support for reducing our dependency on Yahoo. The cost and effort required here is large, and there is a risk of disengagement from volunteers who feel left behind. It might be possible to build a platform which includes encouraging volunteers to become more active on social media (a.k.a. gamification of slacktivism).

The Board will need to discuss this further.

Media

Various updates from Cat, which will be considered by the Board.

Nimber are trialling in Brighton. They woud pay £250 for an infotorial in the next Freegle member newsletter.
Freegle could be a sponsor of the greenest family PEA award. This has no cost; Cat is the judge, and we would get publicity in exchange for another newsletter infotorial.
Cat has discussions ongoing with YOTI, Reusle, and Friday Ad.

The Board has also voted to pledge £1k to Cat’s crowdfunder for a reuse depot in Brighton, as part of the media budget. In exchange for this:

Freegle acknowledged as a CRD “Founding Supporter” in perpetuity
Freegle logo to be include on all CRD press releases, official marketing, website, publicity and documentation for one year.
One large side (20 foot x 8 foot) and one small side (8ft x 8ft) of one shipping container is “Freegled”. Design and execution of branding artwork to be agreed in advance between CRD and Freegle UK. CRD to action once agreed. This ‘branding’ to remain in place for 12 months.
Guarantee of 6 non-local mainstream media pieces in first 12 months (ie *not* the local paper)
1 Freegle sponsored Community Reuse event during the first 12 months. All publicity and social media for that event. Event type to be discussed and agreed between Freegle Board and CRD .
A case study report on how to set up a Reuse Depot and how to run a Freegle Drop Off and Collection Point will be developed between the 6th and 12th month and be available in summer 2016 for Freegle Ltd to use, share, publish and use for it own ends.

This donation will be transferred directly to Freegle Brighton.

Instagram: Jacky has added this as a task to the Development Working Group task list and Cat will continue work on this. YOTI: Cat is arranging to meet up with them in London.