Borrowing or Lending

The Basic Requirements of a Freegle Group highly recommend not allowing borrowing or swapping on groups. However, the decision is up to you.

Legal Liability:

In 2016, the potential of liability for lending items was researched by Dominic (Bordon, Alten, Petersfield group) and was brought to the Development group for discussion [[1]]. See Lending Liability for further details of this.

Advantages of allowing:

• It could indirectly divert something from landfill by preventing the borrower from having to purchase the item and saves resources
• It could create a better sense of community

Disadvantages of allowing:

• There are liability issues for lending an item, which could affect the lender
• It doesn’t directly divert something from landfill
• Borrowed things can be broken, lost, not returned or cause damage, potentially leading to more problems for your moderating team to get involved in and have to deal with

Tips:

• If you decide loans are not appropriate for your Freegle group you could refer members to your Café group if you have one
• If your cafe group allows lending and borrowing, it is advisable that there is information available about the liability of lenders
• If you don't allow borrowing you could allow someone to say they only need it for a short time and then they will reoffer it on Freegle.

Links:

• Lending Liability
• sample message : Borrowing, Lending you could use to reject a post
• Specific Circumstances
• How To Deal With