Freegle Board Minutes 30 September

A meeting of the Board of Freegle Ltd was held on 30 September 2015 at 8pm GMT by Skype chat.

The meeting started at 20.00.

DIRECTORS PRESENT

Andrew Ludlow (Andy), Andrew Trusty (Trusty), Cat Fletcher, Christian Brenninkmeijer Edward Hibbert, John Carroll, Ollie Clark Chairman

Edward Hibbert

Minutes

Taken by Alison via a text transcript of the main meeting sent to her afterwards.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

This is now at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M5J1pKrHfqwqdgPJufwZMmDKSZuOdinPVRuZGxvSYNA/edit?usp=sharing . All Board members should review and update.

Action: All Directors

RISK REGISTER

The Register is held at:

https://docs.google.com/a/ehibbert.org.uk/spreadsheets/d/1RQ3Uzgt7Lf_RTRRH8vdySOYXzqnHI-JxG1SVBeykctI/edit#gid=0

There are no changes since last month.

MATTERS ARISING

Nimber

Cat has followed up with Nimber on rewards partnership and enewsletter but the eNewsletter is yet to go out. There will be £250 income when done, rewards possible. Cat will action in the following week.

Action: Cat

City Reuse Depot, Brighton

Cat to provide an update in a media report to Central.

Action: Cat

Business Cards

Cat still has to hand over the task of sending out business cards to Sally. She still has the cards and will send them out in the meantime. Edward will automate the requesting of business cards for community events.

Action: Cat/Edward

Fundraising

Edward has raised fundraising guidelines on Development.

Reserves Policy

Edward has documented this policy:

http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Finance_Procedures

NEW PLATFORM

The background to this agenda item is that the 2015 AGM voted to take urgent action to reduce our dependency on Yahoo. Following this decision John Carroll set up a small team to consider the options. The team members were: Chris (Penrith), Jean (Ely & many others), Ollie (Otley/Director) and Christian (Wimslow/Director).

On 15 September 2015 the team reported to Central that the working group recommended building our own platform. This would enable us to work without Yahoo if it stopped and make it more supportable plus more easily extendable in the future.

In order to avoid potential Director conflict of interest Edward and Andrew Trusty left the meeting for this item. The other Board Members discussed the Platform group report and voted on a decision. This was done by setting up a separate Skype conversation.

John reported to the main meeting that the Platform meeting had agreed unanimously:

it was now time to make a firm decision.
we should build our own platform (native group support)

They also reported that they had voted against a system that Must have a Yahoo fronting capability

For 4, 1 Against.

The platform meeting noted that

not having Yahoo may be unpopular with some groups but they felt a good user friendly system that is well tested and not continuously changing is more important.
groups must have the choice to remain with Yahoo if they choose to opt out of the new system (Yahoo permitting).
they hoped to keep FD running in parallel for a while, if possible, but only with what support is given on a voluntary basis. This would be an option open to any future developer but will not be a condition of the tender.

The meeting agreed that the next steps are:

announce the platform decision on Central as soon as possible.
ask the platform working group to work on a requirement specification. John will set a timescale for this.
for the Board to consider the process for tendering.

DISAFFILIATION

The Board agreed to post on Development Working Group to clarify the process for disaffiliating a group at the request of the Group Owner/s.

REPORTS

Fundraising

Key activity during this month was the Microsoft vote for Freegle to win £32,000. We will find out on 16th October whether we made the cut. The response rate for this was very low. There has been discussion about this on the Funding Working Group.

It is clear from discussions on Central that there is little appetite amongst existing volunteers for active fundraising. It is also clear from the FD donation appeal that some members are receptive to being asked, and so far as we are aware have received no complaints from members for doing so. We will need to clarify expectations here once the platform discussion is concluded.

Edward has met with Paul Varags, Oxfam fundraiser, and is working on other ideas for fundraising. One idea is to host an event at the Waste House. Cat and Edward will investigate this option further

Action: Edward/Cat

We continue to get some donations via FD - we suspended the appeal during the Microsoft voting.

The Board are considering ways in which strategic environmental politicians and other influential organisations can be approached. Edward is working with Paul Varags to develop ideas.

Action: Edward/Cat

Finance

Financial Update for Freegle IPS Board

1.Current FY Position for Freegle UK

a.Income -

b.Expenditure

2.Current FY Summary for Freegle Ltd

a.Income - £1,112

b.Expenditure - £2,858

3.Status of Funds

a.Freegle UK Bank account currently stands at £3,438

b.Freegle Ltd Bank account currently stands at £14,229

4.Issues to resolve

a.Dependent upon Platform decision, funding for new direction including funding priorities for Tech/Media/Volunteer

Jobs still left to do

1. Sort out new authorisers for the Ltd account

2.Finalise the switch over tasks that are only half finished

3.Confirm with Jane the need to close the Uk account

4.As the Unity Bank sort code change doesn’t stop the old code from working then the need to change can wait until the UK account closure, although the new sort code should be given for all new uses.

Action: John

Board Secretary

Alison has agreed to do minutes from a transcript of the Skype meeting.

Company Secretary

No report

Chief Technology Officer

We continue to see Yahoo losing messages. Edward has raised this with them and had some contact but it is not resolved. His contact has apologised within the last week and is trying to find out more, and arrange a better contact; Edward is not optimistic.

We have agreed improved hosting with Bytemark. This is now provisioned, but use of it is waiting for platform discussions to conclude, as the nature of the migration depends a bit on future plans.

Edward has started work on a revamp of ModTools. It would aid integration with FD, and save costs, to host this on Freegle’s servers.

Media

We continue to have funds which are payable if there are regular media reports to Central. Edward has suggested that we should place a 3 month time limit on these, after which we should return them to the donor. Either we do this or we stop having to track it. The Board will vote on this suggestion on the Yahoo Group.

Action: Edward

Enewsletter

Cat will action newsletter going out in the coming week.

Action: Cat

Friday-Ad

Cat arranged a meeting for next week but they have rescheduled to 20th Oct 3pm for 2 hours in Brighton. Edward may join the meeting via Skype.

Action: Cat/Edward

City Reuse Depot

Cat is currently emptying the containers and will sell them and return money to funders. She will be sending an update to all CRD supporters this week. Cat is very grateful for Freegle’s support and very sorry that she has not been able to deliver the project as planned.

Thrift Festival

Alison (Middlesborough) is going to do a report to Central as soon as she is able. It was very successful. We want to do something different next year and try to use the occasion as a meet-up for all NE Freegle volunteers.

Patrons

Edward and Cat continue to work on ideas for patrons.

Action: Edward/Cat

Volunteer Support

We need to find someone to lead on this task.

Health and Safety

Nothing to report this month.

Policy

Jacky reported to the Board:

1. Discussion that started with looking at finding ways to do local press releases has expanded into wanting to encourage groups to expand their team to include a media volunteer. The approach suggested is a 'bottom up' one, in the spirit of grass roots and local autonomy, with the wiki providing group owners with the tools to recruit and support the additional role. The idea is being refined at the moment and then will be taken to Central for promotion.

2. A basic set rules for running caretaker groups were presented by the Mentors and agreed to be sensible.