GiveItAway

Give It Away

The old version of this page (before it was selected as a launch project) is available at OldGiveItAway

Summary

A site to make it as easy to give something unwanted away to charity as it is to throw it away.

• /OurWonderfulPeople

• /UserSpecifications

• /CodeDesign

• /InterfaceDesign

• /CharityEngagementAndFundingSituation

Project Mailing List Signup

http://www.mysociety.org/mailman/listinfo/mysociety-gia

The User's View

A user starts by being in possesssion of some item or items they want to get rid of. They surf to GiveItAway, enter a postcode, tick a box referring to the category of item, and enter an email address. They are then sent an email which is copied to a contact at the relevent charity. They can then discuss with the charity the details of whether the item is wanted, and if so, how it can be donated or collected.

Definite Features

• Postcode driven engine, cross-referencing with database of charitable organisations who have expressed interests in different types of items.

• Only charitable and voluntary organisations allowed to be recipients (to prevent abuse)

• Syndicatability - i.e optician's site with a 'give away your old glasses' page

To Be Decided in Development

• Which categories of items to be given away?

• How to allow charities to register their interest?

• How to publicise in the voluntary and wider world?

Additional questions to be addressed: DetailedQuestions

Champions

• Tom Steinberg - mySociety.org founder

Core Developer(s)

• To Be Decided - Please approach us if interested - core@mySociety.org

Volunteers

• Please submit yourself here if you want, or email volunteers@mySociety.org

• KakePugh

• Richard Alderson

• Simon Bates

• Ben Edwards

• Richard Nuttall

Budget

NYK

Timescales

NYK

(Chris Sharpe) -- to me, this seems one of the more useful of the five shortlisted sites. It certainly makes things easier for people wanting to donate items. It should be developed to make things as simple as possible for the charity shops as well. Perhaps it should present the shops (or their organizations) with a map showing where items are offerred for pick up at what times? Some detailed input would be useful - anyone know someone from Oxfam?

[David Hayward] - I think that this is one of the more useful ones as well. Also, it would be good if the people who have things to donate can have a list that they add to and individual charities can contact them if the charity needs an item like that, instead of a message being sent to the charity even if they don't need it.

[Mark White] The Brisbane, Australia City Council, where I work on the Internet Strategy Team, would be very interested in this project. We have a similar project underway now in the volunteer sector, Brisbane Gives and Brisbane Serves. Contact me for more info mark.white@brisbane.qld.gov.au

[Simon Bates] I made a suggestion that fed into this idea. I would like to help, but don't have (applicable) coding expertise. I would be happy to assist with testing and potentially in other non-coding ways. Once I know the development approach being taken, I might even learn how to contribute.

[David Papadopoulos] How would this be different from exsting 'WasteXchange' and FreeCycle sites? (See http://www.wasteexchange.net; http://www.waste-exchange.org; http://www.wasteexchange.com; http://freecycle.org among others. Some are non-profit while others are commercial.) Would it attempt to function as a meta-resource for these groups, so that if I entered my post code, the result might take me to one of these sites? In other words, some exchange sites already exist as charitable organisations, and they could conceivably be recipients of something I want to dispose. Or is the aim to make it exclusively available to a limited range of charitable organisations? I'd be keen to see recipients for things like old computer parts, used cartridges, software, books, construction materials, and maybe even a knowledge bank of sorts. For example, I just found an academic recipient for some industrial materials and records pertaining to a defunct UK manufacturer. The recipient is in the process of setting up an industrial archive, so the 'knowledge' artefacts are going to a good home, completely aside from the question of whether it is a charitable organisation.

[Josef Davies-Coates] - like David, I'm not sure how much added value this would give over already existing sites like freecycle and wasteexchange.

[Craig Nicol] - I've just found out about this project, and I'm a member of my local Freecycle group (I've got no experience of wasteexchange). The differences I see between freecycle and this project is that freecycle is for giving items to individuals whereas this project is for giving things to charities. Whilst I see some crossover in items offered to the two projects, there are certain items (for example: old print cartridges, glasses, stamps) which are only really useful to charities rather than individuals. I would certainly expect this project to focus on those areas, at least initially, and tie in with, for example, the Roy Castle appeal for print cartridges, World Vision's appeal for glasses or Oxfam's scheme for collecting old mobile phones, and to provide a place where people can discover charities looking for unusual items that most people would consider waste.

David Papadopoulos - 2006-03-06 My previous comment was several months ago - and I am now prompted to make further comments based on my experience of Freecycle. My local freecycle community uses a Yahoo Group as a medium for communication - but it turns out that there are several negative consequences of this, things that will only be resolved through an alternative structure. My recollection of GiveItAway and the nature of mysociety.org makes me think this is the right place to propose development of such an alternative.

There are four issues that are persistently making the freecycle experience difficult for users. These revolve around uneven access, scandals around 'traders', the absence of a discrete discussion forum and the relative inflexibility of the Yahoo interface/options.

The first is an issue of people with 24/7 broadband access (myself included) who can snap up items within seconds of them appearing on the list. This leaves a lot of people in the dust. There is no way for Yahoo to address this issue, but a bespoke application could implement any number of features that would provide access to a wider group of people. I'll leave aside suggestions for now, and just emphasise the potential social value of an equitable way of choosing recipients.

The second issue revolves around 'the spirit' of freecycle, where there is a nascent hostility towards unspecified 'traders' (with some deeply unpleasant, even racist undertones). Some people feel strongly that there should be a way of screening recipients. Again, Yahoo has no facility for this, whereas a bespoke scheme could develop classification and sorting functions.

The third issue is conceivably addressed by setting up some sort of allied discussion board, but this has yet to be implemented, and probably means even more work for the existing group moderators. Again, a beaspoke function could make this easier.

Lastly, the adoption of Yahoo means that the commercially-driven and not-particularly responsive development of features means that Freecycle users are burdened by a sytem that they cannot tailor to their requirements. In this case, a socially-aware software development would be a good fit with the needs of freecycle-type communities.

So, while mysociety.org may have decided to focus its efforts elsewhere, I'd like to suggest that there are good reasons to come back and look at development of alternatives to the Yahoo Group model.