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Club recruitment Neighbour Recruitment Proposal to a housing association: Increasing tenant mutual support Aim: Monitoring and Funding: Stage One: Stage Two: Stage Three: Stage Four: Stage Five: Stage Six: Email to freecyclers in your local area: Email to freecycling moderators Marketing ideas to be worked up

 

Club recruitment

Idea in brief: Discuss with/suggest to those who run clubs the benefits of creating a database of their equipment that can be loaned out to their members. Examples include Sports Clubs, Religious Groups' libraries eg a Buddhist Centre's library

 

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Neighbour Recruitment

Suggested words for visiting houses on your neighbouring streets:

"Good evening; I'm one of your neigbours and I'm wondering if there's anything that you'd like to borrow from me or from another of your neighbours? Does anything come to mind?

 

 

-ok, thanks. Then can I just ask whether you sometimes watch DVDs?

 [If yes] The DVDs you watch, are they mostly owned or borrowed?

 

 

And do you sometimes read books?

[If yes] The books you read, are they mostly owned or borrowed?

 

 

The only other things I want to ask whether you use tools (including a lawn-mower for example) and camping equipment?

Where would you go to borrow any of these?

 

 

The items that you own and don't use every day; how would you go about lending these to others, if you wanted to?

If I paid a £5 deposit on a DVD of yours, do you have any DVDs that you'd be willing to lend to neighbours?

 

 

And do you have any spare shelving or large storage boxes that you would be willing to donate to me? (No harm in asking)

 

 

I've got a few DVD's with me, and a list of those being lent in the neighbourhood at present, if you'd like to borrow any. This list will probably grow soon, so I'll come back sometime with news of what your neighbours are lending.

 

 

Can I ask if it's likely from what I've said that you might look in the next month at the things your neighbours are offering on the website freelender.org that I've been working on with others to support local borrowing and lending?

 

 

If you don't use computers much, I'm willing to help any of my neighbours find things by phoning me, so I'll leave you my home number, if I may? If you have any ideas about how your neighbours can do more to pool resources, please let me know. I'm looking forward to us building a stronger community in this area. Thank you for your time this evening;

 

Can you ask if anyone else in the house would like to talk to me about how they might borrow more stuff from neighbours rather than buy it? Thanks.

 

 

It's been  a pleasure to meet you. Thanks again for your time."

 

(NB Check this strategy against the 6 persuasion techniques article)

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Proposal to a housing association: Increasing tenant mutual support

 

Aim:

To encourage tenants to support other tenants to get useful items at lower cost.

 

Monitoring and Funding:

The proposed project will be delivered in six stages with a review of each stage's achievements before the commissioning of the next stage.

All six stages can be achieved within a timescale of 3-6 months with a teleconference between each stage.

The minimum investment per stage is £300-£900, depending on the partnership arrangements.

6 stages costed in the middle of this range would result in a project size of £3,600.

Freelender staff time to be paid at £30/hour

Local Mediation Service to respond to requests for mediation at a cost of £x.

Targets can be set for both: 1) savings for tenants and 2) an increase in measures of community cohesion.

 

Stage One:

The Housing Association, Mediation Service and Freelending CIC participate in a joint clarification of how the project will measure:

1. tenant participation during each stage
2. tenant savings achieved from completion of the stage

With clarity as to how much of each outcome is expected at each stage it will be possible to then determine whether we are on target to proceed to the next stage, and to adjust funding according to results achieved. Provided that targets are reached, the project would progress on an understanding that there will be a teleconference to review reports written by Freelending CIC/ The Mediation Service at the end of each stage.

Stage Two:

Interviewing tenants and door to door recruitment to a workshop on the theme of “How to get use of better stuff (eg pushchairs, playstations, bikes and tools) through freecycling, freelending and fractional ownership.” This workshop to take place within stage two.

Stage Three:

Tenants interview tenants and recruit interviewers. These interviews will uncover more of the local obstacles to, and opportunities for, sharing.

These interviews will generate a wish-list of items most wanted within the housing association (to be rationalised at stage 4)

Other interview questions will generate discussion of ways people can address problems that might arise; i) increasing awareness of outside agencies in mediation that can be called in when certain thresholds have been crossed & ii) building skills to tackle the more minor local problems without calling in agencies.

Stage Four:

Wish list of items as generated at stage three to be publicised. The demand for these items to be addressed through a combination of:

a) peer-to-peer passing on of items

b) grants obtained by charities*

c) support from neighbouring organisations*

d) sponsorship from outside organisations eg Mothercare*

[*Who approaches the charities, neighbouring organisations and sponsorship companies can be agreed between us i.e. either Housing Association, Mediation Service or Freelending CIC.]

Stage Five:

A system of lending is established across the housing association / locality.

One way of doing this involves staffed premises to support the monitoring of items being dropped off and collected. Relationships and trust are built up with the people who staff the premises and who monitor the ownership and whereabouts of items using the website created by Freelending CIC - i.e. freelender.org.

The preferred way for the partners/users may however be direct peer to peer lending with possibly less use of websites and without any other intermediaries involved.

Some hybrid of these two models is foreseen.

Stage Six:

The Housing Association, Mediation Service and Freelending CIC participate in a joint review on an agreed date of all research and outcomes that have been collected and written up by us all in order to clarify how the aims can be sustained locally by the ongoing activity of tenants supporting each other.

 

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Email to freecyclers in your local area:

 

Dear xxxx

I'd like your tools to get maximum use.

I'm a freelender, using the website freelender.org , and I would offer these tools on that site so others can borrow them.

I live in BS7 too so could come round eg this evening.

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Email to freecycling moderators

Select the local group from the following list:

Freecycle groups in UK

Dear Freecycle group moderators

I understand that some freecycling groups would rather that people wanting to borrow (and lend) stuff did so elsewhere.

Perhaps you could encourage such people to do so via the website freelender.org .

Would you do this by sending out a special notice to members or by adding a link to the groups page; please let me know, and ask for more information/text if this would help.

Yours trying to provide a solution and support borrowing and lending,

xxxx

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Marketing ideas to be worked up