My Nonprofit Reviews

In my opinion and experience, The Freecycle Network (TFN) suffers from Founder's Syndrome and will continue to do so as long as Deron Beal remains at the helm. There is a long sordid story that goes along with not only having been the listowner of Freecycle St. Louis, listowner for the Missouri state modsquad, previously the New Group Approver for Missouri as well as a member of the IMOD team and a former Group Outreach and Assistance team member - obviously I've seen aspects of TFN from many angles and advantage points. In my experience, anytime a volunteer asks questions that Deron or "the inner hub" feels he doesn't want addressed, that volunteer is moderated (gagged) on the OIDG and the country's modsquad forums which were initially setup for the VERY purpose of facilitating communication between Deron, the inner hub, and the vast team of volunteer moderators. Eventually I saw the writing on the wall after years of watching large waves of TFN volunteer moderators leave the organization, each time repeatedly citing the same problems as previous waves of departing moderators had expressed. So after a very long deliberation, I moved Freecycle St. Louis from TFN to another Reuse type network where the membership has continued on the mission of keeping good items from the landfill without TFN's interventions.

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