Page Comparison

Agnieszka and Karolina started a facebook group based on foodsharing.de's experience around March 2016.

Community: 15 core people who meet every two weeks, only 1 verified foodsaver so far (because of a lack of cooperations) and around 30 more aspiring ones (by 09/2016). After 10-20 interviews for different media in May they now get contacted by people all over Poland and other cities already started foodsharing initiatives as well.

Food-Share Points: 3 fridges, soon 4 (by 09/2016). They call them 'Jadłodzielnia' (from 'jadło' - the fodder + 'dzielić' - to share + '-nia' - marks a location). Are used by the people, but sometimes empty.

Stores: The most lacking part so far. No regular pick-ups, just spontaneous calls from a bakery, a chef-in-training, and a seafood store.

Legal: foodsharing Warszawa doesn't want to register as an organization, because as private individuals noone is liable for possible problems due to the FSPs.

Difficulties: getting more stores to cooperate. Will focus from Oct. 2016 onwards to get regular cooperations. The Polish gift law, which makes the recipient of a gift pay 10% of its value to the state.

Solutions for handling the gift tax problem:

1. First solution is clandestineness (The food is 'abandoned' and 'coincidentally' gets found by the foodsaver. Downside: Makes the cooperation inofficial and illegitimate.)
2. Second solution is price reduction (where the store reduces the price to ridiculously small amounts and thus makes the tax almost non-existent. Downside: There still is money involved and the store has more work in accounting.)
3. Third solution are tax-free amounts (If the value of the gifted items doesn't exceed a certain amount of money over some years, no tax needs to be paid. Downside: Work in accounting.)

How does it work? Extensive use of facebook:
Fanpage with 2246 likes (by 09/2016) https://www.facebook.com/FoodsharingWarszawa/
A closed group for the orgateam consisting of 14 people (by 09/2016)
A closed group for private foodsharing, dumster diving and freeganism, which already existed before, with 2069 members (by 09/2016)
A closed group for connecting organizations that have food with those who need it with 13 members (by 09/2016)
A closed group to coordinate the expansion of foodsharing to other Polish cities with 26 members (by 09/2016) 

They have no quiz. 3 trial pick-ups are needed to become a verified foodsaver, two meetings must be visited to get the password to the orga-googledrive. On that drive there are spreadsheets about FSPs, pick-ups and verified and aspiring foodsavers, meeting minutes, a general rules sheet, flyers and posters, also to approach stores and basically everything they work on. The googledrive is like the office of foodsharing Warsaw, and who has the password is part of the orgateam.

Still dreaming of translating foodsharing.de. Interested to try out a basic software. Already thinking about building an app for themselves.