It's easy to get started - just start posting! Here's a breakdown of the sorts of posts you can share with your Buy Nothing group:

• GIVE: Offers of any goods or service you’d like to share, loan, or give away.
• ASK: Requests for services or any goods you’d like to borrow or keep.
• GRATITUDE: Sharing the gratitude is what fuels the magic.

Aside from gifts of goods and services, there are a few other types of gifts that fit into our mission:

Gifts of Self:

A Gift of Self is something that one participant can do for another. It could be help moving a couch, organizing a pantry, a ride for an errand, help in the garden, a request to lift your spirits or turn a bad day around with a good joke, the gift of your own company in the form of a game of Scrabble, or anything else that one neighbor might do for another.

Gifts of Talent:

A Gift of Talent is anything that one participant can teach another. Examples include: cooking or canning classes, computer lessons, tutoring or anything else that you would like to learn or teach.

Gifts of Time:

A Gift of time refers to offering or asking for someone to spend time with you. Examples include: jogging/walking/workout buddies, coffee/tea meet-ups, playdates for kids or pets, organizing an activity for the members of your group. This does not include open invitations to attend events that are also advertised elsewhere and open to the public, unless the recipient will be attending as a guest (or date) of the giver.

Gifts of Buy Nothing-ness:

Please DO share information about the Buy Nothing Project movement, events, and resources that provide inspiration and education about how to bring Buy Nothing to life. We're all for posts that bring people from Buy Nothing communities around the world together, in person and/or online.

To learn more about what you can do in a Buy Nothing group and how it all works, you can check out the free Buy Nothing Academy, visit our Help site, and/or read our book (you can check your public library for a copy).

Gifts of Self:

A Gift of Self is something that one participant can do for another. It could be help moving a couch, organizing a pantry, a ride for an errand, help in the garden, a request to lift your spirits or turn a bad day around with a good joke, the gift of your own company in the form of a game of Scrabble, or anything else that one neighbor might do for another.

Gifts of Talent:

A Gift of Talent is anything that one participant can teach another. Examples include: cooking or canning classes, computer lessons, tutoring or anything else that you would like to learn or teach.

Gifts of Time:

A Gift of time refers to offering or asking for someone to spend time with you. Examples include: jogging/walking/workout buddies, coffee/tea meet-ups, playdates for kids or pets, organizing an activity for the members of your group. This does not include open invitations to attend events that are also advertised elsewhere and open to the public, unless the recipient will be attending as a guest (or date) of the giver.

Gifts of Buy Nothing-ness:

Please DO share information about the Buy Nothing Project movement, events, and resources that provide inspiration and education about how to bring Buy Nothing to life. We're all for posts that bring people from Buy Nothing communities around the world together, in person and/or online.

Be a Both a Giver and an Asker:

If no one asked in their Buy Nothing groups, we wouldn’t be able to build gift economies. No single person is an island, so the key to a healthy gift economy is BOTH the giving and receiving. As we wrote in our book, “The ask, and the act of receiving, is the critically important other half of the gift economy equation. Asking requires trust, courage, a willingness to show our vulnerability, and faith that our requests will not diminish our value or respect in the eyes of others. In truth, our requests foster interdependence that benefits us all.”

The answer to this is here in the Fine Print:

Participate As Yourself:

• If your Buy Nothing group is using Facebook or a similar online platform, you must use your personal account, and not a business account.
• You may share or request goods or services from or for your business, school, charity or other organization, as long as those offers or requests are not presented as a way of marketing, advertising, recruiting, promoting or otherwise “spreading the word” about your business or organization.
• You may request and offer gifts in your group on behalf of your family, friends, organizations, etc. If you know someone who wants to participate in a Buy Nothing group and is able to do so, please help them establish membership in their own local Buy Nothing group. If you know someone who can participate with assistance, that is a welcome gift of self to offer. You can help them participate in any way that makes their Buy Nothing group accessible to them. We ask all group leaders and participants to expand their understanding of what accessibility and inclusion looks like to allow for shared accounts, people who offer and request on behalf of others, and people whose abilities and circumstances impact their participation in ways that may be new to you. Gift economies are especially strong when individuals are empowered to participate directly, as themselves, and there is a beautiful diversity in how this manifests.

How Does "Participate As Yourself" Work in Practice?

Let’s say you’re a professional fish groomer, and you want to share your skills. You could definitely offer your services, but they’d need to come from you, without any mention of your business name, directions to your business office, store, or website, or anything else that might even remotely smack of marketing or advertising. You could say something like “Offered: One grooming session for your goldfish. I’m a professional fish groomer and would love to give an hour of my time to help your Goldie look her best. Please let me know if your fish could use a spa day. If there’s a lot of interest, I’ll choose a recipient tomorrow around 8 pm.” As with everything, the offer needs to be completely free, given with no expectation of any return or reward. It’s fine if a conversation develops and people ask about your work, your training or expertise, your business, etc – there’s a difference between natural conversation between neighbors who are interested in learning about each other and using the group for marketing. In a Buy Nothing group, we practice building relationships through natural conversations, knowing this leads to a more resilient real life community in many ways.

The answer to this question is here in the Fine Print:

Participate As Yourself

• If your Buy Nothing group is using Facebook or a similar online platform, you must use your personal account, and not a business account.
• You may share or request goods or services from or for your business, school, charity or other organization, as long as those offers or requests are not presented as a way of marketing, advertising, recruiting, promoting or otherwise “spreading the word” about your business or organization.
• You may request and offer gifts in your group on behalf of your family, friends, organizations, etc. If you know someone who wants to participate in a Buy Nothing group and is able to do so, please help them establish membership in their own local Buy Nothing group. If you know someone who can participate with assistance, that is a welcome gift of self to offer. You can help them participate in any way that makes their Buy Nothing group accessible to them. We ask all group leaders and participants to expand their understanding of what accessibility and inclusion looks like to allow for shared accounts, people who offer and request on behalf of others, and people whose abilities and circumstances impact their participation in ways that may be new to you. Gift economies are especially strong when individuals are empowered to participate directly, as themselves, and there is a beautiful diversity in how this manifests.

• Reselling: There is no rule against the reselling of Buy Nothing Project gifts outside of the groups, but reselling must be done in ways that build trust. You simply need to share your intent to resell a gift when you request it. Givers are always free to give as they choose, and the disclosure of reselling respects each participant’s right to make informed and mindful choices about their giving. Many people are happy to give gifts that will be sold elsewhere to support organizations they respect, to help neighbors make a living by reselling, or to provide materials for artists and craftspeople who reuse gifted materials in their work. It is the responsibility of people who resell gifts to openly and clearly explain this when they ask for gifts they’d like to resell.

The answer to your question is in the following section of the Fine Print:

We Are A Gift Economy (No Buying/Selling/Trading)

• This is not the place to refer people to ways to meet their needs or desires through the market economy. This means the following things are not allowed here: marketing or advertising; referrals to services or work that's bought, sold, rented, or traded; offers or requests for paid employment; offers of items for sale, trade or rent; GoFundMe or Kickstarter campaigns and the like, requests for items you’d like to buy or rent; items you wish to barter, trade or exchange; real estate for sale or rent; encouraging people to buy, sell, or trade items or services elsewhere.
• Ask your local group’s leader(s) for your group’s policy on coupons, gift cards, and gifts of cash.
• This is the perfect place to offer and offer free gifts of all legal kinds, including free gifts of self in the form of services, skills, assistance, items of all kinds and in all conditions, etc. You may request or offer anything you might otherwise want or need to buy; since this is the Buy Nothing Project, you just may find what you want and need here without buying it.

The answer to this question is in the following section of the Fine Print:

Give From Your Own Abundance

• Please do not tell people where they can purchase an item, pay for a service, or receive charitable assistance. If you know of a free assistance program or free community resource that would be helpful to your group, we encourage you to check in with your group’s leader(s) about the creation of a Community Resource document in the group’s Files.

• The Buy Nothing Project welcomes the creation of a Community Resources file in your Buy Nothing group to list and link to all of the community resources that group members may find useful. The co-founders of the Buy Nothing Project believe that creating one document as a go-to resource for these links can help the group by providing permanent access to these resources in a way that doesn’t take up space in the daily feed. This gift economy was set up as an experiment to see just how many of the community’s needs can be met right here in the group. The creation of a Community Resources document is optional; check with your group’s leader(s)about their approach to this.

• The traditional charity and community support paradigm often splits people into “haves” and “have-nots,” and the two aren’t on equal footing. The Buy Nothing Project is not a charity, it’s a network of person-to-person gift economies that can subvert this traditional have-have not relationship. Everyone here is both a “have” with things to give away (whether those are tangible goods or gifts of self), and a “have not” with wants and needs that the group can help fulfill.

• Please do not direct each other to charitable organizations to meet requests shared in your Buy Nothing group. Focus instead on helping each other whenever and however you can with your own hands, time, stuff, and presence. This social experiment is about finding ways to strengthen connections between neighbors through giving, receiving, and sharing creatively.

• Build Trust: Recruiting:
• Do not use Buy Nothing groups as a means for collecting personal information about your neighbors, or to recruit people to join your religion, political party/candidate/ballot option, business or other organization. Buy Nothing groups are inclusive and equitable at their core. All group members should be respected as equals, just as they are.

• We Welcome Discussions:
• Your Buy Nothing group is not the place for personal status updates; promotion of current political parties, candidates or ballot options; religious conversion efforts; offering unsolicited advice; outside-of-this-group community announcements, discussions, or invitations to public events; lost and found pets or items.

Keep It Legal: 

• Don’t offer or request anything illegal. Follow all national, regional, and local laws, as well as the Terms of Service and community standards of any platform you’re using.
• The Buy Nothing Project also prohibits giving or asking for items that endorse or oppose any current political party, candidate, or ballot option.
• The Buy Nothing Project does allow neighbors to request, give, and receive items (example: signs, banners), and supplies to create these items, in support of social movements and events (example: Black Lives Matter, Pride parades, memorial vigils).

• This is not the place to refer people to ways to meet their needs or desires through the market economy. This means the following things are not allowed here: marketing or advertising; referrals to services or work that's bought, sold, rented, or traded; offers or requests for paid employment; offers of items for sale, trade or rent; GoFundMe or Kickstarter campaigns and the like, requests for items you’d like to buy or rent; items you wish to barter, trade or exchange; real estate for sale or rent; encouraging people to buy, sell, or trade items or services elsewhere.

• Ask your local group’s leader(s) for your group’s policy on coupons, gift cards, and gifts of cash.

• This is the perfect place to offer and offer free gifts of all legal kinds, including free gifts of self in the form of services, skills, assistance, items of all kinds and in all conditions, etc. You may request or offer anything you might otherwise want or need to buy; since this is the Buy Nothing Project, you just may find what you want and need here without buying it.

We Welcome Discussions:

We welcome discussions that are sparked by the giving, asking, and gratitude shared in the groups. All of our stuff and gifts of self can be great starting points for building connections between us. Please refer to our “Show your humanity” rule and to the Community Agreement created by the Equity Team to guide your discussions.

We ask that every discussion start naturally in response to a give, and ask, or sharing of gratitude. We also allow questions and discussions about the Buy Nothing Project, how to further the Buy Nothing Project mission to build inclusive and equitable gift economies, the platforms groups use, and gift economy culture, including links to relevant articles and information.

We welcome all perspectives about Buy Nothing groups. Discussions about improving the gift economy groups can be uncomfortable for some, and may include statements that are angry (including the use of profanity that isn’t directed at other people) or otherwise emotional, and that may mention other members by name or situation. No one can use threats or hate speech, but even difficult, controversial, and emotional discussions are welcome provided that they follow the Community Agreement.

We welcome discussions about reuse, repairing, and upcycling items that are given and asked for in the groups. If you are looking for information or advice about how to make something, how to reuse something, or how to repair something yourself, those make wonderful gifts of self that you are welcome to request here. We welcome efforts like this that help people live a Buy Nothing lifestyle. This includes requesting or offering information about where things that no one wants as a gift can be reused/recycled/upcycled to keep as much as possible out of landfills and incinerators (check with your group admin(s) to see if there’s a Buy Nothing Re-Use Store – Your Local Zero Waste Roadmap document in your group’s Files for this sort of information).

Your Buy Nothing group is not the place for personal status updates; promotion of current political parties, candidates or ballot options; religious conversion efforts; offering unsolicited advice; outside-of-this-group community announcements, discussions, or invitations to public events; lost and found pets or items.

Grounds for Removal from Group

• Disrespect for your group's membership criteria
• Spam, advertising/marketing, or offering items or services for rent, sale, barter, or trade
• Joining any group with a fraudulent account(s) or with the purpose to defraud others
• Hate speech, cruelty, or threats towards or between group members
• Dishonesty or obtaining items under false pretenses in order to sell said items without disclosing that intention
• Repeated instances of disregard for the rules or principles
• Blocking or refusing to communicate with a group leader
• Repeated complaints about the group or rules
• Statements that make it clear to the group and its leaders that you do not intend to build trust or participate in line with the mission and rules.
• Using the group as a platform for promoting any personal agenda that doesn’t meet the mission or rules of the Buy Nothing Project.

Respect Your Group's Membership Criteria

Buy Nothing communities using Facebook Private Groups and other platforms use a variety of membership approaches. 

The Buy Nothing Project was founded around the idea that local gift economies empower each person to Give Where You Live to create a resilient network of connections that see entire communities through times of joy and sorrow, ease and hardship. As part of this, we originally asked people to join only one Buy Nothing Facebook group, the one where they lived, and we helped people set up only one Facebook group per neighborhood. Things have changed a lot since then! You can read more about what we’ve learned along the way in this blog post.

Please reach out to your group’s local leaders if you have questions about your group's membership criteria. 

Participate As Yourself:

• If your Buy Nothing group is using Facebook or a similar online platform, you must use your personal account, and not a business account.
• You may share or request goods or services from or for your business, school, charity or other organization, as long as those offers or requests are not presented as a way of marketing, advertising, recruiting, promoting or otherwise “spreading the word” about your business or organization.

You may request and offer gifts in your group on behalf of your family, friends, organizations, etc. If you know someone who wants to participate in a Buy Nothing group and is able to do so, please help them establish membership in their own local Buy Nothing group. If you know someone who can participate with assistance, that is a welcome gift of self to offer. You can help them participate in any way that makes their Buy Nothing group accessible to them. We ask all group leaders and participants to expand their understanding of what accessibility and inclusion looks like to allow for shared accounts, people who offer and request on behalf of others, and people whose abilities and circumstances impact their participation in ways that may be new to you. Gift economies are especially strong when individuals are empowered to participate directly, as themselves, and there is a beautiful diversity in how this manifests.

Practice Patience - Let It Simmer:

You can build a stronger Buy Nothing group when you move more slowly to select recipients for your gifts, and when you choose recipients through a variety of methods. Letting your offer “simmer”, “soak” or “stew” for a bit before choosing a recipient will allow more people to respond to your offer. If you need an item gone right away, you can choose to use a variation of “first come, first served” or a “flash give” to select a recipient, but it’s much more positive for the entire group if you can use other methods, such as drawing a name from a hat.  

We hope this section of the Fine Print helps as a guide to offering this sort of Gift of Self:

How Does "Participate As Yourself" Work in Practice?

Let’s say you’re a professional fish groomer, and you want to share your skills. You could definitely offer your services, but they’d need to come from you, without any mention of your business name, directions to your business office, store, or website, or anything else that might even remotely smack of marketing or advertising. You could say something like “Offered: One grooming session for your goldfish. I’m a professional fish groomer and would love to give an hour of my time to help your Goldie look her best. Please let me know if your fish could use a spa day. If there’s a lot of interest, I’ll choose a recipient tomorrow around 8 pm.” As with everything, the offer needs to be completely free, given with no expectation of any return or reward. It’s fine if a conversation develops and people ask about your work, your training or expertise, your business, etc – there’s a difference between natural conversation between neighbors who are interested in learning about each other and using the group for marketing. In a Buy Nothing group, we practice building relationships through natural conversations, knowing this leads to a more resilient real life community in many ways.

Cross-Posting:

If you're posting your Gives and Asks on multiple platforms/groups/communities, please let people know. 

Curbside Giving:

Let your neighbors know if you’ve put something out on the curb as a free offering, or if you see something in your neighborhood that one of your neighbors might be able to use. 

Diverse Communication Styles Are Welcome:

Communicate in ways that are easy for you. What you say must fit into the rules about what sort of posts and comments belong, but how you express yourself is entirely up to you. Participating in your Buy Nothing Project group should be fun, not a complicated chore. Explain what you’re offering or requesting in the words of your choosing. There are no rules about how your communication with your group must be worded or formatted. It’s fine to use a lot of whole words to tell a story about your offer or request, it’s fine to use very few words, it’s fine to use abbreviations or acronyms, or to use any combination of words, images, and links to online content that help you express yourself. We ask everyone to extend patience and understanding to each other, as each Buy Nothing group includes people with a variety of languages, literacy levels, available time, physical ability, internet access, and communication styles. Accessible communication for one person may not match up with accessible communication for another person, so we can help each other out by bridging the gap when we see ways to add comments or questions that help with any confusion, to make posts and comments more understandable by more participants. The more your personality comes through in your offers, requests, and comments, the more you’ll build connections with others. You’ll build more connections when you share stories, and connections are one of the best Buy Nothing gifts.

Please speak up! 

If you see something that you feel is not in keeping with the rules and standards of the Buy Nothing Project, feel free to let the participant know. Local Group leaders can’t be in the groups at all times, and it’s always helpful when neighbors remind each other how Buy Nothing works. 

Regarding Complaints:

If you have a complaint about another member, you have several options: Ignore content that bothers you, knowing that everyone participates as they like and that no one is ever forced to request or offer a gift they’re uncomfortable with; use the Community Agreement as a guide to start a discussion with your group, addressing whatever the issue is; approach the person via other means, away from the group, to suggest a discussion to resolve the issue, as you would for complaints about people in your life outside of your Buy Nothing group. Each Buy Nothing participant is responsible for resolving their own conflicts. Local group leaders are not professional mediators or counselors, and cannot step in to resolve conflicts between group participants

If your complaint is about your local group leader, please know that we are not decision-makers for any Buy Nothing groups. We encourage you to work out your differences directly with your local leader or within your group to create a dialogue about your concern. Buy Nothing groups are “brave spaces” where we allow the space for people to speak up if they feel they’ve been treated unjustly. Our Facebook Conflict Resources page might also be helpful.

If you'd like a fresh start, we welcome you to join your Buy Nothing community via our independent platform, the BuyNothing app (for iPhone and Android). Our app is structured to make Buy Nothing as accessible as possible to everyone, and it empowers each person to act as their own leader/admin. We hope you'll check it out (and you can always use it in addition to participating in your Buy Nothing group on Facebook or another platform).

We are an inclusive, equitable movement, not open to active haters. We encourage everyone to report accounts that are responsible for hate speech and hateful action directly to the platform they are using, so that the platform and the group are safer for all.

Don't Give Up - Keep Trying!

Sometimes a Give is posted and no one is interested in receiving it. Sometimes a Give is posted and many people respond, but there's only enough for one person. Sometimes Asks are posted but not fulfilled. Don’t give up! It can be discouraging or feel embarrassing when your offers and requests aren’t met with enthusiasm. It can be discouraging to request a gift and see it given to someone else. Participating in a gift economy can make all of us feel emotionally vulnerable at times. There are many reasons that offers and requests aren’t met. Sometimes online platforms hide content from group members, sometimes people are too busy or focused on outside events to check in with their Buy Nothing groups, sometimes it’s just one of those days or weeks. Please know that this is a shared experience. We encourage you to try again – offer a different gift, or offer the same gift with a new description; post your request again, with a genuine bit of your personality in your wording. Experiment, and feel free to share your feelings and frustrations with your group, to request help and tips that can make your offers and requests more successful.

Give Freely: Trading, bartering, buying, or selling is counter to the Buy Nothing Project mission. Keep in mind that all gifts must be freely given without any expectation of reward or another gift in return. There is no limit to giving or receiving in the groups. Participants may offer and request as much as they’d like, as often as they’d like. No one is under any obligation to give or receive. Everyone may ask as they choose, and give as they choose.

Give From Your Own Abundance:

• Please do not tell people where they can purchase an item, pay for a service, or receive charitable assistance. If you know of a free assistance program or free community resource that would be helpful to your group, we encourage you to check in with your group’s leader(s) about the creation of a Community Resource document in the group’s Files.
• Please do not direct each other to charitable organizations to meet requests shared in your Buy Nothing group. Focus instead on helping each other whenever and however you can with your own hands, time, stuff, and presence. This social experiment is about finding ways to strengthen connections between neighbors through giving, receiving, and sharing creatively.

We Are A Gift Economy (No Buying/Selling/Trading)

• This is not the place to refer people to ways to meet their needs or desires through the market economy. This means the following things are not allowed here: marketing or advertising; referrals to services or work that's bought, sold, rented, or traded; offers or requests for paid employment; offers of items for sale, trade or rent; GoFundMe or Kickstarter campaigns and the like, requests for items you’d like to buy or rent; items you wish to barter, trade or exchange; real estate for sale or rent; encouraging people to buy, sell, or trade items or services elsewhere.