Please note: The first section of this page is the Community Commitment created by the Buy Nothing Project to serve all BN participants across all platforms, including our independent app.
The second section of this page holds a link to the Community Agreement created by an independent Equity Team made up of Buy Nothing admins to serve BN Groups using Facebook's Private Groups platform, and also a description of the process involved with the creation of the Equity Team's Community Agreement.
The second section of this page holds a link to the Community Agreement created by an independent Equity Team made up of Buy Nothing admins to serve BN Groups using Facebook's Private Groups platform, and also a description of the process involved with the creation of the Equity Team's Community Agreement.
Buy Nothing Project
Community Commitment
THE BUY NOTHING PROJECT is an international network of local gift economies. Buy Nothing offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors. We believe that communities are more resilient, sustainable, equitable, and joyful when they have functional gift economies. Below are the Community Commitment and Community Guidelines that make Buy Nothing Buy Nothing, and keep it safe and welcoming for all.
You commit to the following when you choose to use the Buy Nothing app:
- Participate at your own risk. You are responsible for all of your interactions online and in person, and must do your own research and make your own choices in order to keep yourself safe.
- Keep Everything Legal. You must respect all laws and regulations in force everywhere you participate in the BuyNothing community.
- You are 18 years of age and older.
- No hate speech, threats or harassment. No gifts that glorify hate groups or call upon others to join in active hate. We define hate speech as words or images that demean or dehumanize another person or group of people on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar historically marginalized metric.
- Give freely, receive freely, and share freely. No selling, buying, renting, trading, bartering, or otherwise engaging in this-for-that interactions. No marketing or advertising. All gifts offered and requested must be freely-given without expectation of any reward or reimbursement. No fundraising or requests for money. Remember that all gifts have the same value in Buy Nothing: Priceless.
- Give, Ask, and Share without limit. You may offer as much as you’d like to give. You may request as much as you’d like to receive. You may not find homes for all of your gifts and you may not receive everything you ask for, but you are encouraged to offer and ask without limit on how much, how often, market value, etc.
- Build Trust. Be honest in your communication and strive to build trust through genuine interactions. No spam, scams, trolling, or the like.
- Be accountable for yourself and your impact on the Buy Nothing community. You are always in charge of your own posts and can edit or remove things as you desire. You may block anyone you don’t want to connect with. Personal grievances and issues with other community members need to be resolved elsewhere, not in the community feed.
- Show your humanity. Remember that each person you meet here is a real person. None of us are perfect, sometimes we get things right and sometimes we get things wrong. Speak your truth without fear, listen with compassion, build the sort of community you want to live in, and allow people the time and space to learn better so they can do better.
- Be open to creativity. Experiment to find new ways and new gifts to give, request, and share. Find ways to use your Gives, Asks, Gratitude and Shares to build a more equitable, joyful, inclusive, sustainable, and compassionate community.
- Real Humans Only - Participate as yourself. No bots, no spam, no accounts for fraudulent purposes, no troll accounts. No spam or troll behavior.
- If you're participating on our independent BuyNothing app. Adhere to this Community Commitment, our Community Guidelines, Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Equity Team’s Community Agreement
Your BN Community can use the Community Agreement created by the Equity Team that was created by a diverse group of Buy Nothing admins, working independently from the Buy Nothing Founders. This is the Equity Team's work product, created to serve BN communities using Facebook's Private Groups platform.
Click here to read the Community Agreement, created by the Equity Team.
This will take you directly to a public Google Doc owned by the Equity Team.
Translations of the Community Agreement are available in Deutsch / German, Español / Spanish, and Français / French.
This dynamic document may be improved by the Equity Team without notice, so please read it often.
The Buy Nothing Project mission is to build an international network of hyper-local gift economies where people can give, receive, and share freely, without strings attached or any expectation of reward except the joy of sharing, and where the real wealth being built is a more resilient, interconnected and interdependent community. This cannot truly happen until we address the poison of racism and other forms of oppression and start to develop an actively anti-racist and anti-oppression culture.
At the end of 2019, an Equity Team was created to examine this goal. The Buy Nothing Equity Team is led by DiDi Delgado who is a local Buy Nothing Project leader in New York. DiDi is an author, international activist and anti-racist educator from Boston, MA. The team is also led by Katherine Valenzuela Parsons who was a Buy Nothing Global Team member (while that Team was active), and anti-racist advocate originally from Texas but now leads a local Buy Nothing group in central Virginia. Katherine is also the director of Decolonize Abundance, a reparations and food justice project co-founded by Didi and Katherine. With Decolonize Abundance, "a new idea was born in the gift economy world with a focus on creating a space where people give on the basis of reparations to Black organizers, Black families, and Black communities. Especially in these times, they agreed that now more than ever, a new path needed to be paved in gift economy communities via mutual aid, reparations, and advocacy groups." (from the Decolonize Abundance "Who We Are" page). Visit the Decolonize Abundance website and follow Decolonize Abundance on Facebook to join this important movement. Daria Kelsey from Tacoma, WA who was also a Buy Nothing Global team member (while that Team was active) later joined as an Equity Team lead to assist in the vast efforts necessary to do this difficult work. The Equity Team consists of Buy Nothing Project group members, local admins, and people who were on the Development Team and the Global Team while those Teams were active, who are from various places around the world. Every attempt has been made to center the voices of the members of the Equity Team and many other local admins and members who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other systemically oppressed people in our larger society.
Below are a few questions that we’ve been working on answering as we attempt to improve the impact of the Buy Nothing Project.
– How can we assist groups to become more sustainable and more equitable gift economy communities?
– How can we address racism, inequity, and injustice through our giving, receiving, and sharing?
– How can groups consider the safety and well being of all people but especially our systematically oppressed members when giving, receiving, and sharing?
– How can groups become a brave space for discussions about white supremacy, racism, classism, ableism and other forms of oppression and specifically how these issues show up in the giving, receiving, and sharing that happens in the Buy Nothing group?
– Do our group’s boundaries follow old redlines or other official or unofficial segregation boundaries? If so, can we reconfigure our group to cross these lines to form a new sharing group neighborhood identity that doesn’t gentrify or disrespect existing neighborhood identities?
– Is this group safe and welcoming to Black, Indigenous and other People of Color, disabled members, LGBTQI+ members and other diverse intersections, both as members and as admins? Does our group fully include all neighborhood members as participants and leaders, however individuals desire to participate?
– How can we encourage people of privilege to take their responsibilities seriously, educating themselves, listening to the opinions and suggestions of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and other systematically oppressed people and act upon them?
When the Buy Nothing Project started in 2013, the founding team created a “Keep it Civil” rule. As the movement grew, it became very clear that the word civil was being used by various members, local admins, and support team volunteers as a tool of silencing in the guise of respectability, as is done by many other people outside the Buy Nothing Project. The co-founders began working to eradicate the word “civility” from the Buy Nothing Project vocabulary in late 2018. We would like to refer to Coshaundra Dillard’s article to further articulate the concerns with civility: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/who-decides-whats-civil
The co-founders began working to address the destructive impact of “civility” on people participating in the Buy Nothing Project in late 2018 and worked with the Buy Nothing Project Global Team to write a new Code of Conduct. Still, this new document contained several uses of the word “civil” and “civility.” The co-founders removed the Code of Conduct from the Buy Nothing Project website in early 2020.
To replace the problematic Code of Conduct, the Equity Team created this Community Agreement over a period of several months in early 2020. This new document was provided to Local Admins for use in existing groups before being published here on the website. The Equity Team and Buy Nothing Project founding team hope that local group leaders, members, and support team volunteers will be empowered to use this document in their Buy Nothing groups to establish a more inclusive and equitable place to achieve the goals and mission of Buy Nothing Project gift economies.
This will take you directly to a public Google Doc owned by the Equity Team.
Translations of the Community Agreement are available in Deutsch / German, Español / Spanish, and Français / French.
This dynamic document may be improved by the Equity Team without notice, so please read it often.
The Buy Nothing Project mission is to build an international network of hyper-local gift economies where people can give, receive, and share freely, without strings attached or any expectation of reward except the joy of sharing, and where the real wealth being built is a more resilient, interconnected and interdependent community. This cannot truly happen until we address the poison of racism and other forms of oppression and start to develop an actively anti-racist and anti-oppression culture.
At the end of 2019, an Equity Team was created to examine this goal. The Buy Nothing Equity Team is led by DiDi Delgado who is a local Buy Nothing Project leader in New York. DiDi is an author, international activist and anti-racist educator from Boston, MA. The team is also led by Katherine Valenzuela Parsons who was a Buy Nothing Global Team member (while that Team was active), and anti-racist advocate originally from Texas but now leads a local Buy Nothing group in central Virginia. Katherine is also the director of Decolonize Abundance, a reparations and food justice project co-founded by Didi and Katherine. With Decolonize Abundance, "a new idea was born in the gift economy world with a focus on creating a space where people give on the basis of reparations to Black organizers, Black families, and Black communities. Especially in these times, they agreed that now more than ever, a new path needed to be paved in gift economy communities via mutual aid, reparations, and advocacy groups." (from the Decolonize Abundance "Who We Are" page). Visit the Decolonize Abundance website and follow Decolonize Abundance on Facebook to join this important movement. Daria Kelsey from Tacoma, WA who was also a Buy Nothing Global team member (while that Team was active) later joined as an Equity Team lead to assist in the vast efforts necessary to do this difficult work. The Equity Team consists of Buy Nothing Project group members, local admins, and people who were on the Development Team and the Global Team while those Teams were active, who are from various places around the world. Every attempt has been made to center the voices of the members of the Equity Team and many other local admins and members who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other systemically oppressed people in our larger society.
Below are a few questions that we’ve been working on answering as we attempt to improve the impact of the Buy Nothing Project.
– How can we assist groups to become more sustainable and more equitable gift economy communities?
– How can we address racism, inequity, and injustice through our giving, receiving, and sharing?
– How can groups consider the safety and well being of all people but especially our systematically oppressed members when giving, receiving, and sharing?
– How can groups become a brave space for discussions about white supremacy, racism, classism, ableism and other forms of oppression and specifically how these issues show up in the giving, receiving, and sharing that happens in the Buy Nothing group?
– Do our group’s boundaries follow old redlines or other official or unofficial segregation boundaries? If so, can we reconfigure our group to cross these lines to form a new sharing group neighborhood identity that doesn’t gentrify or disrespect existing neighborhood identities?
– Is this group safe and welcoming to Black, Indigenous and other People of Color, disabled members, LGBTQI+ members and other diverse intersections, both as members and as admins? Does our group fully include all neighborhood members as participants and leaders, however individuals desire to participate?
– How can we encourage people of privilege to take their responsibilities seriously, educating themselves, listening to the opinions and suggestions of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and other systematically oppressed people and act upon them?
When the Buy Nothing Project started in 2013, the founding team created a “Keep it Civil” rule. As the movement grew, it became very clear that the word civil was being used by various members, local admins, and support team volunteers as a tool of silencing in the guise of respectability, as is done by many other people outside the Buy Nothing Project. The co-founders began working to eradicate the word “civility” from the Buy Nothing Project vocabulary in late 2018. We would like to refer to Coshaundra Dillard’s article to further articulate the concerns with civility: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/who-decides-whats-civil
The co-founders began working to address the destructive impact of “civility” on people participating in the Buy Nothing Project in late 2018 and worked with the Buy Nothing Project Global Team to write a new Code of Conduct. Still, this new document contained several uses of the word “civil” and “civility.” The co-founders removed the Code of Conduct from the Buy Nothing Project website in early 2020.
To replace the problematic Code of Conduct, the Equity Team created this Community Agreement over a period of several months in early 2020. This new document was provided to Local Admins for use in existing groups before being published here on the website. The Equity Team and Buy Nothing Project founding team hope that local group leaders, members, and support team volunteers will be empowered to use this document in their Buy Nothing groups to establish a more inclusive and equitable place to achieve the goals and mission of Buy Nothing Project gift economies.