The “green movement” is many things to many people: a philosophy, a political campaign, technologies.  To Eric Snyder, it is a way of life – i.e., the small choices in his everyday life that reduce any negative impact that his lifestyle has on the planet.  For instance to reduce landfill waste, Eric often gives away or “freecycles” perfectly usable items (e.g., TVs, chairs, board games) that he no longer wants to other people rather than throwing them away.

To help others do this in his hometown of Ottawa, Canada, Eric created a FullCircles Ottawa group on Yahoo Groups.  People post messages about items they no longer want, and other members “claim” them.  FullCircles Ottawa has 9500 members who have “rescued” tens of thousands items from the landfills.

At first, Eric was happy to have the Yahoo Group deliver the messages that facilitated the exchange of the “re-used” item.  But the Yahoo Group no longer meets all of his needs.  To increase the impact of the group, he realized that he needed to educate people more about freecycling and sustainable lifestyles.  He also found that he spent too much time “coaching” members to include the right information in each message.

“I wanted to embed videos and other resources about green lifestyles on my Yahoo Group, but I couldn’t.” says Eric Snyder, founder of FullCircles Ottawa.  “With Grouply, it literally took seconds to add new pages and embed videos throughout.  The best part is that Grouply required no migration from my Yahoo Group – it just automatically integrated it.  With other systems, I would have to leave Yahoo Groups and lose thousands of members in the process.”

In addition, the Grouply website provides message templates that ensure that members include the right information when they post.  Eric also uses the group analytics in Grouply to monitor membership and increase group activity.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Group Spotlight.