How it works

Sharebay is a free, community library of anything.

Avail of thousands of free goods and services offered by members all over the world, by offering at least one yourself.

Free to use, and always will be

We don’t advertise, we don’t track you. There’s no catch—just a community of thoughtful people who believe that sharing goods and services is good for you, and good for the world.

How Sharebay is good for the world:

• Reduces waste and encourages reuse of resources
• Promotes collaboration and sharing
• Builds connection and trust in local areas and around the world
• Helps organise community programs
• Helps you meet like-minded people in your area
• Helps organise meetups, find friends and more with our map and member searching system
• Supports an Open Access Economy. Find out more here.

Getting started

To get started, just create your account, make an offer listing and start sharing free goods and services with other members. That's it!

For best results, add as much information about yourself as you can, so we can better match you with things you might be interested in.

By default, new offer listings are available to anyone, but we do recommend members to require responders to have at least one Stripe, so you may need to have at least one item on offer before you can avail of other offers. See The Trust System.

What to offer

You can offer anything on Sharebay as long as it is genuinely free, and yours to give. Please just respect our Do's and Don'ts guidelines →

You can also request an item or service that another member might be able to help you with.

Do:

• Do offer complete, working items
• Do offer services that you can provide to a reasonable standard
• Be courteous and give timely responses to queries

Don’t:

• Don't offer faulty or incomplete items unless issues or missing parts are clearly stated
• Don't offer items or services that may be illegal in yours or the recipient’s country
• Don't use Sharebay to advertise paid products or services †
• Don't offer items or services that may cause offence or bring Sharebay.org into disrepute *

If you’re not sure what to offer, check out our listing templates for some commonly offered items and services.

† You may post offers that promote a paid product as long as the item on offer is fully free.
* Offers that do meet these criteria will be removed, and members may be banned from the site.

The Trust System

Sharebay uses a three level ‘stripe’ system that denotes the overall trust and giving activity of a member.

These Trust Levels are as follows:

Contributing Member (has at least one live offer listed)

Active Contributor (has given at least once)

Prolific Contributor (has given to at least three other members)

Denotes a member who hasn’t yet listed or completed an offer

Trust Stripes are awarded daily based on the total number of offers and completed transactions a member has made using this simple point system:

• 1 point for every offer listed *
• 4 points for every offer completed

Higher Stripe Members can choose to limit access to their offers based on a respondent's Trust Score. This acts as a safeguard for those who may prefer to offer higher value items.

* Up to a maximum of 3 points. Offers must be live. Request listings are not counted, however fulfilling another member’s request is counted as a completed offer

The Transaction Record

Sharebay logs every transaction that happens. This transaction record is public and helps to ensure transparency and trust on the site. Each completed transaction is recorded as a ‘gave’ and ‘got’ score to giver and receiver respectively. These totals are displayed in every member’s profile page, along with a link to view their site transactions.

The Trust Score, Transaction Record and offer counters help you make an informed choice about who you want to share or have contact with.

The transaction system works like this:

In the case of responding to a request, it’s slightly different:

A pending transaction can be cancelled at any time by either member.

HonorPay

Sharebay uses HonorPay - an independent award app that allows you to send virtual awards to show your gratitude and appreciation to any other member. 

When you register for Sharebay, you have the option to create a linked HonorPay account as well. HonorPay is a free service and you can log in using the same email and password as for Sharebay. Find out more about HonorPay here.

A member's Honor score is displayed beside their name. If you are especially pleased with a transaction, you can award the member an Honor via their profile page.

Member safety

There are a number of measures that we use to make our site as safe as possible for members:

• Spam or offensive content reporting. Every listing has a link at the bottom to report it anonymously and safely. Our site actively follows up reports and removes inappropriate content.
• Profile reporting. You can report another member who behaves inappropriately or who is abusing the site using the link at the bottom of their profile. Reports are anonymous and all are followed up.
• Member blocking. If you no longer wish to hear from or see content from a member, you can block them using the link below a member’s profile. When you block a member, neither of you will be able to send messages or view each other’s content.

NB When arranging to meet other members to collaborate or exchange goods, be sensible at all times. Arrange to meet in a public place, or bring someone with you. Never meet someone you don’t know alone in a strange place.

Automatic translations

Because Sharebay is an international site, we have added optional automatic translations by Google. To set up translation, just set your preferred language and enable automatic translations in your Edit profile & settings page.

Note: Accuracy of translations vary according to language.

Graphics from OpenClipArt.org

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