So I was talking earlier today with Brimstone (Makers Local 256) about the psychological aspects of the finances that we at Midsouth Makers have encountered and it lead me to wondering what others might have for input on this. I'd like to hear about any sort of "herding cats", "controlling the masses", and psychological warfare type of situations, events, changes, or anything else that other spaces have encountered. And hopefully after reading our spaces encounter with it you'll grasp the idea a little better of what I mean.<div>
<br></div><div>Let me preface this with we are still very much so in our infancy stage and are learning by leaps and bounds every day.</div><div><br></div><div>In the very beginning, once we knew a financial goal that we would need to hit in order to move into a place, we decided we would need to implement some form of collections from the people showing up. I would assume that almost every space hits that exact same point. Well we figured out that we had X number of people coming, and we needed Y amount, so if we collected Z from each of those people we would get there in a matter of 3 or 4 months. So we decided we would see about starting some form of collection. What we did was make the mistake of terming that collection as "dues" which gave it a mandatory/required or else type of connotation. We paid the price as a result of that too. We've spent quite a bit of time trying to recover from the people that no longer show up likely due to that for the most part. The response that we essentially got was that we were attempting to sell a product that (and charge for it) that did not exist yet, and so people who were not seeing the vision felt no need to pitch in. What we've resorted to now is doing away with the term "dues" until there is an actual mandatory aspect to it. Now we have our set goal and are requesting pledges/donations in order to accomplish our goal, and that is exactly how we word it to all our regulars. Any time we give an update on our goal we usually word it as such "we are X number of donations of $45 away from our goal." This has overall had a reasonable result on our group working very nice as motivation and encouragement all without discouraging them or enticing them to run away as a result of a mandatory monthly payment.</div>
<div><br></div><div>We've had a few other little things here and there, and I'm personally very much so interested in other psychological concepts of handling the group whether it be finance related or not, but I hope that the above helps to explain the kind of input that I'm curious to hear about.<br clear="all">
<br>Thanks,<br>Daniel<br><br>- Copying one is plagiarism, copying many is research.<br>
</div>