[hackerspaces] Hackerspace in Poland - hackerspace.pl

[Eric Michaud]

If you've noticed the majority of spaces go by the matra members pay first. Which means it should be a membership based organization that by virtue of the dues supports rent and utilities. It makes it easier because you become less reliant on fickle corporate sponsorship that can be pulled at any moment.

Also figure out what your expenses will be such as rent. Your not going to be able to get the ultimate space out of the gate that's a goal to get to. Case example the space for Pumping Station: One we pay 1500 US dollars a month and currently have 33 members paying 50 a month. Doing the math we have 1650 a moth to work with currently. Add that they are setup for autodeduct from checking or credit accounts it makes it easier on us to collect that and meet it every month, plus more members are coming in.

We have already had several thousand dollars of new equipment being donated but we clearly expect that to not happen again. It's more of a mental note so we don't get our hopes up and say hey we don't want as many members here because we get free money every month. Now what you can do is for projects make the budget then go shopping for grants and or sponsorship for individual projects or pool the money of the members involved with their own pocket books. Mind you very often just asking for materials depending on what it is goes a long way. Some people are just helpful and would love to be with you and your members on that project.

-E.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcin Kaszynski <marcin at elksoft.pl>

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:25:58 
To: <discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org>
Subject: [hackerspaces] Hackerspace in Poland - hackerspace.pl


Hi everyone,

time for me to stop lurking and say hello :)

I am one of the people building a hackerspace in Warsaw; you might have 
seen or heard a mention during last call-in -- olleolleolle and kugg 
flew all the way here to talk about it at http://bootstrap.pl, our 
monthly developer meetup. We have started very recently, so we are 
looking for more people, the right place and ways to finance it.

One of my main concerns is making the place sustainable, either by 
finding enough members to cover expenses out of their (relatively small) 
fees or by finding other sources of income. We might be able to find a 
place very cheaply (I know some of you were lucky enough to get one for 
free -- great!), but it is hard to depend on that.

We are looking into the obvious ways like grants and government 
programs, but my question is: what are your experiences with other 
sources of income? I know that selling drinks and supplies like solder 
is an option. Does that provide enough money to justify the burden of 
keeping stock, dealing with suppliers and doing other non-hackery stuff? 
What about other commercial activities like renting out parts of the 
space for coworking or paid workshops? Are they worth it and doable 
without interfering with the main purpose of the place?

The goal here is not to create a company, but to make the money flow 
stable enough so that we don't have to worry about it.

I'll be most grateful for all suggestions.

Cheers,
-Marcin

-- 
http://marcinkaszynski.com/
http://warsztatyit.pl/django/ - warsztaty Django
http://oiola.com/ - łatwe organizowanie imprez

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