[hackerspaces] question about hackerspace hourly rate, what do you think

[Agent 5]

Florencia,

>From the Hackerspace user standpoint, myself and several other people who
are part of a local group pitched an idea to a local hackerspace which was
having similar attendance and budget issues. Our proposal involved a group
membership which would allocate a certain number of user hours. The folks
in this potential membership were interested because they really only need
to use the space for a few hours a month and the cost was too high to
justify for some based on their use... ($40-$80 per month for 32 hours of
access depending on level of volunteerism. the $80 is without
volunteering.). The group membership we were offering was somewhere in the
range of $300-$500 for 10 people to use that membership with the same
number of hours and/or use for the other memberships(32 hours) but split
between several people. This would have provided a lot more attendance and
guaranteed $300-$500 income. The membership price would depend on what your
needs are and what you think a group fee would be. But that is my
suggestion, group memberships for working professionals who may need access
to the tool for a brief period of time.
The additional benefit, would be the users who find themselves getting more
involved after having been introduced to the Hackerspace via their 3-5
hours a month, may now develop projects they can justify the cost of a full
membership. This is a concept of "growing" a customer base slowly, aka
foot-in-the-door. Many people I speak with find Hackerspaces novel, but
lack the experience or need to justify the monthly cost. A method of
generating that personal value should then be applied.

-Dave


On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Florencia Edwards <floev22 at gmail.com>wrote:

> So we want or makerspace to have more people daily, knowing the feel of
> being here . Also we are losing money every day so if we don't do something
> about it we'll have to close eventually. Some times people are't willing to
> take from their pockets once a moth reasonable amount, that all together
> seems a lot and hurts. It hurts more than giving two dollars a day,
> something we don't even notice. Also a lot of people come here to sit in
> and don't collaborate, don't give anything back to the space, don't pay the
> membership. And staff wages are awful.
>
> This is why I thought of the hourly rate, for people that can't pay for
> the month and want to do small fixes or tweaks to their projects, so we can
> have more people at the space, and people that sit in can contribute
> hourly.  Do you think it could work or could it be even worse for the
> hacker space and it's sustainability
>
> Please help!
>
> thanks
>
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