[hackerspaces] Cash flow?

[Yves Quemener]

Hi all, interesting discussion!

3 remarks :

1) Recurring payments and cash.
If you want to have recurring payments but have some people who want to pay
with cash, an option can be to offer a small discount (or a token of
appreciation) for paying a whole year up front. Less stresses for everyone.
May not apply to every membership amounts.

2) About the job of treasurer.
> I'd like to clarify something about recurring payments.  This is
> important, because in my experience, it's the difference between
> treasurer being a 20 hours/week job or a 10 hours/month job.

I never did this job so I can't really relate, but would this be possible
to distribute the work? Publish who did pay and who didn't, and let people
pressure and remind others. Maybe accept that a few trustworthy members
receive payments and transmit them later to the treasurer. In a non-profit,
no one asked to work in the boring administrative tasks. It is everyone's
role to make these as light as possible. Obviously it is easier to do when
the fee is 5€/month than when it is 200$/month.

3) About fueling a non-profit with goodwill.
> We sadly don't live in a world yet where hacker spaces can exist simply
> with good will, teachers willing to give free classes

I am often reminded that US and France are different cultures, but I think
that this statement is not totally true. Of the three hackerspaces that I
have been a member of, none paid a rent.

The /tmp/lab used to be inside an old public building, with the approval of
the communist (heh) municipal council of Vitry-sur-Seine, who already lent
a lot of the room to artists with low income (this neighborhood caused
interesting synergies).

The LOG,in Grenoble, is hosted by a big non-profit that actually depend on
regional public funding (the CCSTI), and they have a kind of
animation-for-rent barter : the host owns (and pays for) the machines and
the hackers operate them.

The LOL, in Lyon, is hosted for free by LibrePC, a computer shop (which
loves free software), who wants to attract interesting projects in the
neighborhood. We have a cheap membership (5€/month) that pays for
insurance, some small tools and soon electricity.

It may not be a model suitable for everyone or everywhere, but I can
testify that this model works for several spaces here.

Iv

On 12/02/13 08:24, Rubin Abdi wrote:
> Casey Callendrello wrote, On 2013-02-11 22:45:
>> There are a couple best practices we've settled on at Noisebridge
>> (shocking, I know):
> 
> Another thing I would add to Casey's excellent list, is don't be afraid
> to point out who's a member supporting the community and who isn't. The
> Noisebridge meetings I've attended, when we get to that point of
> explaining how Noisebridge gets its money and doesn't go under, I
> typically say this...
> 
> "Could everyone who thinks Noisebridge is awesome and appreciates that
> this place exists please raise your hands."
> 
> Everyone in the room raises their hands (except for Crucher)
> 
> "Please keep your hands up. If you wouldn't be super sad if Noisebridge
> disappeared tomorrow, please lower your hands."
> 
> That one asshole in the back lowers his hand.
> 
> "Please continue to keep your hands up, unless you're a paying member of
> Noisebridge in good standing."
> 
> On an average meeting night, about 5 people out of the two dozen
> attending lower their hands.
> 
> "For everyone with their hand still up, the sad truth about Noisebridge
> is that we can only pay for our rent with money. Everyone here really
> appreciates any community support, classes, projects, and excellent
> energy you bring into the space, but at the end of the day we still need
> to pay for our rent, power, and sweet sweet internet. If you truly value
> our space, and can actually support us with money, consider donating
> into our donations bin, setting up a tax deductible reoccurring monthly
> donation to us online, or singing up to become a full fledged member. We
> also accept matching donations from Microsoft and Google employees. If
> you can't support us financially, please keep that in mind when you are
> at a place in your life where you can. "
> 
> People tend to call me a dick for doing this routine, but it totally
> works. At the end of almost every meeting I've said this shtick, there's
> at least one person who comes up and asks about how donations work or
> where's the membership sign up form, and two or three others who throw
> some cash money into the donations bin.
> 
> We sadly don't live in a world yet where hacker spaces can exist simply
> with good will, teachers willing to give free classes, and rainbow
> pissing ponies, so please make it a point to remind people of this sad
> fact, because a lot of folks employed in crazy over paying tech jobs
> giving us so much money we honestly don't know what to do with (myself
> included about 50% of the time) tend to forget this little fact that
> nonprofits don't pay for themselves.
> 
> 
> 
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> 


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