[Finance] Psychological Aspect of the Finances

[madstringer]

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Hi!

When we decided that we wanted to start a hackerspace in Denver, we
figured out a budget, and then looked for a certain number of interested
individuals to contribute "seed" money to get it going. We do use the
"dues" system - the flip-side to your argument is that using the dues
systems also really only attracts people who are truly interested in
making things happen. I understand not wanting to scare people away, but
i think that if you're going to be handing the finances of a non-profit
(in my case), you're gonna need to be able to forecast out a certain
number of months, plan purchases, and be sure that you can pay the rent
and utilities on a space, not just for the current month, but for months
to come. This is harder to do on a "donations" system. I think there's
good and bad sides to each system, and that you need to decide which one
fits you the best, based on your situation. If you don't have many
expenses, or a space to maintain, I think maybe the donations model
would work better for you....

madstringer
<><><><><><><><><><><>
madstringer at denhac.org


On 8/30/2010 8:53 PM, Dan Hess wrote:
> 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.
> 
> Let me preface this with we are still very much so in our infancy stage and
> are learning by leaps and bounds every day.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Thanks,
> Daniel
> 
> - Copying one is plagiarism, copying many is research.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Finance at lists.hackerspaces.org
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