Pausing membership?

[Alex Linsker]

Do you get requests from members to "pause membership" at your coworking place? Many of our members at Collective Agency travel a lot, some for several months or more at a time. What policies do you have with members quitting and rejoining, or pausing membership?

Do any coworking places require a year lease, or is everywhere month-to-month, some with two months payment required up front?

What do you do to increase the amount of time people stay members? Expressing appreciation to people for who/how they are, and having a vision for the place that's something big people can be part of and contribute to somehow, are two ways that work for us.

I'm also interested in how much your members like variety in their life? Ours tend to like a lot.

And how long your average member stays a member for less than 3 months? We get a percentage who are between jobs, or just moved to Portland and are looking for jobs. 

And for more than 2 years? We've had 16 people stay members for the past 2 years, out of 50 members currently.

What are the main reasons people stop being members? Ours is members travel to another city, and after that, the top reason is getting a job at another company.

Thanks,

Alex

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Alex Linsker

Collective Agency's Community Organizer / Proprietor

     (503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co

Tax and Conversation's Statewide Community Organizer 

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322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

[Will Bennis, Locus Workspace]

Partial answer to your question.

Here's what we do for pausing membership:

"

PUTTING YOUR MEMBERSHIP ON HOLD

Members with a 3-month or longer membership agreement can put their membership on hold for 2 weeks per 3-month agreement (that's 1 month for a 6-month agreement and 2 months for an annual agreement).
There's a 2 week minimum per break. And of course you need to let a Locus manager know ahead of time. For simplicity and accounting purposes, you'll need to keep paying your monthly invoices according to the original contract, but you'll be able to continue using Locus at the end of your membership for no additional charge for the duration of the period that you put your membership on hold."

Our space is not representative in that about 70% of the members are expatriates (from another country) and so the need for extended travel is common.

People use this option A LOT.

Best,

Will

[Ramon Suarez]

Yes, it is part of our standard offering at Betacowork Coworking Brussels. We have had it since the very begining and it does add quite some administrative burden, plus a drop of about 15 members in July/August.

We are developing our own software to manage the coworking space and right now users just cancel and don't ask for their deposit back. In the ToDo for the developer is exactly what you ask for, a button to pause membership. The advantage for us is that we will know when they are coming back without guessing.

On Monday, September 30, 2013 5:11:39 AM UTC+2, Alex Linsker wrote:

[Barbara Sprenger]

Hi Alex,

     Our policy for putting memberships on hold is:

You may change your membership or put your membership on hold at any time with 30 days notice in writing or by email. There is a $15 processing fee for this service. Minimum hold time is one month; maximum is one year.

     We have 4 sites, and people tend to leave for a variety of reasons: moving out of the area, getting a new job that requires them to be on site, startup growing beyond our capacity. We're month to month, but we give a discount for 6 month or 1 year commitments. We take it quite strongly that we're not an executive suite; we are flexible workspace. Means you're continually marketing, but you have a much bigger pool of potential members.

[Jeannine]

I have a dirt cheap membership (20 - 40 euros a month depending on whethr you want me to handle yoru mail and visitors) available for folks who want to stay members or be in some way associated with us, but aren't using the space itself.  It's the "can't let go" membership.  :-)  Several who have actually moved on to a full time office are nevertheless still members on this plan.

It's also often an entry level membership, it's right up there with the punchcard for people who want to kick the tires.  As the businesses growm they generally move on to other kids of membership.

If folks want to leave their stuff here and so forth -- I have a member now who is off for a Habitat-like-thingie in Nepal for three months -- I give them half off or something similar.  I have one member who is regularly out of country he sends his bookkeeper here to do his work while he is gone.

Our philosophy is that you pay for what you use, and not for what you don't.  So each situation is different but we have these options available.

Jeannine

On Monday, September 30, 2013 5:11:39 AM UTC+2, Alex Linsker wrote:

[Jeannine]

Geez, sorry about the typos.  My keyboard is getting old, I need to replace it.  :-)

[Jacob Sayles]

I should really dig into all the data we have in Nadine and find answers to your specific questions but I'm going to answer off the cuff for now.  Some members switch a lot, some members don't switch much at all.  We do everything month-to-month and we bill on the day you sign up and on that date every month.  Our only rule is that you need to tell us of any changes before your billing date.  If someone misses the date we don't issue refunds but do offer a credit for that amount in the next few months if they want to come back.  This simple system has worked out great for us.  

Nadine is the system we use to manage all of this and I've shown many people how it looks from the back end.  Often I get asked why we don't let members change their membership from within Nadine and that's because we want to have a conversation with folks when they are changing things up or leaving.  We've already greatly simplified how everything works so it's not much of an inconvenience to send us an email or come up to the front desk.  

I can pull actual numbers sometime soon.  We have lots of data to play with.  :)  

Jacob

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Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
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[Alex Hillman]

There's a lot of great ideas in this thread, I'm taking notes - thanks y'all.

At Indy Hall, we allow for "pausing" of a membership with the same notice that we require for canceling: 30 days. 

Naturally, not everyone will give 30 days notice. To minimize the impact on cashflow, upon signup we collect a deposit that's equal to the level of membership the person is enrolling in. ($175 month membership = $175 deposit). When people upgrade, we upgrade their deposit.

We explain that this deposit is in lieu of any formal contracts, allowing them to flexibly stay at Indy Hall month to month. MOST people change very little. As some of you have noted, some change a lot. Somewhat like Jeannine, it's more common that members downgrade to our "basic" membership to help them stay connected to the community when they're not here. 

In all cases, if someone gives us 30 days minimum notice of their membership change, we happily refund that deposit. If they do not give notice, we keep the deposit to help support cashflow. Internally, this gives us a month before losing a member impacts our bottom line...and ideally, we're adding more members each month than we're losing. Net effect: cashflow stays positive with minimal impact on everyone.

We do whatever we can to change a cancel/pause into a downgrade. One thing we didn't do before recently was keeping track of paused memberships effectively - and making sure we follow up. Pausing is only pausing if they actually come back :) 

It should be obvious, but this is the #1 mistake I see in any business, not just coworking. Unmanaged cashflow can (and probably will) kill you.

Related sidenote: there are some seasonal things you should plan for. Summertime and holidays are generally when we see the most downgrades. 

Our cancel reasons have also yielded a lot of interesting data in the last year and a half, with some dramatic changes compared to the years prior. I'll have more to share on that soon.

-Alex

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indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

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[Barbara Sprenger]

Ramon, 

We have already developed software for running coworking spaces. We're using it for our 4 spaces and already have several other companies using it. (We're told it's the most robust available!) Putting an account on hold is a simple matter of just entering a note and setting the "Next Bill Date", which makes the billing automatic. It also sweeps any other charges sitting out there. Of course, we find that most people aren't sure when they want to restart, so we just make their account inactive and reactivate when they come back.

Let me know if you want a demo of DeskWorks!

Barbara  Sprenger

Satellite  Telework Centers, Inc.
6265 Hwy. 9 * Felton, CA *  95018
bspr...@thesatelliteinc.com * www.thesatelliteinc.com
phone: 831222-2100 * cell: 831 345-6529

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[Sean Qian]

This is very interesting to me too. 

We're heading into the spring/summer months in Australia and it will be interesting to see the uptake (or lack thereof) of memberships.

Looking forward to seeing your cancellation reasons, Alex.