Boost Membership Feedback

[Laura Pullig]

At the last directors meeting we thought it would be a good idea to see if there was any feedback about the boost membership. So..

What do people think is going well about it?

What would people like to be done differently?

Anything else? 

We'll also be asking previous Boost members what they think, let us know your thoughts, thanks 

Laura

[Alex J Lennon]

On 25/07/2023 22:23, Laura Pullig wrote:

At the last directors meeting we thought it would be a good idea to see if there was any feedback about the boost membership. So..

What do people think is going well about it?

I don't have anything specific to say other than that it seems to be working really well and from what I can see is hugely successful. Bravo!

What would people like to be done differently?

We talk about diversity within the community. I am not convinced that positive discrimination is a good thing but perhaps we could try to reach out into places that we hadn't reached to before.... ?

Anything else? 

We'll also be asking previous Boost members what they think, let us know your thoughts, thanks 

Laura

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[Kirsty Styles]



At the risk of gushing…

As a former Boost member, I can certainly say that meeting the folks at DoES has changed my life. 

No question too strange, no suggestion too large. 

I love dropping in at Maker Night and being *almost certain* that there’s someone who knows *something* about the thing I’m trying to get done (with love to Mike, Russ, Terry, Chris, Sean and more). 

Or coming to do a half-day coworking and meeting the next ‘most interesting person I’ve ever met’ (of course the most interesting person I’ve actually met is Snoof… Jackie… Adrian… Chris… hm it’s hard to decide!).

An almost unbelievable organisation (what, this is all done by volunteers?!) doing almost unbelievable things. More of this.

X

Please excuse typos - my thumbs weren't built for the modern world! 

On 25 Jul 2023, at 22:26, Alex J Lennon <ajle...@dynamicdevices.co.uk> wrote:



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[Alex J Lennon]

Kirsty,

>An almost unbelievable organisation (what, this is all done by volunteers?!) doing almost unbelievable things. More of this.

I had a visitor in yesterday who I am doing some projects with. I took him around, explained the space, and as so often happens he was blown away and now intends to be back every Friday :))) He's even wondering how a MakerSpace could be opened up in his home town of Wolverhampton

It is an amazing thing isn't it. At the risk of adding to the gusher I think we're all very lucky to have people like the founders, directors, and organisers of DoES putting in so much hard work behind the scenes to keep the space going, and enabling the rest of us to Do Epic Stuff !!!

Bravo!!! 👏 👏 👏

A/

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[Laura Pullig]

Thanks so much  for the feedback - really useful to hear what people think so far. 

I’ll make sure to pass that on to John & Jackie who did the work setting the boost stuff up. And if anyone has any more feedback it’s always appreciated.

Thanks

Laura 

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[Laura Pullig]

And also definitely think it would be good to reach it to places that haven’t been reached before as Alex said. If anyone has any suggestions let us know.

Thanks

[Alex J Lennon]

LCR Founders if they are still going maybe?

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[Adrian McEwen]

Have you got links to them Alex?  The latest round of Boost Membership is open right now, so sharing details of it would be good.

(That goes for the rest of us too, if there are groups (or individuals) we know, particularly if they're a different demographic to the regulars)

There's a general page about what Boost Membership is at https://doesliverpool.com/boost-membership/ and the link to this round is at https://doesliverpool.com/press-releases/launching-the-october-2023-boost-membership/

Cheers,

Adrian.

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[Alex J Lennon]

HI Adrian, et al,

Probably the best people to loop in from LCR Founders @LJMU are Isobel and John.

I've also looped in Richard as he runs the Liverpool Entrepreneurs Monthly meetup.

ref: https://doesliverpool.com/boost-membership/

Cheers!

Alex

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[jo...@mckerrell.net]

I’ve just mentioned it to Imogen who’s one of the people running the Liverpool Tool Library in case she’d like to share it with their members.

John

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[jo...@mckerrell.net]

And now also the Lodge Lane Credit Union. I guess having a poster that people could print out and put up in physical spaces could be good although with just 10 days left to go maybe we wait and see if one is requested?

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[Tim Dobson]

I run a totally different membership organisation in a totally different location.

I've never been to your hackspace 😭 and having read this whilst persuading a baby back to sleep, I'm sad not to.

I love your "value propositions" but my gut when traversing your website was that it wasn't quite as easy to sign up for normal membership or boost membership as I'd expected. By which I mean, I was sent to different pages, or the signup links were text hyperlinks.

Eg this is a very important page

https://doesliverpool.com/membership/

And doesn't have obvious list of benefits, price and signup link. 

This is also an important page

https://doesliverpool.com/boost-membership/

And yet to apply, you'll have to traverse one page via the less obvious link at the top of the page.

I don't want to pretend my organisation is perfect, or critique unnecessarily your volunteers hard work, but our membership pages try to make it obvious: HTTPS://www.climbingclan.com/membership 

When I read about your first day free with cake scheme I laughed with happiness very hard. I love it. I love it. 

We do (I think like your maker nights and days) a "first Wednesday of month" is open access" and everyone is encouraged to bring cake.

Good luck, and hopefully I'll get to drop in with cake sometime when I'm next local!

Tim

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[Zarino Zappia]

Thanks Tim, all useful feedback.

As you can probably guess, DoES’s "membership" options have evolved organically over time, making it all a bit confusing. For what it’s worth, here’s the full story (I’m sure one of the founders will weigh in if I get any of this wrong):

Option 1: You can pay for "services" without being a "member" – these are listed at https://doesliverpool.com/services/, but you pay for them (or set up recurring billing for them) all in-person, when you visit the space. Confusingly, some of these (eg: permanent desk rental, permanent workshop access) are colloquially referred to as "desk memberships", "workshop memberships" etc, but really they’re not officially "memberships", just recurring payments for a service.

Option 2: You can "become a member" (paying a £10 monthly "membership" fee). This was initially intended as a way for people to "support" DoES even if they don’t actually need to use any of the "services" (above) – which is why you can self-serve signup and payment for a "membership" via the PayPal link on https://doesliverpool.com/membership/. BUT – if you intend on using any of the "services" (above) in the space, then actually "membership" comes with a nice perk – it gives you a reduced rate for any services you buy – that’s what the red prices on https://doesliverpool.com/services/ are all about. You’re paying £10/mth for membership, but you’re likely saving more than £10/mth on whichever service(s) you buy, so it becomes worth it overall, just from a money-saving perspective. Most people take this combination, and they usually set it all up, in-person, when they visit the space. Meaning the PayPal signup link on https://doesliverpool.com/membership/ is really only for people taking out a "membership" as a way of "supporting" DoES from afar without ever using its services.

Option 3: You can apply for our Boost Programme for a chance to be given free use of the space for a limited time. I think one source of confusion is that this is often called "Boost Membership" but it has nothing to do with the "membership" described above in Option 2. It’s really just time-limited free access to any of the "services" in Option 1.

So yeah, there are 1) memberships which aren’t memberships, 2) actual memberships which are really a sort of supporter scheme crossed with a loyalty discount scheme, and 3) memberships which are free time-limited access to services as a result of a random draw. Sorry it’s so complicated. But then, in its own way, a perfect introduction to the DoES approach to life ;-)

The discoverability of https://doesliverpool.com/boost-membership/ isn’t great – but I have a feeling some of that may be by design. Ultimately we really want Boost to benefit people who wouldn’t normally use DoES’s services, maybe because they don’t have the finances right now, or they’ve never thought that a maker/coworking space might be for them. So we try to spread word of Boos primarily through outreach. I think the fear is, if we list it too prominently on the main website (for example, displaying it on the Services or Membership pages) then it’ll not only make the services seem expensive ("why pay £180/mth when I can get it for free?") but might also lead to increased applications from people who don’t necessarily "need" the Boost, and since Boost selection is (I think?) largely random, that’d reduce the chance of the programme’s intended recipients actually being selected.

Hope that helps!

Z