Compensation
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adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace
Sep 14, 2017, 12:01:55 PM9/14/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
Byron Hynes
Sep 14, 2017, 12:20:00 PM9/14/17
to CanadianCre...@googlegroups.com
We have a cleaning lady for two hours every two weeks. Without her, we would have a biological weapons lab but no restrooms. ;)
Our bylaws specifically forbid trading services for membership, but we can pay members, like any other contractor, for legitimate services. As far as I know we have never paid a member for time, but we have reimbursed expenses and perhaps bought goods.
Our training model allows instructors to keep a portion of training fees for development or delivery time. Very few chose to. This was to encourage more and better courses.
When discussed last, all of the then-current directors said that they did not wish cash compensation. I don't think that has changed.
One of the key questions during growth is do you hire an _implementer_ -- someone to watch the tool crib and refill the pop machine -- or hire a leader/exec director -- someone to drive membership and strategic planning and find funding.
Most non-profits try to hire their first staff member to do both. This is almost always a mistake.
Mobile: big fingers, little buttons, and don't get me started about autocorrect.
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
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kulps @ ENTS Edmonton
Sep 14, 2017, 7:23:35 PM9/14/17
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ENTS does not have any paid staff and our board does not receive any compensation, monetary or otherwise. It sounds a bit harsh when I type it all out, but the reality is that we just don't have the extra resources to compensate volunteers.
In fact, most of our directors end up donating more money than regular members, in effect making it cost money to be on the board.
We have been growing the last couple years though and the amount we're asking from our directors has dropped a lot to mostly just time, but historically it's been a difficult thing to ask people to do.
kulps @ ENTS Edmonton
Sep 14, 2017, 7:26:36 PM9/14/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
We also have the rule against trading services for membership. We do have the ability to discount memberships at will, which could ultimately be construed as trading services for membership (For example, if an otherwise great member who happens to always take the garbage out gets a discounted rate because they have limited resources, are they trading services for membership? No, but somebody might make the argument.
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doug moen
Sep 14, 2017, 7:28:47 PM9/14/17
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Kwartzlab is completely volunteer based. Our income from membership dues pays for rent, utilities and insurance, with a little left over, but we've never had the income to afford paid staff. That's probably true for most of the hacker/makerspaces on this list.
On 14 September 2017 at 12:01, adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
--
Darcy Whyte
Sep 14, 2017, 7:40:42 PM9/14/17
to CanadianCre...@googlegroups.com
I'm from hack613.com in Ottawa.
I'm curious what the aversion to volunteering in lieu of dues I'm seeing in some of the responses is about. There are requests from people who want to volunteer instead of pay so I'm curious what issues there could be....
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 7:28 PM, doug moen <do...@moens.org> wrote:
Kwartzlab is completely volunteer based. Our income from membership dues pays for rent, utilities and insurance, with a little left over, but we've never had the income to afford paid staff. That's probably true for most of the hacker/makerspaces on this list.
On 14 September 2017 at 12:01, adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
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kulps @ ENTS Edmonton
Sep 14, 2017, 8:20:47 PM9/14/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
There are two big problems with compensating volunteering in my eyes:
- Landlords don't accept clean bathrooms as payment for rent
- Quantifying volunteer effort is a fools errand.
- If a member volunteers to do drywall and is a professional drywaller, at what rate should they be compensated?
- If a member volunteers to do drywall and has done some drywall before, at what rate should they be compensated?
- If a member volunteers to do drywall and has never done drywall, at what rate should they be compensated?
- What happens if any of these three hypothetical members does more harm than good because they didnt know they had to sand before painting? Now the drywall is effectively ruined, do you claw back the "compensation"?
- How do you decide which work should be compensated? Table Clearing, yes/no? Bathroom cleaning, yes/no? Painting flowers on the fence yes/no? Maintaining the machines in the shop, yes/no?
Most all of these are real examples from either ENTS or other spaces I've worked with. In the end, the only equitable way to pay volunteers is to pay them nothing. I'm sure there are spaces that do get by successfully with compensating members for work around the space but it's not worth the trade off, in my eyes.
On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 5:40:42 PM UTC-6, Darcy Whyte wrote:
I'm from hack613.com in Ottawa.I'm curious what the aversion to volunteering in lieu of dues I'm seeing in some of the responses is about. There are requests from people who want to volunteer instead of pay so I'm curious what issues there could be....
Contact: darcy@inventorArtist.com | 613-563-3634 by appointment (no text)
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 7:28 PM, doug moen <do...@moens.org> wrote:
Kwartzlab is completely volunteer based. Our income from membership dues pays for rent, utilities and insurance, with a little left over, but we've never had the income to afford paid staff. That's probably true for most of the hacker/makerspaces on this list.
On 14 September 2017 at 12:01, adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
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doug moen
Sep 14, 2017, 8:24:39 PM9/14/17
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In the case of Kwartzlab, the founding members had a core value of egalitarianism: all members are equal and treated the same way. So all members must pay the same monthly fee. So we have no provision for reduced membership fees for certain classes of members, for example.
On 14 September 2017 at 19:40, Darcy Whyte <da...@inventorartist.com> wrote:
I'm from hack613.com in Ottawa.I'm curious what the aversion to volunteering in lieu of dues I'm seeing in some of the responses is about. There are requests from people who want to volunteer instead of pay so I'm curious what issues there could be....
Contact: darcy@inventorArtist.com | 613-563-3634 by appointment (no text)
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 7:28 PM, doug moen <do...@moens.org> wrote:Kwartzlab is completely volunteer based. Our income from membership dues pays for rent, utilities and insurance, with a little left over, but we've never had the income to afford paid staff. That's probably true for most of the hacker/makerspaces on this list.--On 14 September 2017 at 12:01, adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?--
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Byron Hynes
Sep 14, 2017, 8:34:49 PM9/14/17
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What Kulps said.
I have heard of maker spaces where so many people were trading time for membership that even with lots of "members", they couldn't pay rent.
B
Mobile: big fingers, little buttons, and don't get me started about autocorrect.
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kulps @ ENTS Edmonton
Sep 14, 2017, 8:35:29 PM9/14/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
I could name names :D
On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 6:34:49 PM UTC-6, Byron Hynes wrote:
What Kulps said.I have heard of maker spaces where so many people were trading time for membership that even with lots of "members", they couldn't pay rent.BMobile: big fingers, little buttons, and don't get me started about autocorrect.
In the case of Kwartzlab, the founding members had a core value of egalitarianism: all members are equal and treated the same way. So all members must pay the same monthly fee. So we have no provision for reduced membership fees for certain classes of members, for example.
On 14 September 2017 at 19:40, Darcy Whyte <da...@inventorartist.com> wrote:
I'm from hack613.com in Ottawa.I'm curious what the aversion to volunteering in lieu of dues I'm seeing in some of the responses is about. There are requests from people who want to volunteer instead of pay so I'm curious what issues there could be....
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 7:28 PM, doug moen <do...@moens.org> wrote:
Kwartzlab is completely volunteer based. Our income from membership dues pays for rent, utilities and insurance, with a little left over, but we've never had the income to afford paid staff. That's probably true for most of the hacker/makerspaces on this list.
On 14 September 2017 at 12:01, adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:
Do any groups here have paid staff? Do you compensate your board of directors or other volunteers in any monetary way?
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K M
Sep 14, 2017, 9:53:45 PM9/14/17
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Sorry if I already sent these, but it looks like the Google group doesn’t like my Kamloops Makerspace email yet.
Response 1:
In BC, the society act prevents the payment of anyone on the board of directors for these services. The day to day operations are what are board does in practice, but this does not need to be the case. We could have a paid administrator, but can’t afford it and choose not to.
We are working on a grant app for a project with a local science education centre that could return a chunk of funding for curriculum dev stuff. We currently have a bunch of members that do educational work in the community, and occasionally bring groups into the space. What we tend to do now is individual members will donate to the space to bring people in, but we do not have set rates. If we get the funding, then we will first develop a framework for developing curriculum around the educational projects that they already do. Once they deliver a package to teach the project it will trigger an honorarium payout, and allow access to a budget for equipment and materials related to teaching the project. We plan to release the framework (developed in coordination w/ local teachers) and all of the curriculum content produced under a CC license. Same program will also be asking for some travel funding to visit local communities.
We don’t trade memberships for services, technically. We have just gone from a two-tier $50 drop-in $100 key holder system, to a single $75 rate for everyone (key included). Selling the $50 wasn’t too hard, but retention was a problem due to lack of consistent open hours for drop-ins. There were a couple drop-ins with keys, but the deals were worked out mostly on a verbal basis with past boards etc. Plan is to go with the new rate, with a provision that we can discount memberships on an individual basis, with the sign-off of a couple board members. The stated expectation is that this is for members contributing to the community around the space, and while we do need money to operate, there are also a lot of other things they can do to help with the success of the space…
Response 2:
From an egalitarian perspective, it can be argued that charging everyone the same rate regardless of their ability to pay, is incredibly unfair. People that argue on both sides of a flat tax rate for the entire population (regardless of income) will call themselves egalitarian. This issue parallels that.
If you wanted the ability to discount memberships, you can make the argument that access to tools and the ability to learn skills will help remove economic inequalities, and help to decentralize power, which could be perceived as making everyone more equal. It depends if your definition of of equality stops at the dollar or is broad enough to include socioeconomic considerations.
@kulps said ”Quantifying volunteer effort is a fools errand.” I disagree here. Not with any of the sub bulletins that he raises, they are all valid considerations, but with the overall idea that we should be quantifying volunteer hours. I just added up all of the volunteering that goes into our hack nights as either “unskilled” labour ($10/hr) giving tours, or “skilled” labour ($20/hr) for project support, and the results were astounding. The unit rates come from BC lotteries, and are frankly extremely low. The bottom line was still shocking in terms of what we deliver to the community. I was using these numbers to apply for funding, which is something that more of us should probably do, but it can be daunting. Having a sheet to track volunteer hours is a great idea, and it can be as easy as saying “did that require someone with skills”, such as a drywaller.
Makerspace’s provide an incredible amount of social benefit, and there are MANY sources of funding for groups that provide social benefit. Keeping a simple list of all the shit that we do makes it a lot easier to access this funding.
I will agree that I am TOTALLY unwilling to try and quantify a persons effort in terms of negotiating a discount on their membership. But while giving a discount (that would probably happen either way), I am happy to make the implication that the person should feel compelled to make up the difference in another way that they can afford, and leave it up to them to figure out. If someone is obviously abusing our goodwill, then we can deal with it with the old verbal>written>consequences.
kile
Kamloops Makerspace
If you wanted the ability to discount memberships, you can make the argument that access to tools and the ability to learn skills will help remove economic inequalities, and help to decentralize power, which could be perceived as making everyone more equal. It depends if your definition of of equality stops at the dollar or is broad enough to include socioeconomic considerations.
@kulps said ”Quantifying volunteer effort is a fools errand.” I disagree here. Not with any of the sub bulletins that he raises, they are all valid considerations, but with the overall idea that we should be quantifying volunteer hours. I just added up all of the volunteering that goes into our hack nights as either “unskilled” labour ($10/hr) giving tours, or “skilled” labour ($20/hr) for project support, and the results were astounding. The unit rates come from BC lotteries, and are frankly extremely low. The bottom line was still shocking in terms of what we deliver to the community. I was using these numbers to apply for funding, which is something that more of us should probably do, but it can be daunting. Having a sheet to track volunteer hours is a great idea, and it can be as easy as saying “did that require someone with skills”, such as a drywaller.
Makerspace’s provide an incredible amount of social benefit, and there are MANY sources of funding for groups that provide social benefit. Keeping a simple list of all the shit that we do makes it a lot easier to access this funding.
I will agree that I am TOTALLY unwilling to try and quantify a persons effort in terms of negotiating a discount on their membership. But while giving a discount (that would probably happen either way), I am happy to make the implication that the person should feel compelled to make up the difference in another way that they can afford, and leave it up to them to figure out. If someone is obviously abusing our goodwill, then we can deal with it with the old verbal>written>consequences.
kile
Kamloops Makerspace
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Byron Hynes
Sep 14, 2017, 10:03:29 PM9/14/17
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Oh. This doesn't touch on money but was part of one of our grant applications: http://protospace.ca/community.
Mobile: big fingers, little buttons, and don't get me started about autocorrect.
Darcy Whyte
Sep 14, 2017, 10:04:17 PM9/14/17
to CanadianCre...@googlegroups.com
All great points.
I decided to not advocate for the volunteer for membership. I think we just need people who are serious enough to help economically and sharing work...
Contact: da...@inventorArtist.com | 613-563-3634 by appointment (no text)
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Derek Jacoby
Sep 14, 2017, 11:38:21 PM9/14/17
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Victoria makers pace.
We don't pay directors or have any regular staff.
Cleaning of bathrooms and common areas is handled by our landlord who takes a portion of membership revenue in lieu of fixed rent.
We have hired some co-op students for specific tasks - website revamp, refit laser cutter, etc. This has worked out pretty well due to a BCIC grant program that covers a portion of their salary.
On Sep 14, 2017 7:04 PM, "Darcy Whyte" <da...@inventorartist.com> wrote:
All great points.I decided to not advocate for the volunteer for membership. I think we just need people who are serious enough to help economically and sharing work...
adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace
Sep 15, 2017, 10:02:30 AM9/15/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
Lots of great responses to this. Thank you. Does any of this change when it comes to paid courses? We are looking to start offering a decent amount of paid workshops/courses as a supplement to members fees. There seems to be a number of examples of spaces in the USA that offer 50-50 profit sharing with instructors. Our board is currently having a spirited debate about some of that compensation level and when to implement it.
Grant Fraser
Sep 15, 2017, 1:25:22 PM9/15/17
to Coalition of Canadian Creative Spaces
At the Kamloops Makerspace it's voluntary. We ask that instructors that make a profit from running a course give a percentage back to the space. Its completely on the honor system. The donations back have ranged from 30%-100%. It depends on how hungry the instructor is. The Kamloops Makerspace hasn't collected money for the courses. Its been up to the instructors to collect payment. The space will start helping in the future by taking payments but I suspect we won't change how we do business. We will probably turn all of the money over to the instructor and let them decide what they can afford to donate back. Our space was founded on the idea that you can use the space to make money.
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