Seeking Advice: Student Use of Maker Materials for Selling & Fundraising

[C Mytko]

Good morning - 

Maker educators, I’d love your advice! I have students in my after-school Maker Club (which families either pay fees to join or receive financial assistance) who are using materials and tools provided by the program to mass-produce items—like making batches of earrings—to sell in their online shops. While I love their entrepreneurial spirit, I also feel like they shouldn’t be using club resources for personal profit without some kind of structure in place.

A related but slightly different situation has also come up: students making items not for personal profit, but to raise money for an unrelated cause, such as their class’s 8th-grade trip. While their intent is different, it still means club materials are being used for purposes beyond personal learning.

How have you handled situations like this? Have you set guidelines or policies around selling what students make in a shared makerspace? I want to support their creativity and initiative while ensuring fairness for everyone. I am also not opposed to supporting their fundraising efforts, but I feel like there is a real learning opportunity here about the cost of materials and budgeting when you set up a shop or fundraiser.

Christine

[Matt Zigler]

Hi Christine, that's a really interesting problem. We have a sort of general policy that would apply to the fundraising part of that, and might help determine how you handle the selling for profit side of things.

Since we don't require students to purchase supplies for our maker classes and activities, it is understood that we have a variety of materials they can use for their projects. Some more advanced classes have a budget for special supplies. Certain basic colors of filament, laser cutter material, fabric, vinyl, etc are available for use. There is also a general understanding that access to these supplies is not unlimited.

Within these guidelines, if a student wanted to use the supplies for making fund raising items or items for sale, that is fine with me. Once the amount of items they make goes beyond what the average student in the club or class might make generally, it's time to have a conversation about using their profits to purchase their own supplies. This would have to vary based on your budget and material needs for the entire group.

So the two variables that come up are:

1. Amount - making 10 earrings to sell is a lot different than making 100. (or 5 phone stands vs 50)

2. Specialness of the material - If they want to make 5 phone stands out of white filament or 1/8 laser plywood and paint them by hand? Go for it. If they want to make 5 phone stands out of that one roll of tricolor gradient filament or colored acrylic? Lets talk about that. 

That way your club can act as a bit of an incubator for their entrepreneurial interests while also giving them a lesson is cost/availability of supplies and how it relates to pricing. 

Hope this helps!

Matt Zigler

Author- Three Modes of Making

[michael.sco...@gmail.com]

We have a policy where students calculate the cost of the item(s) they’re making and if it sells, we take the net profits and split it 50/50. Half goes to them and half goes to the space for more materials/tools. I don’t always charge students, like if they made and sold a one-off project, but if they were making ornaments with the laser or something similar, they’d be paying for the wood and stain, etc but not for the laser time. 

I hope this helps. 

Mike

On Friday, February 7, 2025 at 10:29:46 AM UTC-5 cmy...@gmail.com wrote:

[Paul Meinersmann]

Once classes or student groups start selling things that are more than one offs, I have a conversation with them about the need to, at a minimum, reimburse the program for the cost of their materials.  We had a class that designed bookmarks that we laser cut out of 1/16" hardwood.  I told them what the cost of the goods were so that they could incorporate that into their pricing model to make sure they raised as much money as they wanted (to buy books to send to a school in Kenya) and also reimbursed me for the cost of those goods.  These are 3rd graders so I'm not including the cost of running the machine or my time to support them, but those are factors that I would certainly consider for middle or high school students.

Thank you,

Paul

Paul Meinersmann Technology & Makerspace Director St. George Municipal School Unit 65 Main St, PO BOX 153 Tenants Harbor, ME 04860 mobile: 207-975-3043 school: 207-372-6312 Pronouns: he/him/his

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[Marci klein]

I am doing this with a 4th grade class, I made a COG/retail cost/profit list - You can collaborate with the math teacher and do a whole project out of it! (we also have them using area formula to calculate the cost of a new feature at the town zoo. I can share more details if you like!!

[Tatian Greenleaf]

I would handle it similarly to Matt. As far as personal commercial/for-profit use goes, our Acceptable Use Policy prohibits that ("Using network resources for financial gain or for any commercial activity") so it would be a no from me. I would encourage them to take the skills learned in my class and figure out resources outside of school to use to continue their business venture. I can definitely see a place for letting students print one or two of something if it's for a class assignment and there's an overlap with something they want to do commercially.

Some of our students have 3D printers at home. The $199 Bambu A1 mini makes that affordable for more families. So there's less need for students to have to print everything at school. Obviously, that depends on the financial status of each family and it doesn't take into account things like filament costs, repairs, etc.

Tatian

Tatian Greenleaf

Design, Tinkering and Technology Integrator

Director of Summer Tinkering Camp

Pronouns: he/him  

Mark Day School
39 Trellis Drive

San Rafael, CA 94903 

415.472.8000 x1014

 

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[Anna Delia]

This is exactly the model we use here at Hawken School in Cleveland OH as well –

 

We do not charge individual students for project components, although, if it’s not for a school project, we may ask that they bring in items to contribute to the project. We also regularly accept a broad array of donations from the community that can provide a lot of fodder for students to search through when looking for something for a creative personal project.

 

For anything that would be sold for a school-related cause, we let them know the individual cost of materials based on our purchasing sources and students refund for the price of the materials out of the profit for the sale. We do not charge for our time, machine use, and prototyping materials needed to get things going. We also coach them around not making a huge volume before securing sales – with rapid production on site, they can always make as they go, and not waste materials!

 

We have also priced out acquiring a few community low tech machines that benefit across the school – the button maker is a great example from American Button Machines – a booster group purchased one for the school to use and in one season and some motivated athletes, fully paid for the typical cost they were spending with an outside vendor on spirit buttons by making them in-house. Then the machine stays in our lab for us to use and lend out as school groups need.

 

If this were a profit business model of some kind – we have a had a few students start online shops to sell some things – we operate as an open access fab lab where they can access our time and equipment but are expected to bring in their own materials needed for the project. We also like to keep an example of their work somewhere in the lab or on display as a proof of concept of our students’ creativity and process.

 

Good Luck with your projects!

Anna

Hawken School Fab Labs

Cleveland, Ohio

@hawkenfabplay (Instagram)

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[Castle Kim]

Hi Christine -- 

I hope you are doing well. 

I am not sure if my information would apply to your case, but thought I'd share a similar situation I was in with the Makerspace I use to assistant manage. For background the makerspace was an open access makerspace in a university where students, staff, or faculty can come use the equipment and fabrication tool for a variety of projects. We generally provide most materials, but users were allowed to bring their own approved materials depending on the specific color or scope of the project - if they need a lot of materials for the project. 

We ran into a situation where a student organization reached out to see if they could print, laser cut, and make some novelty items as raffle prizes for their gaming competition they were hosting. The purpose of the competition and raffle was for fundraising purposes to donate to a non-profit cause. Generally we support student projects and encourage students using the Makerspace for a variety of uses, however, for us we realize it could become a sticky situation because of our university policy around using university resources, the makerspace equipment and tools, for a monetary exchange. The situation was tricky because this would technically fall into the student using university resources to make money, even for fundraising purposes. Since all the funds for equipment and materials the Makerspace provided came from the Provost office, we had to not roll the dice on the situation and had to explain and tell we couldn't support the project. 

I don't know how your Makerspace is set up, whether it is tied to a school or it is independent, but hopefully this is helpful. 

Thank you, 

Castle 

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