Difference between revisions of "Opendiscussion"

Revision as of 10:24, 19 May 2009

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else

Use this as a community whiteboard, however actual discussions should probably happen on the mailing list.

Funding

What are you folks thinking about for funding this and what type of funding are you open too? Membership fees, fund raisers, seeking out an investor, hacking the lottery? -- Deltaray 19:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see this be user supported by membership dues, however I think we're open to about anything to help reduce costs for everyone. I have a spreadsheet (File:HackerSpaceCosts.xls) linked on the front page so that anyone can see what numbers we're looking at for the moment. Obviously variables like the final rent cost and other costs will vary the final amount, but with 10 members a rough shwag would be around $70 a month, 20 members and that can get down below $40 per member per month. Things like startup costs like rent-deposit I think we would look for donations (probably from ourselves). Also, and this should be discussed at some point, there could be some small fee-based services that could be offered like low-budget web hosting out of the space or other things that could help reduce costs. -- Dosman 21:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

A few other ideas for funding here and there are:

• Fixing things for people get them to donate or maybe just have a flat rate for the repair.
• Maybe a monthly/annual sale of things that have been created at the hackerspace
• Going to garage sales, finding cheap electronics things that can be resold or whatever. Like $1 items that could be fixed for cheap and sold for $20 or something.
• Buying IU Surplus stuff to resell (this can be dangerous though because we could wind up with lots of junk)
• Hold some interesting event in order to take donations.

There are lots of possibilities. -- Deltaray 17:15, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, there are a number of avenues that can be pursued, those are good ideas. I'd also like to mention the issue with donations (as in hardware). Like you said, we don't want to end up with lots of junk being stored in the space. Another problem is that anything formally donated to a non-profit (and it turns out to be junk or unusable) needs to be disposed of in accordance with law. This may simply be keeping records that we threw it away or it may require donation to another non-profit in certain cases. Additionally, if the space ever comes to a close, everything owned by the non-profit must be donated to another non-profit. All I'm saying is that we need to be leary of accepting large amounts of stuff until we can get things formalized. Sadly, I do know where there are semi-trailers packed full of IU warehouse computers and electronics here in town ;). Dosman 11:23, 19 May 2009 (EDT)