Donations

[mike]

Just a passive-aggressive reminder (if I admit it is passive-aggressive, does that remain passive-aggressive?)

It is really nice to have weird, inspiring supplies in the space. The only way this happens is if people only use space materials when they need them.

I don’t know why, but in the last couple months it seems we have gotten no less than 3 sizable electronics donations. I would have expected to see a lot of these things sorted and filed away into the VHS bins, but most of them seem to have been taken by members.

Unless a donor explicitly says that donations are for the members of the hackspace, donating to the hackspace should be seen as donating to the hackspace.

That being said, nobody should feel bad about grabbing the odd thing or two for a personal project. The expected behavior, however, is to drop a couple bucks in the donatio. If you want an actual value, call it ‘salvage value’. Obviously this is not a requirement, just the culture of VHS; please keep the culture alive. There’s other ways, however, for giving back to VHS that you could consider.

1. Leaving the thing at VHS until you are ready to use it. If someone else uses it, that’s great!
2. When you just starting your project (yes, starting, not throwing on the giant list of things you won’t ever complete), feel free to chuck the item in your bin.
3. When you are working on your project, make a talk topic about it. Even if you don’t chuck a buck or two in the donatio, making a progress blog results in tangible benefits to VHS (increased internet traffic, increased knowledge share to members, engagement, etc).
4. When you complete your project, consider making a demo, posting, blog entry, instagram, twitter, Super-Happy-Hacker-Night talk, makerfaire booth, etc. Sharing is caring.

Remember that if someone is donating to VHS, they are donating to VHS, not to your closet.

[Janet]

@mike

Remember that if someone is donating to VHS, they are donating to VHS, not to your closet.

I agree 100% with Mike but especially with this statement.

[toma]

On this topic it seems like we are discouraging donations and been purging materials instead of sorting them into bins.

[mike]

There’s been a lot of cleanup efforts lately to try to remove things that will apparently never be used , and potentially that has encouraged a landgrab on incoming items. We need to dissuade people from effectively stealing from the hackspace. Incoming items are not the same as a piece of equipment that had been at the space for 5 years and was never used.