Money should not be a barrier to being a part of VHS

General lounge
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This is part of the VHS Culture series

You should be able to participate in VHS even if you can’t afford the monthly membership cost. This has always been a core principal of VHS. This is accomplished one of two ways.

No enforcement of the membership system
Currently if you are not a member you can officially come down to the space on our weekly open house nights, use our tools, have conversations, and participate at VHS like any other member. We will suggest that you become a member to help support the space and keep the doors open.

In actuality you could come down at anytime the space is open, and you would be welcome. No one would check if you are a member or not.

Sponsored members
We have set up a system that allows people to privately contact the board of directors (BoD) and request a sponsored membership. Where they can have the members or key-members status while either paying a reduced rate or being complacently sponsored.

Over the entire history of the space only ~10 people have requested a sponsored membership and when they are able to pay they convert back to a normal dues paying member pretty quickly. So far I don’t believe this system has been abused in anyway.

We are very careful to tell the people that are getting a sponsored membership that they are NOT required to do anything more then a normal member is required to do. That they are not getting a sponsored membership in-exchange for work around the space. This is to prevent the Slave labor problems

The problems

I like the sponsored membership program and I don’t want to change it.

Historically we made the contentious choice not to enforce that its members only on non-open house nights, because we where paying rent and it wasn’t a huge issue. We said that if we ever didn’t pay rent or were in a downward direction we would take action to enforce the members only nights.

The problem is that we are still making rent, but we are not making enough off of membership that we can afford the nice new building that we want, or the updates to our infrastructure that we need. We are basically treading water and hoping for a miracle.

There is less and less of a reason to become a non-key member. If I can show up any day of the week and use the tools and resources at the space without paying membership dues while having all the same rights as a non-key member. Why would I choose to become a member? Because of that less people are becoming members. This is why we can’t have nice things! (I know its not THAT simple)

A possible solution
I suggest that we start enforcing that guests (non members) are only invited on open houses (Tuesday night, SHHH, and other events).

  • If a guest shows up on a non open house night, we can show them around and introduce them to the space but we ask that they come back on a open house night.
  • You as a member are allowed to bring as many guests as you feel like on any day, but you are responsible for them. When you leave they should leave too.

Enforcement and how to tell if a person is a member or a guest is a technical issue that can be solved in another thread (Reply as new thread)

Comments, suggestions…
I would love to the perspective from someone that will be negativity effected by this “possible solution”.

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Thanks for making this series, Steven, it’s a great overview of the past and a improves the chances of continuing some or all of it into the future.

I really like the sponsorship program, I think it’s valuable to vhs and to the people that have the need for it.

I also like the open house policy but agree, there needs to be a limit to make membership more attractive and encourage people to pay (or keep paying). Think the paid workshop proposal (elsewhere) is a good idea, I made some of the smd workshops members only to push for people to support vhs.

One thing I’m less than thrilled about is the ambiguity around the keyholders list. I don’t want to go into too much detail but there are a lot of people who are not openly sponsored or pay regularly that end up with key access. Most of them never use it, so I think we should stop this (if we haven’t already) and if necessary make some people lifetime members with key access to openly acknowledge that this is happening. I actually don’t know any of the people on this list but I do know that when we change the door code there is a grey list of “people who need the code” that don’t come from the paypal payments, some of these will be cash payers but there are too many to key just this.

We also need to make sure the membership system (@Jarrett) caters for life members and we do a better job of recording this. One of the goals would be to issue membership cards so we can continue/re-instate the 10% at Lees.

Yes, I’m off topic.

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As far as I know, we don’t have any formal “life members” status, or process by which to nominate for such. If this is current practice, we should discuss and vote on it at an AGM. (If we have, please ignore me).

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@funvill: thank you for taking the time to put these together. Long time listener, first time caller. This one relates directly to me in a way it doesn’t to many other so I thought I would weigh in.

About a year and a half ago I lost my job and took the humiliating [to me] step of asking the BoD to subsidize my membership. The responses I got were wonderful and they allowed me to stick around without plastering it all over the walls about the resident freeloader. When I got back to work and got my bills back under control a couple months later I immediately upgraded to keyholder status/payments to show my support despite only ever actually using my key … maybe twice… In the year I have been a keyholder [hey look, first keyholder rate payment was Dec 2013. happy birthday to me!].

From a purely financial point of view, it was a solid return on investment. On the human side, the goodwill and community-building is immeasurable. I still very rarely come down, but I do my best to help when help is needed and I spam the hell out of the IRC channel on a regular basis. I continue to pay the higher rate to support an organization/cause that I believe does Good Things. But that is getting on a tangent.

Some times Life happens to good people, and all they need is a hand.

The other side of the comment was enforcement of the membership policies which really could be their own discussion. As I see it right now, there is absolutely no reason at all for anyone walking in off the street t become a member unless they want to use the shop, and even that rule was pretty arbitrary and seems like it is only there so they can say “this is what you get for membership”, and the laser. That said, I do like the fact that we are open and accepting to non-members on all nights. I think that, as with the helping hand above, the goodwill generated by not turning someone away on their first visit far exceeds the loss. I think that the RFID entry system will go a long way toward solving this once it is in full swing. Members get a card, a sign on the door says “non-members (knock | ring bell | do the truffle shuffle) to enter” and we have a digital guest book that will allow us to set a reasonable limit of where we distinguish a casual visitor from a membership leech, whether that is visits-per-month or overall visits or whatever metric we decide on.

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Personally, I became a member after coming down on a non-open-house night. There was one other dude there (Steven? Maybe?) working on his own stuff, and I was pretty much left to my own to devices to browse the goods, and ooh and ahh.

I really wouldn’t want to discourage that.

To my knowledge, the people who have requested (or been nominated for) subsidies have all been members that contribute heavily. This isn’t an exchange or anything, but it seems to have a correlation. The people that WANT to continue being members are the same people who tend to get sucked into VHS projects.

Other than dangerous tools (seriously - members only. This is liability stuff), I like that non-members are able to come in and do a one-off project. With a bit of a nudge towards Donatio.

Here’s a fun what-if:
There is a good chance that we will be moving into the Cook St location (the Shoebox). The front door has a standard apartment-style buzzer at the door. What we’re planning on doing is tying that into our membership system.
Each member has a four digit username and a four digit password that they select. They type both into the door’s keypad, and the keyholders get buzzed in immediately. If isvhsopen.com says we’re open, the members get buzzed in, too. If the person at the door is guest, they hit 0 or something, and it calls the VHS telephone so they can get escorted in.

That’s how I’m envisioning the system, anyway. It’s just bikeshedding at this point.
The result of that is guests would be totally welcome to come in (when we’re open), but there would be a little bit of pressure (and a little bit of benefit) to be a full member.

Thoughts?

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If we do get the cook street location, will we be able to have a sign on the door above the keypad detailing entry, and perhaps a lit up section saying “VHS IS OPEN - PRESS 0 FOR ACCESS”? This might be more friendly than a forbidding locked door and keypad.

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I would still like to be able to use a fob if possible. It would tie into access to other areas as well, ie. machinery and laser cutter unlocking.

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I’m not sure, but it’s unlikely we’ll be allowed to put anything on the outside. It is a shared building. People will have to dial #105 (or something) to call up VHS initially, so we could have a voice menu system that tells people what to do.

[quote=“RobertButterworth, post:7, topic:774, full:true”]
I would still like to be able to use a fob if possible. It would tie into access to other areas as well, ie. machinery and laser cutter unlocking.
[/quote]The code that the FOB stuff works with isn’t going anywhere, so there’s no reason that won’t continue to work. It’s just as easy to use a keypad and people use their account for everything, though!

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I am just going to leave this here without reading the back-scroll yet.

http://runningahackerspace.tumblr.com/post/103659427697/getting-some-members-to-actually-pay-their-dues-on

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So, since it’s story time:
I first visited VHS at the old space for a crypto-night. Was interested, but moved out of town and mostly forgot about it.

I dropped by a few months ago randomly after googling, found Ty, he showed me around, let me use some tools to work on a project for an hour or so.

I joined up, but my bank went dry and the payments stopped (or never actually started I think). I dropped by the space here and there, I was really happy I was able to do so. While at the space, Matt let me know about a recruiting event he was going to, and I tagged along, and that’s what got me my current job, which I am extremely grateful for. I have since joined up and I’ve donated back the difference of missed payments, and am now a keyholder. Hackspace’s laissez faire attitude helped me immeasurably, giving me a place to work and a community which got me employed with a career.

I have trouble asking for help even when I need it (asking for sponsorship). I’m a supporter of the idea of being lenient, but if we’re cutting it close on payments, we might need to push some to join.

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I have the other fob reader at home with the other stuff from my locker.

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I wonder if we should use twilio for this. Those access systems are often programmable to call any number, if it can call twilio that would work well - we can host the twilio script on the cloud server. Will all work even if the net to the space is down.

Twilio also supports sms so we could offer this too.

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