Continuing the discussion from Does the Hackspace want a CNC Taig Mini Mill?!?:
Back in January there were some uncomfortable conversations during the move revolving around “Who owns this?”
We need some sort of document for all of our donated and loaned equipment.
We need to have it absolutely crystal clear who owns what, what is a donation, and what is a loan. This could have saved us some resentment for certain things (LED wall anyone?).
These documents were started, and I’d like some help fleshing them out, please:
Loan policy
Donation Policy
Second link can change a lot, we don’t really care about donator (or it’s optional, or something).
For loans, I want to word it so that it’s clear that we aren’t trying to take ownership of loaned equipment or whatever, but we need some reasonable procedure if we’re moving and need to purge equipment.
Our policy as it stands doesn’t exist, so we can talk about what a reasonable policy is here, too!
I posted the Google doc links in Slack, and @wander posted these excellent reference materials to help guide us:
https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Guides/Bringing_items_to_the_space
Tampa hackspace form: Donation Guidelines - Google Docs
http://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/how-to-accept-or-refuse-donated-equipment
I haven’t read through these yet, but will start adding good parts to our forms, as should you!