Using grants to help pay for rent on an expensive space

General lounge
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Part of the VHS culture series

Currently VHS does not search for grants to pay for rent and basic operating costs. This rule was put into place by the founding members (gray bears, and gray buns). They had seen other organizations that relied on grant funding to support their spaces. When the politics or government changed some of these spaces didn’t get their grants, lost their funding and hand to close up shop. This has happened many times in vancouver and is a real problem.

At the start, VHS was a lot more of a political space, Some of us organized protects and political action. We had problems with the city and elected government and clashed more than a few times. This has changed dramatically over the last few years. Now I would say that VHS is not political at all. (When was the last time you heard “Die Harper Die!” ?)

Using membership dues for rent was a good idea. Its fairly predictable, and grows as our membership and need for space grows.

Not all grants are bad
One of the problems is that this rule for not looking for grants for rent and basic operating costs has transformed over the years into not looking for ANY grants for ANY reason.

Over the history of VHS (Please correct me if I am wrong) VHS has applied for two grants and gotten one of them without too much trouble.

  • Vancouver Mini Maker Faire - Emily Smith (Gray bun, OG) wrote a grant to the CoV asking for money to launch the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire. She wrote the grant, followed up, and got the money days before the Faire. It was amazing, She’s amazing, The faire was amazing! The grant was written thought VHS, and VHS gave its social capital, community support to help get the grant. The profits from this faire help VHS buy the laser cutter. Maker Foundation has gotten this same grant 4 years in a row since then. Again Emily is awesome!

  • CoV Infrastructure grant for front staircase at 45 west hastings. - Uhm, I don’t want to get into this. We didn’t get this grant but there was lots of reasons why we shouldn’t have gotten it.

  • ARC - Did you ever get that radio grant ? @sIGNgUY

There are lots of grants out there that VHS can apply for.
VHS has a great name, lots of social and local support, We should “leverage” this social credit to apply for grants instead of wasting it.

Limit on what we can take in with membership dues.
Sooner or later we will hit the max amount of members the space can sustain. This limit could be reached because of several things such as. Administration limit, physical space limit, limit of different personalities in the space before we are nothing but drama, or we hit peak Hacker/Maker (Every hacker and maker will have heard of us or been to our space once and we won’t be able to attract any more people)

When this happens we will need alternative sources of income besides membership to sustain our space and get more tools, etc… We can and should start looking in to alternative sources of income now!

Wow that got a little ranty. Lets see if I can bring it home.

My point is that not all grants are bad, Some grants can pay for rent, There are lots of grants out there, and VHS has the requirements to meet a lot of these grants.

We should apply for some of these grants and use the money to pay for infrastructure upgrades and maybe rent for a year or two while we build up the membership at a space that is bigger then we can afford.

Either way we should cultivate a culture of applying for grants at VHS using VHS’s name for VHS’s projects.

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well said. let’s get less ranty, and more granty!

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Always an awesome idea.

I’d throw caution to using grants to pay for operating costs like rent as it’s generally not sustainable or can put an organization in trouble financially - but using it for expansion, projects, or growth is a good call. It’s likely the new place will need leasehold improvements and a grant would be great way to make it happen.

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I agree that we should definitely excersize caution with how we use
grant money. Using it to pay for rent can definitely put VHS in a
precarious position if that money ever dries up. I got let go from the
same job twice because grant money dried up and they had no other form
of income. Not fun, and I definitely don’t want VHS to go through losing
a space because grant money disappears.

On the flip-side, I think that if we do get a grant we could budget
some of it for rent, or for a rent shortfall fund. I think the trick is
not to rely on grant money to pay rent/utitliies. It’s better to think
of grant money as “oh awesome, extra money” instead of “this is part of
our main revenue stream”. That way, we can get through tough times when
membership dips or whatever, but not lose the space if the grant disappears.

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I did some digging in to gaming grants a while back and that could be a good fit. They fund operating costs, tools and equipment so it could be used to cover things like:

  • laser tubes
  • full sized drill press/bandsaw
  • CNC
  • blades and bits
  • test equipment
  • 3D printer & printer supplies

I’m basing this from their 2014 guidelines only, I’ve never applied for such grant before.

I think it would be worthwhile to apply for the 2015 year, the application period is between Feb 1st - May 31st

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I am not writing the grant but I will help you!
I am sure there are a few of us that have written grants before that can review and give suggestions on the first few drafts as well. Just need someone to “bottom line” writing the grant.

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I have never been involved in the process; I’d not mind being in the wings to see how it is done, if that isn’t too much of an inconvenience