Continuing the discussion from November BOD meeting date?:
I see this line item in last BoD meeting minutes:
Maker Fellowship Fund - Total of 76 Grants: $-405.85
How is a “Grant” defined? Per maker or per month? I.E. have we helped out 76 members or have we funded 76 total months of membership? No issues here, just curious…
How does the fund have (as in reach) a negative balance? Isn’t this like a bucket having a negative amount of water in it?
A grant is x number of membership months, either $35 or $50/month. There have been instances of someone getting 3 months for exceptional service to the organization. We have many people doing great things for DMS and I hope everyone would consider putting some money in the fund here: https://dallasmakerspace.org/contribute/maker-fellowship-fund/ Several Board Members and myself had contributed lately to get the fund back up.
This brings me to your second question: Our class based system of tracking committees and other funds essentially is just attaching an IOU and switching money between pockets. We went negative when we were allocating 2-3 grants per board meeting for service to PR. Not to say the people granted membership did not deserve it but I personally felt we lowered the bar to make it a paid helper situation. Since we ran out of money that pretty much put the brakes on that. I would love for the members of DMS to have a campaign to restore that fund.
Thank you Marshall for bringing this up, as well as whomever put it on the agenda. This has been weighing on my mind of late, and I’ve been contemplating ways to facilitate a fundraiser, to replenish the funds, of course, but mostly to raise awareness. I for one was not aware of how it was funded until I dug into QuickBooks. I can’t help but think folks would give more if more of its understood how it works, and what methods of giving are supported. Glad to see it pop up. Hope we can grow some legs on giving, but more importantly awareness.
Thank you Lampy for the explanation.
Thanks Ken. Makes sense now…
Hmmm…I wonder if we might not ‘officially’ decide that the monies we get from the Amazon Smile and Tom Thumb programs be diverted into this fund going forward. That assumes we know how much we are getting or can track these particular donation streams? Same thing with other donation sources like weekly tours, open houses, t-shirt & tchotchke sales? Any others…?
Is a tax receipt or statement available for people who donate to this fund?
PR team is working on a Makermade fair and all the table proceeds will go to this fund. Hopefully this will help. Things should be out about it ASAP.
Is there a way to designate either half (committee / teacher) of the class honorarium directly to the fellowship fund?
A teacher can alway donate their honorariums to the fund ‘after tax’ like any other source of income.
Something to remember here is that the fellowship fund was never to be a direct recipient of DMS funds. It was to be funded solely through extra to DMS sources.
Has anything been changed to prevent this kind of tit for tat behavior in the future?
Love the idea. Also, maybe, a “Please Give to…” can on the table?
Also, just occurring to me! Coin-op toilet stalls!
It’s the dubiousness of it that matters. What are the standards to receive it? It feels a little like, “paying” to volunteer. Is it my buddies that are getting it? A lot of questions around who and why someone would get this.
IOU,s …LoL … just like the federal social security system.
My guess it was setup to sincerely ‘thank’ a member that went above and beyond to volunteer their time. I see a lot of members doing that, are they all getting the fellowship?
There needs to be standards applied in order to lower the subjectivity to the situation and anybody’s buddy should recuse themselves from the decision.
Lastly, who makes the decision to offer the fellowship? Is it the board only? Or is it the committtee chairman? Or?
If it’s an important aspect of running the operation, why not just allocate funds monthly from the general fund to keep it liquid?
That fact that there was money in it and then fellowships were given, then IOU’s were used and then it stopped because of lack of funding raises eyebrows.
Sounds like a nice idea, but wasn’t thought out and refined.
My understanding is it can not come from the space itself. It has to come from outside funding. I could be wrong though.
If someone were to add this to the iPad or put up a donation box I would probably try to throw a few dollars in there every time I’m at DMS.
Yes it should be - as long as it is separate from dues and states it is a donation to DMS. I.e memo filed on check “DMS Donation - Fellowships” This makes it clear where donation is to go and that it is a donation not dues, fees or purchase.
The problem is each “Tombstone” kiosk is committee specific and I believe to set one up is $500-$700 dollars. If PayPal weren’t so strict it would be easy.
@Robert_Davidson @AlexRhodes Is there an easier way to do this with Braintree with a web link or QR code that payment could be received? Multiple items, say $5, $10, $25? I confess little knowledge of how this is actually implemented.
Anyone can put a nomination on the agenda for someone to get the grant, then the board decided on it.
I’ll disagree on that. Because it’s like Pearce said:
This makes it very transparent. It also happens infrequently enough that most folks don’t pay attention. Usually, though, it’s a group of people who get together and provide supporting argument for their chosen candidate to be endowed with some “free months” for all the stuff they do for DMS. Reviewing past BOD meeting minutes lent quite a bit of insight on my part. The most prominent example I can think of off the top of my head was when the air compressor was down due to a scrubbed-out dryer. Tim Bene came through with a unit from his personal stash. Not only did he donate the equipment, he installed the whole shebang! In a day (maybe 2) all the places that need compressed air were back up and operational. We were facing weeks, likely to buy new components and get them installed. Tim was gifted (how many, I don’t recall) member-dues free months. They didn’t even come CLOSE to paying for that generosity, but it was a small token of appreciation.
If there were any funds in this, I’d recommend Luke Strickland for a 3 month grant. I know he’s been working hard on the Infrastructure, but when I walked into the Metal Shop! WOW! I had no idea it could be so bright in there! I think he’s really done a lot for the 'Space with doing the installation (and coordination the professional service which did some installation, as well). $150 grant would be a nice way to thank him for going above and beyond. If there were any funds.
On slightly different notes:
I really like the idea of trying to get this funded by some stream of revenue (outside of Member Dues, obviously, or general donations). I like the suggested streams so far (sales, Amazon, etc.). Just for giggles, because I know nothing about it, I tried to figure out about how much an endowment would need to be made to fund 3 free memberships for a year (@ $50/month, that’s $150/monthx12=$1800 a year).
This (randomly chosen, completely un-fact-checked, and likely erroneous, but for the sake of portrayal) web site claims you’d need an endowment of 2x your annual budget. That’s an endowment of $1800x2=$3600. So if were to trip over $4k that we could stick into an endowment fund (I’m not saying they exist in such paltry amounts; I have no idea) we could, hypothetically, fund 3 “grants” per month indefinitely. Would striving for something like this be “better” than trying to generate funds from membership donations to the fund? Could we get a corporate gift/endowment/matching funds to do this? The “Energizer Battery” member endowment fund, maybe?
Anyway. As usual, I’ve got bad ideas, but decent dreams, so there they are.
Does anyone who actually does such work now: do such small endowment funds exist, or is such a dream simply outrageous, and endowment managers only work for $multimillion endowments?
Regardless. Excited to see us talking about this.
The Fellowships are new to me, didn’t even know they existed. So I’m coming at this from an ignorant position. It seems that some know about it and some don’t.
Why would one person get it and others don’t?
I don’t know that it has ever been requested for anyone that hasn’t received it, provided the funding is available. Usually there’s a bit of a ground swell from the membership to support the request. The most controversial statement I’ve seen made about this is what Ken posted (though I don’t think this sentiment originated with him, nor was it limited to him; I think a lot of folks were confused about some of these allocations):
Just an FYI on Fellowship funds. They are raised through donations specifying that’s what they are for. Or there are fund raising activities and the money goes to the fund. DMS does not donate members dues out of general funds to it. The reason is monies given to individuals could be considered an enurement to that person. Money donated for the fund is held in a “constructive trust” by DMS and tracks and administers the funds. Since the funds were never part of DMS funds there is no enurement of DMS funds but of another fund that then transfers the money to DMS as dues.
To our credit, we try to make sure that monies only going for legitimate things in furtherance of our mission. We may get a little nit-picky it may seem at times, but that is also part of our Makerspace culture as well as all volunteerism and no employees. I think these are some of the things that have allowed us to be a success.