Hello, I have been a member on/off for years and I have noticed a change of culture when it comes to classes. I think there has been a shift from volunteer mentoring and teaching, to pay-per-class mode. Before the flamethrowers are lit, I am not criticizing either, as I find both methods valid. I am just checking if my mind is playing tricks on me. It looks like DMS went from free (or nominal fees to cover materials) to higher class fees. I would assume to also compensate for the instructor’s time? AGAIN, NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT. Of course, this is not for all the classes, but the mix seems to have shifted. Am I just imagining things?
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You may be seeing a small number of teachers who teach for $$, but teach a lot of classes. If you look, there are still many teachers who are being paid by the honorarium. For instance, if one of my classes has a fee that you have to pay upfront, that’s for DMS materials. And, if I’m charging you at the class, that will be for materials I’m providing.
Edit: We did change how Woodshop Basics works. By the nature of the way it works (small classes because there’s only one set of machines), cancellations may bring class below the 3-person minimum for honorarium. Those folks are being paid by the students that do show up. We had already started charging a small “skin in the game” fee to discourage people from signing up for multiple classes.
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Make sense. I may be just getting old. Incidentally, years ago, you were the teacher at my first class at DMS. 
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I’ll join you in the not laying blame but can try to give some context as I remember it. Names not mentioned, small judgements left as my worldview and historical context is part of the story lol.
A while back there was (pre-COVID by a couple years) there was a glut of classes and most (all? eligible minus maybe one exception I can think of) were taught for the honorarium which was a $50 DMS paid the teacher per class. The board at the time decided there were a couple bad apples who were teaching too many classes and it would be best to throw out the whole bunch by limiting the honorarium to $25 the teacher and iirc 2? classes maximum per month per teacher. The hope at the time was to keep the variety of classes but to keep people from teaching too much.
That killed the classes basically, so they backtracked a bit and made it $50 per class again but kept the pretty low class limit per month. The classes never recovered.
A couple years later and after COVID and we still hadn’t really recovered to the old honorarium level of classes so some enterprising folks who knew we needed training and members would be willing to pay for it decided that they would let the market decide and suggested that teachers just start charging what they thought was fair for classes.
We have mostly? recovered from the class shortages we had with the few side effects which haven’t been serious enough to prompt too much fixing.
Back when I started up, it took me 4 months or so of weekends to get signed off on every piece of equipment in the Woodshop, Machine Shop, Automotive, Metal Shop, CA, Ceramics, and Jewelry, and about $130 (75 of that was the HAAS class lol, most classes were $5). Today I expect it would cost you a whole lot more but you’d be able to do it a bit quicker maybe and there’s also more tools than there were before.
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Many good points and interesting backdrop to the whole class/teach. Thx!
There is more of a mix now for sure.
I think all of the departments/individual teachers are figuring out what works for them to be most beneficial for their time and also make sure we get enough classes up for the demand.
Teacher/volunteer burnout is a real issue currently at DMS and if paying a little more for classes incentivizes more people to teach, we just have to pay a little more.
I do think the honorarium rules/amounts are in need of a re-review.
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Yeah, you’re not wrong. Honorarium is a shitshow and people are bypassing it to avoid its limitations. We have had entire departments switch over to private pay (e.g. woodshop),which is a clear indication of a failure of our processes/systems.
As a former teacher, being offered a cookie (50 dollars) and then having it taken away (due to no shows/cancellations last minute) is incredibly insulting and wastes my time. It’s a good way to ensure that you will have a limited supply of teachers, going forward.
I get that there was abuse in the past, but the amount of bureaucratic systems we have in place is doing more harm than good to the culture of the space and kills off a lot of this culture of mentorship and volunteering.
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If we do move to a different version, it will need some serious oversight. In the earlier version, I personally became aware of 2 people who were gaming the system to pay their rent because they were in 2 of my normal teaching areas, They were teaching so many classes that I couldn’t get a slot to teach my classes. Plus, I am moderately sure that they were, largely, teaching the same people over and over again. I think the current version is working okay. One just has to teach classes that people want to come to. I have also found that you need a pretty short time frame to keep people from forgetting that they signed up. YMMV.
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This goes back to a failure of processes. Rather than penalizing the entire community for the actions of a few bad apples, the people abusing the system should have been caught earlier and disciplined for it. Instead, more rules were thrown onto honorarium and more bandaids were slapped onto it. It’s entirely a mess at this point.
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It’s currently working for me.
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As a teacher, I charge two ways:
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Creative Arts purchased the supplies for my watercolor and drawing classes. I take the honorarium but charge a low fee for students to cover the supplies that go back to the space. Kinda a wash if I only have enough students to cover the honorarium cost.
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My calligraphy classes I personally purchase all the supplies: pens, paper, printing costs, my camera, etc so I worked up the supply cost/per student and mark up a bit to make a little profit and don’t take the honorarium.
I also post my classes for over a month so I can get those who know they can make it. Last minute calendar posting don’t work for me.
No shows were hard when I started teaching but now since I’ve had many classes I rarely deal with them anymore but still happens every now and then.
I try not to charge much for DMS members so they can learn a new skill but if they are not DMs members and I advertise externally the cost goes up for non-members.
-Gena
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It shouldn’t be hard to monitor how many classes a person teaches and who the students are to address the issues described above and prevent abuse. but what do i know.
Ah, but it’s just one more task that someone has to volunteer to do.
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Sure, sure, I get it. It was also a volunteer’s task to add “more rules were thrown onto honorarium and more bandaids were slapped onto it”. I was referring to the technical aspect of the task.
Except that there were a lot of us that were willing to volunteer to do this, and kept getting shot down and roadblocked one thing after another after another.
I was planning on writing a post later, but my tldr: a lot of people seem scared to try things because in the past when people tried things there was no direction and the systems ended up being bad. There’s a lot of the mentality of… Things are mostly working at least for most people and a potential change could cause more issues, so let’s just not touch it. But then when there’s tech debt due to that, people start getting annoyed and it’s like a catch-22. I get that the space is concerned about people starting projects, leaving halfway through without documenting, etc… but rather than causing so many pain points, we should come up with clear and public guidelines for this. And that means abolishing duplicate information locations, putting information where it makes sense/consistently, etc.
I had statistics going on for classes, honorarium, access, cancellations of memberships to new members to add one and stuff, but it was always a meh. Case in point, I brought up some of the concerns with the finances over a year ago, and was kind of laughed / ignored on a lot of it (I won’t repeat some of what I was told because it pissed me off) until suddenly bam we have a rate increase because we’re in the red again.
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There are real problems with the Honorarium, as I understand the process: the IRS forms required by DMS expose the teacher’s personal identity information in an uncontrolled public process. For myself, I would rather skip the whole Honorarium than risk identity theft, $50 is one tank of gas where as identity theft escalates into thousands of dollars and multiple headaches and sleepless nights.
At the same time, perceived value comes into play. If a student is not charged for the class, they may (and do) think that last minute cancellation or no show is not a big deal. Apparently the idea that there are actual physical resources used as well as preparation time and time committed to being physically present (instructor) don’t count. The fact that the class has of necessity been limited to the number of “tool/equipment” available, and that the class was “FULL” means that the late cancellation/no show usually does not allow others who wanted the class to register or participate. That problem flies under the radar.
As far as the culture of DMS, like most things in life: you get back what you put in. And there are PLENTY of opportunities to put in. Whether one takes that path usually determines their ultimate perception as well as their level of enjoyment and fulfillment.
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Unless something has changed, you need to plaintext email jitasa a copy of your W-9. There’s no secure upload with them as far as I know of, so I’m not sure why we still use them to handle tax information in this way.
Thank you for trying to help this unfortunate situation. As I stated in the Talk discussion, the risk is not worth it to me. If I get to the place where I really need/want the teacher’s fee, I will simply charge the students. But hopefully (!) I will be teaching for the foreseeable future because I like it, not because my 401 bottomed out.
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I think we’re working on getting a secure W9 upload link working. We’re in talks with Jitasa to get it up.
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