Crazy Dumb Honorarium Idea

DMS General
#1

As someone who has taught a lot in the past I like the idea that attendance and honoraiums are linked, it helps show what the demand for classes are in a given committee, what if the honorariums are budgeted at 3 students per-class, for a committee to a certain number like 5/month and after that is used up, to 4 students then after 5 classes are used, then 6 students, this would dynamically increase the goal post for the class for a given committee but would also indicate where demand is strongest for a given subject, it may be the best way to balance overall budget constraints with community demand for a subject!

The only thing is how feasable and automated it would be on the calendar.

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#2

I like the idea of knowing how much “demand” is for a class, but there are some classes at DMS that have a fixed size that we can’t really improve on.

Take welding for example. It’s about 25 minutes per student, and we normally have a class size of 8 because any more than that and we can’t keep peoples attention for the full time period.

Or Machine shop where any more than 6 people around a machine and it starts to get really hard to learn because you can’t see the fiddly bits of the machine.

What I’d really like to see in the crazy idea front would be some sort of voting system for people to go to a page and say “I want CLASS X” and then when they take “CLASS X” they get removed or after a period of time they fall off the list. That way we can more accurately estimate how many of each type of teacher we need for classes at the space.

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#3

There would be alot of classes at the beggining of the month and then none towards the end. The would have to be different weeks for beggining of 4week/month period for calculating monthly limits. Would get real confusing real quick

#4

It’s an interesting concept, but as Kevin states it would front load the month.

However it got me thinking about all of the 101 and required classes. You could say that over the course of a month the honorarium is based on how many new people you clear on the tools. So for example you put up a welding class every weekend, you get enough for honorarium every time, the teacher would make 200. But if you had 8 week 1, 6 week 2, 3 week 3 and 1 week 4, you would only get $150 because only 3 hit the honorarium limit. If we did it on total count for the month then you get the full amount because you taught more than the minimum averaged over the month

Food for thought for the next leader of education.

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#5

In terms of honorarium, I’d like to see us approach it very strategically.

Why do we want honorarium? To encourage us to have classes Is the general answer I see.
Why do we want more classes?
If it’s to increase membership, why do we want to increase membership?

And It’s not that I don’t have my own opinions on these, but separating my own opinions out is important with something like this.

Lots of other questions stem off of the answers for these. Increasing classes may have multiple threads - increasing access to tools, increasing community, etc. Each of these would have different honorarium designs depending on the end goal.

This may be the reason we’ve had issues coming to a consensus on a design, as each of us have a different set of assumptions that we’re working from. For instance, this one seems designed to encourage balancing classes to demand. Do we need to encourage that? To what end goal?

So, I ask, what are our end-goals for the honorarium system?

And “I Don’t Know” is a perfectly acceptable answer - it’s one of the best places to start. But I digress…

Keep these ideas coming, and maybe we can get to a system that does what we want.

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#6

Thanks Justin! Honorarium has always been a love/hate topic. Personally I love to see people teaching great classes, from basic 101’s to some of our more esoteric topics that would never be taught anywhere but DMS.

I suggest a 5-6 person task force to look at how to improve the honorarium system. We tried with having a couple of meetings with all of the committee chairs. Those derailed into a land grab for class counts for committees.

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#7

Why do we want more classes? Partially because it draws membership. But I like classes because it ENGAGES membership. When I joined a year ago I had an absolute blast for months! I took classes on almost every topic available and really expanded my capabilities and knowledge set. The space was vibrant, bustling, and had a sense of community. I met a ton of people and had a lot of fun, I learned an incredible amount in a very short time period.
Honorarium/budget/spending is an ongoing discussion, and the long-term effects of covid may never see us bounce back to that time. And no, I’m not forgetting the system abuse.

So yes, I lean towards honorarium as community building and retention, tool access has definitely struggled in recent months.

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#8

I know these questions can seem annoying, because the reasons seem obvious to you and I come across as a dummy. I ask because I want to understand assumptions and this topic goes deeper than I can currently see.I also don’t believe we’ll be able to hash everything out over talk :slight_smile:

If the goal is engagement, how can that be measured or tied to an honorarium? Is it just the number of people? Maybe this could be measured more with something like a survey to see what effect we’re having?
Can we quantify vibrant and bustling? If the goal is getting more people in at the same time to create that atmosphere, would encouraging encouraging classes to occuring near the same time or in rolling periods would help? Or is there some other definition?

Tool access is actually near and dear to me. I don’t like seeing them “locked away” simply because a class is lacking or behind an instructor charge. However, I don’t want to assume the honorarium is the only or best way to solve that problem.

Also understand that if this was when you joined, everything was also new. Newness and novel experiences create an excellent array of chemicals in your brain that excites and makes everything shiny – anyone that’s started a new relationship with someone can attest to that. So it may color your memories of that time.

I would attest when I joined in December and started taking classes that everything was very vibrant, bustling, and had a great atmosphere as well. I would walk around and have great conversations with everyone about thier projects.

It’s actually what I love about Makerspaces in general – the atmosphere and collaboration are amazing. It’s clear that you are also passionate about that, and I look forward to discussing more of it with you!

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#9

Welding might not be the best example. I suspect I could teach MIG every week, and get at least 3 people every time. I will grant that we might eventually hit saturation, but there seems to be a pretty large pool of desire out there.

And to @malcolmputer, I was assuming that there was a limit of 8 because that’s all the helmets we’ve got. Although, if we thought we could teach more, those HF helmets aren’t dreadfully expensive…

Now – sewing. There’s a class that 1 monthly class seems to suck up all the interest. As we’ve expanded, we might fill 2 classes a month, but my early experience leaves me reluctant to over-schedule that one. (And that’s basic sewing – nothing fancy.) Sewing is the one that made me want to find some folks and bang their heads on the ground (I want a class! Sure, I can do that. When? Crickets… Schedule class, 0 students, then “it wasn’t convenient”.)

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#10

I’m surprised none of the folks who manage the calendar haven’t spoken up. As I understand it, our calendar system is cheap and simple and does not lend itself to this kind of complicated programming. It would have to be something monitored on a spreadsheet by somebody. So, it would be either Yet Another Volunteer Opportunity, or more overload for one of the current volunteers.

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Mark Havens, care to comment?
#11

I’ve only been a member for 18 months, and I don’t mean to sound heretical, but I’m still baffled by the whole concept of “honorariums.” Why would DMS get in the middle of the students paying the instructor? It leads to all sorts of accounting headaches, like 1099s, etc. It also directly led to the whole budget crisis thing last year. I can see where DMS might want to regulate how much the instructors charge, but nothing more than that. Just a thought.

I think there are two types of classes: Certification classes that clear you for use of a tool/machine and special interest classes that expand your skills and knowledge. I think DMS has an obligation to provide as many certification classes as needed to meet demand, and the class prices should be low, but still paid for by the students.

Special interest classes are another matter entirely. Let interested teachers charge whatever the market will bear, with DMS getting a cut for providing the facility (a percentage, with perhaps a minimum). This would allow us to draw national instructors. I’ve taken classes at Woodcraft, Homestead Heritage near Waco, Lost Art Press in Covington, KY, and I’m headed to Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Bloomington in a few weeks. The classes weren’t cheap, but the instructors were top notch and worth every penny. DMS has the facilities and should be able to draw instructors like those and let them charge the going rate to the public, with DMS taking a cut of the top for providing the facilities and getting a discount for members.

#12

There are a lot of reasons DMS has to get involved depending on the details of the situation. To the extent that DMS looks like it exists to provide tax-free overhead for independent teaching businesses, it’ll get shut down- especially when those earners are making policy. The in’s and outs are complicated, and have been documented extensively on this forum, but that’s the tldr.

#13

Exactly so. I have a hard time prioritizing DMS since it’s so far. Faced with a vacuum of whatever I tend to choose the path of least resistance…i.e. making at home.

Before the honorarium was torpedoed and classes were plentiful I was more likely to make at DMS, since I found some interesting class to take 2-3x a week. Usually met makers in class I enjoyed talking to, or a new skill to briefly obsess over, and that “networking” added another reason to make at DMS instead of home. I also got a warm fuzzy from supporting that educational mission as opposed to subsidizing someone’s toy box the months I didn’t go.

Since the calendar has been thin I can definitely see where it encourages someone like me to cancel.

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#14

What you’re talking about is already a possibility and always has been. Nothing stops a member from holding (or sponsoring) an Eventbrite class at DMS. The fact is doesn’t happen speaks to demand and a whole other kettle of fish on why DMS isn’t the default hosting site for those types of instructors in our area

#15

We are an educational non-profit. The early leadership believed it was important to give back to the community of makers through free or nearly free education. Honorarium was setup as an intentionally small token of encouragement for anyone willing to teach. Over time the meaning of honorarium devolved to payment for the round trip gas money and then to out right income. I think it has been reset by the current board to its original intent. Still, as others have said, it is possible for an instructor to charge separately if the honorarium is not enough motivation.

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#16

Classes are one of the things that makes DMS fun and since our purpose is educational, it makes sense. Classes also brought in people so DMS was bustling. It’s hard to conceive right now with Covid, but at the time we had 5-10 classes going at a time on weekends and the place was packed.
Once the classes went away it was just a spattering of people here and there, and for a while the buzz was gone. It was climbing back up when boom, Covid.

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#17

I joined early in our occupation of 1825 Monetary, so I can only say what I’ve heard (with some assumptions). I’m certainly not one of the early members, but I have heard lots of discussions by early members.

When they filed for the 501c3 status, many of those folks didn’t realize how broad the definition of “educational non-profit” is. They didn’t want to charge students because they thought it might give us problems with our non-profit educational status. Plus, I have the distinct impression that there’s been at least one small makerspace, somewhere, that got shut down for the non-profit because it became apparent that it was just a tool-sharing club. You have to have some community outreach, and you definitely have to have education going on.

Now, we could definitely charge folks more for classes, but free-ish education has become a byword for us. I keep waving the Craft Guild around when folks are arguing about free education being a requirement. (They’re a 501c3 that’s been around since the 1950’s and they have no qualms about charging.)

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#18

There is definitely a lot we can borrow from how they handle their classes but I think we are a bit limited in how far we want to take that They have a different organization structure than ours, and they employ professional teachers that charge a lot more for the classes.

If we follow their model we are likely to see class prices in the hundreds of dollars with very little actual member involvement in the teaching.

I’d prefer to find a middle ground where we can keep the training classes free or cost of materials and the skills classes charging a reasonable fee that is fair for the teacher and members.

For example, the fused glass class at the craft guild is $100 and there is only 1 class.

This is a class that can be taught at DMS for about $20 in materials.

Another thing to consider is that we don’t want to get back to the days where you couldn’t use the pottery wheels or the whole woodshop on the weekends because they were stacked with back to back classes that were being marketed to non-members who were not being actively recruited to join.

I think we will find a balance, we were close before covid-19. I am happy we are using this time to hash out ideas for improving the system.

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#19

@LAndras put into words what I’ve been feeling. I joined around the same time he did, and was very new to making. I had no idea what I wanted to make, so I went to all the classes I could. For me, it was about education, but also, this is how I made friends, being fairly new to Dallas.

There are many introverts at DMS who are happy to work on projects alone, but for the extroverts among us, and the newbies, classes are a large part of why new people and not-so-new people stay members – it’s the social aspect. It’s a lot easier to say hi and introduce yourself to someone in a class than it is walking up to a random person.

Luke is right, “bustling” is the right word to describe the environment when there’s a full schedule of classes. A full parking lot means lots of people to talk to.

Also, it’s a lot of fun to teach. Seeing people light up when they learn something new is a great feeling.

I watch YouTube DIY’s and how to videos for hours a week. I have most of what I need at home. I don’t know that I’m getting the value out of the space without the classes, because without the classes, there are fewer people around.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to replicate some of this camaraderie online with teachers more willing to step out of their comfort zones by receiving honorarium (within acceptable financial and budgetary limits).

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