There are several classes I was hoping to be able to take in the future, but now, instead of being free, they are $20. If I take just two classes each month, I’m up to $100.
I drive from Rockwall, pay my dues and donate my time (free classes w/no honorarium) and materials (for ceramics and creative arts). I have been taught things by others and now I pass that learning on. I don’t expect to receive anything for that. Yes, outside of DMS, my time is valuable, but inside of DMS, I am a volunteer.
My underlying thinking is: “Help and Be Helped.”
(I understand the efforts in the Woodshop to charge for classes in order to purchase new tools. I applaud that.)
If I am missing something, please help me understand. I don’t want to start a fight. I just want to know if this is the way things are going to be done from now on. It seems to me that there ought to be a guideline for fees and not “every man for himself” where some people charge for their time and others do not. Charging for materials is one thing - I get that. Requesting an Honorarium and donating it is great. Even requesting an Honorarium for a highly sought after class or one that requires a lot of preparation, I can accept. But, getting an Honorarium for every class you teach up to the limit - just because you can - goes against the very nature of this organization.
Stepping off of soapbox now… and hoping for some answers (rather than shaming, calling names or whatever else people are prone to doing now here on Talk).
If you teach, perhaps accept an honorarium or two a month that you can apply towards paid classes you want to take? With the restrictions on honorarium now, some teachers collect class fees to offset their costs, costs that honorarium used to cover. Things like gas to get to and from the space, etc.
If people want to charge $100 for a class, they shouldn’t be prevented from doing that.
If they want to collect maximum monthly honorarium, they should be able to do that. Everyone’s economic situation is different. Honorarium is literally designed to be an incentive program to promote more classes and more teaching at the space. What happened a year ago when the honorarium cutbacks were made? The makerspace went from a bustling hub of learning about anything and everything, into a ghost town. It’s slightly better now, because some teachers have figured out how to make things work via Eventbrite etc, and are teaching again.
I don’t feel entitled to anyone’s time and will happily pay folks for help. I’m not rich but it’s easier for me to find twenty bucks than to find several spare hours to slog through something on my own.
Without getting into the discussion on classes, fees, honorariums, etc., which has been argued over and over and about which I have no strong opinions, it seems like the most straightforward way for you to handle this would be to take the honorarium for the class(es) you teach and use that to pay for the classes you take. You’re essentially trading your time for others’, which is sort of how the world works anyway
Oops. I could have just said, " ^ what @LAndras said."
As a fairly poor person, the “you can counterbalance your fee by teaching a class or two” was a big help in choosing to be a member. And, it was also an enticement in my decision to expand my teaching efforts to committees that were not my primary area of interest. I’ve kinda got the “help and be helped”, so I kept teaching through the first “cut the honorarium in half” thing, even though it made me grouchy. Having spotted opportunities for teaching (during the full honorarium period) by the outcry for classes, I knew that Brad Sims’ “limit the honorarium per person, and more people will teach” was a total crock. I mean, if people would step forward to teach, they would have done that before I got involved.
Capt runs a small business, so I can use our Square for payments. That saved me from having figure out Eventbrite. Much as I may love DMS, I like money too.
There has been massive speculation and discussion over the last couple of years about our “culture”. There have always been “members” (actively part of the community), and “customers” (just here to do their own personal thing). As we’ve gotten bigger and bigger, the customers have become more obvious, and have kinda swamped the smaller core of “members”.
Some of that is just plain flat the way people are. We could do some work with our more personable members making a point to try to involve the customers in hopes that they will become “members” – teaching, helping, doing more than complaining that stuff isn’t available. But – you’re fighting their upbringing, their innate lack of involvement, etc. And, some customers may have calculated their cost-of-making, and they’re good with that, and nothing else.
The concept of teaching a couple of classes to “make up” for the classes I have to pay for is a reasonable approach. I’m going to put together a few classes and see how that goes.
Thank you all for giving me perspective.
You can keep what you “know” Beth; I’ll stick with the facts. The facts are that now, compared to the time when I (and the current D&O) started working on this, we’ve paid out 94% more in honorariums to 35% more teachers. Doesn’t seem like a crock to me, but what do I know?
I am having a bit of difficulty understanding your statistics. You are saying that we have 35% more teachers, yes? From what point in time have we doubled our honorarium payments? I will accept that this is happening in areas other than my normal areas. In Ceramics, we’ve picked up several new teachers, but they just seem to be putting up random and sporadic classes.
I tend to look at the calendar. The golden goose of classes still seems to be a bit moribund. Perhaps you have indeed increased teachers, but they aren’t filling up the bucket. Granted, we couldn’t support the original outflow of honorariums, but the current offerings seem to be a bit stunted.
Frankly, I’d love to see the numbers you used for those statistics, but I don’t want to ask for them in a public forum.
It’s pretty easy, you can view quickbooks and count from the calendar system as easy as I can. The current offerings might seem “stunted” and I don’t think we’re done, but we’ve shown continuous improvement since October every single month. To you, that might be something to belittle, to me it’s something to be proud of and to be proud of our people for.
Since the third group is drawn from both “member” and “customer” types of people it cannot be seperated into a solitary descriptive term in and of itself.
Capitalistic and philanthropic would be more appropriate (IMO) to describe the other (unrelated) descriptive terms you are referencing. Both types of activities happen at DMS. Most teachers, whether capitalistic or philanthropic, fall under the member category rather than the customer. Not only that, but even being a purely capitalistic teacher requires a great deal of philanthropic involvement with the committee, so the lines get blurred even further. Please see my frequent posts on other topics to gain more understanding on the amount of volunteer work that is required outside of class time in order to teach a large (constantly revolving) number of students effectively at the space.
High demand areas in a high attrition environment require more attention and training than philanthropic volunteer hours alone can produce.
Makers gonna make, but makers gotta eat too.
