Honorarium Discussion

DMS General
#61

My experience as a former chair and co-chair (when we had them) of several committees is:

  • When committees buy materials/tools, they have INVESTED in having the new projects available to members.
    • Committee would invest when: they thought there was sufficient interest to justify investing and likely to get the cost returned within a certain amount of time.
    • Instructor would commit to teaching classes AND directing the committee honorarium to that committee (nothing pisses a committee off more than underwriting the expense and then the instructor directs the honorarium to another committee after they paid of for tools, materials, and provided the space. It has happened.)
  • I know in CA we bought full hides. It would take about 4 or 5 classes to recover the cost, but it was done because it was about half the cost per student and leather working was popular.
  • Rather than the instructor being paid and buying the materials, the instructor has “negotiated” with the committee: “If I teach 3 classes and all the honorarium goes to the committee, will you buy this tool?” If it pays for 100% or more, never seen the offer turned down.

Committees are very willing to invest if it promotes the interests of that committee’s interest, which in turn allows them to invest in tools and classes.

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#62

Yes Meetings were held, minutes were taken, I will find them and make sure they are available.

And one of the motions the Woodshop included in the November Meeting was as follows;

  • a. Spending approvals Average Amounts for information Will updated with more accurate data when available)
    • i. Wood $300/QTR
    • ii. Bandsaw blades and Sharpening 150/Month
    • iii. Maintenance Cost 200/month
    • iv. Shop supplies 150/ month

Motion: Woodshop committee gives standing approval to spend up to $500 in each of these categories, for the next six months. Paul moves, Jimmy seconds Vote Passes 6-0

After reading the minutes we will get clarification that the motion intended to say “up to $500 per month, in each category for the remainder of 2020.”

#63

Spending approvals don’t work that way Mike as much as you guys might want them to. Something that we’ve discussed previously.

The reason they don’t is exactly what we’ve seen here. Committees that ignore their responsibilities to hold a meeting every month.

#64

We need to have a discussion about this whole topic. With the run rate of over $4000.00 per month for supplies and maintenance of the woodshop, the limits enshrined in the guidelines don’t work. Our effort in passing the resolution was to comply with the purchasing guidelines. So rather than tossing these issues back and forth on Talk. Let me know when you are available for a sit-down discussion.

We are having regular monthly meetings, with minutes and all the proper stuff. We have misplaced the December and January minutes someplace, Mark and I have been hunting for them. They have apparently gone into hiding in the great internet playground. We will find them or re-vote on all the stuff at the March meeting.

1 Like
#65

The board has office hours this weekend.

#66

There is a lot i wish to comment on this thread. But let me start with Zach’s comment. This is why we exist. And Zach, you are not alone in feeling this.

We are a corporation only in name. This entire discussion is an issue of heart and $$. And that is the debate everyone has in life.

Our goal should always be “Make” - “How do we make this possible”, and to grow the community around that. Let us always first be a force of good.

2 Likes
#67

I do agree wholeheartedly with you. I would also add “how can we be excellent to each other?”

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#68

I would just like to point out that the membership dues from the 300 or so members we’ve lost during this term would have paid honorarium for about 160 more classes a month. This number does not reflect churn statistics, only membership growth. According to the statistics above, we have seen around 1200 new members in the past year or so. If sufficient efforts were made to hang on to the existing members, we would have more than double the amount required to pay out honorarium for our busiest month. It ends up costing more money in the long term to train the constantly changing base of new members from scratch, especially when there are so few senior members left to get the new guys up to speed. The leaderships answer to this problem seems backwards. Limiting honorarium payment limits class availability. Limiting class availability limits not only tool access, but also knowledge of advanced techniques, processes, capabilities and limitations of the equipment available at the space. All of these limitations, when combined with all the machines that never seem to be working properly and the constant political friction work really well to push members out the door.

#69

It was limited due to people taking advantage of the ‘honor’ part of honorarium. The system was never designed to pay people $1,200/month. Especially when they were stacking classes 4-6 in a row with the bare minimum attendance each.

Also we just increased it to 4 classes per person per month. You can teach once a week or all four in one day, whatever suits the teacher best.

Good point but the majority of the membership do not care about the political friction / discussion whatever you want to characterize it as. They just want the tools to work.

3 Likes
#70

It is also necessary for the survival of the organisation, the fact that you do not understand or refuse to acknowledge this fact (which has been repeated ad nauseum) doesn’t change it. Before some members were willing to manipulate the system to maximize personal gain, we could ignore the holes that could allow the membership to take more from the organization than it could support. Once profiteering members started to explore just how much they could squeeze, controls became necessary.

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#71

From what I understand, the belt had to be tightened to keep the doors open, sure, not fun for anyone. Yes, if we had more members paying dues, the space would be able to pay out more in honorarium, I think that leaves us where we are.

#72

If you want us to wear 37 pieces of flair, why don’t you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?
Every time I set the limit to four students and not the minimum of three (which was EVERY TIME under the old system), I was adding a piece of flair so to speak. Every one of those additional students was trained by me for the space at no additional cost. I don’t think I have enough room on my apron for all that flair considering I’ve taught upwards of 400 classes at the space, and countless other members 1 on 1. The one class where I feel like DMS got the least benefit is the one where I didn’t set a limit at all by mistake.
The honorarium system was designed to scale with demand and help committees grow naturally based on the level of member interest. The entirely separate and organically developing system of volunteer collaboration and operation can not keep up with the demand for safety training on dangerous equipment combined with the current rate of turnover.
(Training for) and (access to) large, dangerous tools and equipment are big draws to the space. It doesn’t make sense to have one without the other.
Demand has to be met, or it increases membership churn. It doesn’t affect new member growth as much, because that’s not something they tell you about on tour night.
Thank you to all of the dedicated volunteers, instructors and other contractors that help make DMS great!

#73

The minimum students was not a comment about you. There were other instances of this occurring. Thanks for adding all the flair!

Unfortunately we have always had member churn that does have great impacts on required training classes. The real decline was just less sign-ups not keeping pace with drop offs.

#74

Yikes, really??

#75

Or you were hedging your bets against a single no-show preventing any Honorarium payout for the class.

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#76

As I see it, the current issue with the honorarium boils down to this:

  1. people were abusing the honorarium system
  2. the board took action to prevent this abuse, since it was costing DMS money
  3. that action solved the abuse, but de-incentivized people from teaching multiple classes legitimately
  4. people are in disagreement on how to incentivize people to teach classes (there seems to be a focus on tool training classes in this thread) without allowing people to abuse the system

in the broad strokes, did i miss anything?

5 Likes
#77

Very good assessment. We want to be flexible as possible to encourage people to teach but we do have some constraints we need to work within. Another aspect is to keep it simple. We would not want to implement anything that assigns more work for our volunteers or paid bookkeeper.

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#78

Nailed it.

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#79

Do we have any data on how often members join for a short while (a month or a few), drop their membership and subsequently re-start it?

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#80

No, the billing system is pretty thin when it comes to analytics.

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