Here’s my question. I see a lot of posts about how to get people in the door by offering discounts, but I see no post about where we are advertising to people with disposable incomes. Where are we advertising?
Coupons and discounts are great to get people in the door, but we need to be thinking about people who can whether the storm and it wouldn’t be a choice between a car payment and dms.
It would be nice to get some of those people here but we will have to up our game, so to speak. There is a certain level of service and maintenance that comes with this, I suspect.
That’s a misconception. For instance, we have some luxury apartments right across 35. Someone suggested giving them a month at half price. I lived right down the street and had no clue you were even here for 5 years.
It’s not getting them in the door but keeping them that I am talking about. We are not luxurious by any stretch and I would hope that they might help with that.
Kinda my thoughts too. The guys with that level of disposable income are going to have little time to volunteer since after a certain amount of income they simply buy their own toys.
Idk where we begin to find those people because I’m not rubbing elbows with the gentry
Have you ever sat and talked to some of our members? A lot of them do have disposable incomes or their own equipment. Ask John K about his home equipment. He owns almost all the equipment we do. I’m not talking about Bill Gates, people. There are plenty of people in the middle class who volunteer.
And if you (collectively) expect to teach with eventbrite at higher rates, I honestly suggest we start thinking about advertising outside the starving hacker realm.
Yeah, I probably fall under that category as well. Lots of people with disposable income are members of the space not just because of tools but because of the collaboration aspect. Learning-through-doing and learning from others have always been key components of DMS.
I think it is good that we have such a low rate. I think perhaps we do need to look into supplementing our income with donations. Perhaps it is time to look in that direction… at least get a feel for it.
Fair enough. Do we know what avenues attracted those people? And what are we defining as disposable income level members? Most first response professionals are making mid 50s so I guess I’m not seeing where they’d be in that zone of giving up DMS for a car payment.
That sounds like a huge generalization. I bet we’ve got a large number of people that are members have large disposable income.
Probably. I’m going off the premise given that the people who’d get the discount aren’t able to weather the storm and not a good avenue for increasing membership. Based on the parking lot and general attire of DMS members I’ve observed I figure we are primarily middle class with most members in the 50k to 95k range. I made the assumption that “disposable income” was referring to 150k and up crowd which I probably shouldn’t have done.
Has there been any estimates how that would affect our current cash flow? I’m not opposed in principal, but in light of recent cash flow problems, this requires numbers before it can be evaluated, much less implemented.
Further, there are a number of other categories that might be deserving because they are underpaid, underappreciaed, and deserving.
Most of all, this shouldn’t be entertained until the numbers are crunched.
I think your generalization of the membership is wildly speculative as well.
As a member with lots of choices about how I spend my disposal income, I ‘choose’ DMS because of the tools, collaborative ‘maker-culture’, and continual opportunities for tools and technique-based growth and development.
I regularly reevaluate and reconsider my continued membership at DMS, based on a variety of factors. I suspect these factors vary considerably across our membership. I have choices; I have options. That’s more or less the ‘push and pull’ of it.
I think perhaps we are missing a point here.
It is not if the person is rich or poor or has disposable income.
This perhaps is secondary or somewhere down the line.
We want makers. We want creative people. We want volunteers.
We want people that want to collaborate.
We are here to help, encourage and develop these people.
From talking to people on tour nights most people here about DMS from friends family people that work with Etc. Our members are some of our best recruiters. While we have a lot of tools and some people may have those tools at home what we have is a community. And today many people are missing face-to-face communities. Is one of the things that many churches actually draw folks into is for the community. We’ve lost those Lodge meetings to a large extent and other things that people used to do we don’t even have people being as active in local PTA as I used to be. People might come for their for the tools they stay for the community
All discounts come with a cost. There is this proposed discount, one I think PR is proposing for coworking spaces (maybe I misunderstood that one). How many discounts can we afford to offer. I don’t know, but I suspect no has done the math yet. Chasing new members with discounts is a bad idea. It’s like the old joke that I may be losing money on every sale, but I’ll make it up in volume.
I didnt say forgo, I think we can target multiple audiences. I also didnt mean to derail this thread but wanted to put it out there that we dont always need to think about discounts.
I think you are missing the point. Ultimately it is money and membership dues that pay the bills. Creativity is a bonus.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: BOD Agenda 2019-07-24 - Create First Responder Discount