Certainly seeing the decline is concerning. DMS has relied too heavily on membership churn. I think we are seeing the decline exposing the reduced long term sign-ups. We need to do a better job of on-boarding members so they can effectively use their memberships.
We need to be better at tool access with good training. Need to balance access and not just gatekeep.
just like anything else nothing is truly free. always a cost to be paid for speaking freely. im willing to pay not to have hear mark explain anything ever again. That’s my 2 cents. You see a theme here? lol
THIS. THIS. THIS.
SO. MUCH. THIS.
In my short stint as chair of PR, growth was fairly steady, but there was a LOT of pressure on those who were teaching classes. There were some who believed that I wasn’t doing enough to get more people in the door, but I took a big step back and talked with a LOT of people. We could have exploded the growth SO much more during my tenure, with little effort, but my desire was to look for the RIGHT members, as opposed to the shotgun approach of getting random people to sign up for a month and realize that they couldn’t get into any classes.
Do you have any ideas on how to accelerate/ better educate new members?
This is actually why we created a Member Services this year.
Quality project style classes and tool intro classes. The catch is this takes real effort at real cost by the teacher and the buy in of committees to support these teachers. We had some real growth in this area when we were wheels off on the policing of our honorarium programs. The bad part is we found that we couldn’t afford the cost associated with a curriculum like this across all our areas at DMS. As we found the cost of @Mrksls2’s work too costly for the organization to bare. Not putting Mark down here, he really was a driver on expanding classes and increasing quality. His work highlighted the real costs of quality instruction on class styles that the DMS membership were actively seeking and attending regularly.
I can attest, it’s @Webdevel’s fault I have a mess of leather tools and supplies (and still make stuff), because I took his “make a field notes cover” class.
Not wanting to rehash the entire honorarium discussion, but a few questions. Do we know how many of those courses that were breaking the bank were basics / safety courses vs project classes?
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Thank you for correcting me, I actually learned something today 
Ideally, we need more self service entrances. Wood shop for example, could have the classes on video. Store them on the network drive, or upload to our YouTube channel. A new member could immediately review all the safety, and DMS processes in the Woodshop whenever was convenient for them, and then have a 1 on 1 or small group in person sign off. It gives the new member instant value, and lessens the burden on multi hour classes.
Added value, members who were checked out years ago and haven’t touched it since could review without impacting new students.
Personally I’d like to also implement a self service tour where folks could scan a QR code and get a quick overview of a committee, or an advanced QR that would get into details like 3D fab filament size or ceramics cone firing temps. That way potential members can pick and choose about the committees that interest them.
Do you think new members would be willing to watch a 3-5 hour series of videos and tests for woodshop tools? Followed by a 10-20 minute in person checkout ?
I know I was not the intended respondent, but based on how well I perceive this having worked in Machine shop, for example, no. Folks will show up for the checkout expecting a crash course.
Although… one could hold tutorial sessions about each of the hours of instruction, charge the students directly (no honorarium) whatever the market will bear…hmm…
awwww you’re embaressing me… keep doing it.
New members are willing to go through that during the class, so yes. Those that are eager to get access will. There will be plenty of folks “who know it all” that will try to slip through. Key points they have to remember sprinkled through each video and quizzed on should alleviate that. The key though is, they have a way to start working towards access immediately rather than, all classes in next 3 weeks are currently booked. Keep classes for those that feel more comfortable having that guided hands on learning. It’s about meeting our members where they are vs forcing all members through the same path.
I’ve been to gun ranges that make you read through the rules. To ensure you actually read them they have spots where you have phrases to say aloud. It becomes quickly apparent if someone just stares at the rules vs read them.
I’m going to be real with you, guys. A lot of the people I have toured around were more vain than most of the people here believe. A huge turn off for them is the appearance and general cleanliness of the space. I know several people who are interested in some of DMS’s offerings but simply don’t want to be a member and come in because they find the place too dirty. My girlfriend is one of them.
I don’t know if any of you guys have experienced this while touring people too, but we might have to do what we introverted nerds, especially me, have hated most… clean our rooms…
Would suggest a 60-90 minute onboarding video that explains major rules, expectations, quirky DMS norms (i.e If wearing headphones = do not disturb) where to finding things on wiki (okay that might be a stretch goal), What Training Required means, using calendar, using Talk (with warning it is a chaotic place but has enormous valuable information and is a great resource), dues, voting, parking, leaving things at DMS/storage. Not in great detail but so they are aware.
How to make this work: Must watch, short quiz at the end, then you get you RFID badge activated. Not sure what it would take to make this happen on software side, but would be a fairly passive way to enforce. Better yet, require it in order to join and make first payment. Then they know what they are getting into.
Let me know what to do to help and I’m all in to make this happen.
Lampy,
I was looking for your name among the candidates for the upcoming election. I am disappointed that I do not find it.
For an educational nonprofit we sure struggle with education, especially since tool certification is one of the biggest categories of class that we offer. There’s no substitute for some hands-on guidance or check-out, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of value in low-interaction lecture instruction.
Lack of cleanliness says “I don’t care”. That’s even more unappealing when you know you’re looking at a volunteer business model. You start to suspect the business model doesn’t work.
Also women with families all too often work two jobs: the paid job, then the housekeeping job at home because they shoulder a disproportionate share of the cooking, shopping and cleaning. The DMS mess could send a subconscious signal “it’s another housekeeping trap”.