And it kept going throughout this board!
This is literally what people are talking about when they say that you never answer anything concrete and just talk about nothing. Now’s your chance to show us there’s substance to your arguments.
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Because we stopped giving out candy! 
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Wait, no candy? This is bullshit!
I demand candy with my membership
Ps kidding kidding
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I think the candy was the blue tape 
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From their own website: https://www.morebluetape.org/
Although our leadership has permitted a record number of bans, new rules, expenditure items, expansion approvals, etc., they have put far fewer items on the calendar than our former leadership. Our membership never seems to know what’s going on!
The BoD does not fill the calendar with anything other than scheduled meetings. It is people volunteering to teach that puts items on the calendar. If they were being honest you would say that due to reduced honorariums there have been fewer classes on the calendar. And due to COVID-19 there have been very few classes during the closure.
Our facility has doubled in size. Yet, our membership numbers have consistently declined since our last election
Our numbers have declined since the previous Board of Directors. There was a spike in membership in December 2018 due to rates going up. Then membership numbers started tapering off February 2019.
Our membership decline started well before anyone had heard of Convid-19
This is true but implies we know all the reasons membership dropped. We see the cancelation requests and most were due to moving, can no longer afford membership, going back to school, only 2-3 I can think of were due to board actions.
Even as DMS was closed for Covid-19, our leadership posted no agenda items on the schedule related to us closing our doors and allowed no community discussion. Most of our membership had no idea when DMS would re-open, even days before we finally reopened.
In this case we could have communicated the message better. But discussion would not have changed that we were forced to close DMS. Regarding re-opening, we were waiting on directions from state and local governments when we could re-open. They are the ones that was moving the target dates for certain types of activities. As we can see now there is evidence that some types of activities should have remained closed.
Using your own data at https://makerspacedata.com/Dallas-Makerspace/ you try to relate many pieces of info that are not clear indicators of “community” or “satisfaction” or “health”
Going down the list of charts -
Honorarium: you will see uncontrolled growth ad the end of the 2018-2019 Boards Term. While it was great to see so many classes it was unsustainable. At it’s peak it was 1/3 of DMS’s income!
Board Meetings: This only indicates how busy the board is. As we have grown so has the number of board meetings. There is a section regarding Special Meetings in our bylaws, go read it: Bylaws - Dallas Makerspace Stop implying they are against the rules, in case you missed it see link above.
Permanently Banned: Why only show permanently? I’m sure there were more temp bans but we don’t track that info. As the community grows this metric will grow too. It is just part of human nature that some do not follow the rules of our community.
Total Income: This is actually very useful. You can see that prior to the Covid-19 closure our income remained relatively stable.
Expenses: The prior board the expenses grew quite a lot. We can attribute the bulk of the rise due to honorarium growth and expansion costs. Notice under our term expenses have been reduced while continuing expansion. Honestly reduced honorarium is the majority factor.
Fixed Assets: Not sure how this number is derived but as you accumulate durable tools, equipment this number will pretty much grow over time.
Bank Accounts: While having money in the bank is very important. It is also related to how we spend that money that is more important.
Equity: Like assets, this is expected to grow over time.
Liabilities: This is a big one in terms of importance. What kind of financial exposure do we have? Looks like the last two boards have done a good job keeping this low.
Net Income: This is the big daddy to measure how successful we are as an ongoing concern. While there is a certain amount of seasonal variation (Nov-Dec are hard months). The 2018-201 board had a slow decline over their term but again that is most likely honorariums and expansion costs. Net Income has remained pretty steady in the last year even with Covid-19.
Stop being disingenuous and own up to that a lot of these attacks are political hack jobs. And even poorly done at that.
I think our membership is able to sniff our the BS. What are you going to do to support DMS in the next term?
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Along with red Solo cups
Styrofoam coffee cups
Paper plates / bowls
Plastic utensils
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I would also add: Oranges, Roasted Chicken, Wipes, Eggs & condiments. (Things we found in the expensify reports)
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Not in mine 
DMS Austerity Program
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For me it boils down to this simple statement:
Blue tears group doesn’t represent how believe effective leadership to manifest itself.
I don’t believe locking arms in an organization like this is good for the well-being of the group.
I don’t respect not being able to address questions that are brought up- knowing the information you’re bringing up is cause for discussion.
I just don’t see much of a clean vision outside the noise. I’m know they have one but I don’t see the basic steps of not polarizing a group so everyone can work together to aim towards that vision.
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Not picking on you - just a convenient place to quote the concept.
I’ve heard this again and again. We have data if we choose to compile it into information. Many (most?) members who leave tell us why. Most commonly cited reasons (not in order) are (a) moved, (b) not using the space, and (c) financial. We can’t impact (a). We can impact (b). We should seek to understand (c).
I would ask what percentage of membership drops were because of financial - and by how much did that percentage change with the dues increase? If it did …
I recognize that (b) is somewhat affected by dues rate, but don’t know how to quantify the impact of that.
I think it’s not that more people are leaving, it’s that fewer people are signing up. The churn has always been high but I think the higher dues has people thinking twice before joining. So instead of slightly positive numbers after the churn we’re left with slightly negative numbers. Like a bucket with a tiny hole at the bottom of it and a spout trickling into it. Close the spout slightly and the bucket will lower.
At the end of the day if we’re in a good place financially and the community is very active, do we actually care about the total number of members? Too many members can be problematic. Where’s the Goldilocks in membership size and dues?
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Boy, I absolutely agree with you there. Here’s a question for you … do we care about the seeming trend for in-and-out members? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
This was the core of my data-driven page of a post a ways up. New member signups are way down.
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Do you know where I can find this data for future reference? I think there’s a lot of potential in that data set.
I think you made a convincing argument about membership decline.
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It’s all buried in WHMCS. Unfortunately that billing software, whilst extremely powerful for it’s modest cost, is garbage in a lot of ways. I had to treck through GUI dumps of this data manually to compile a lot of it.
When I have time I’m writing some scripts to pull it directly from the database; but there have been other fires to put out.
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As a person who goes to the makerspace frequently, I don’t find the community to be very active these days. I agree that activity and financial well-being are jointly more important than total membership, but I still think the makerspace is not anywhere near its potential. I think it is going in the right direction in many ways, but I really don’t think the board can carry us to victory on this. The future success of DMS is really in the hands of the committees, but so much of the conversation gets drawn towards the board.
So many committees are absurdly inactive and this is the biggest problem that I see. That’s why I personally want to place more focus on science committee than I do the maintenance of the space over all, even though that is important as well.
People need to stop betting on this or that board to be the thing that will solve the issue and actually take on the challenges that are sitting right in front of them.
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THISTHISTHISTHIS
Between committees not documenting things for new and prospective members, unkempt committee areas, and lack of communication from some committee chairs it’s no wonder that they’re put off about the things they’re interested in.
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Exactly. You know what I hear from prospective new members that I show the space to? It’s not “wow, the corporate governance of DMS really needs to be reformed.”
Instead it’s “Hmmm… this place seems kind of cool, but many of these areas seem like an abandoned dump.” They usually say this in areas like electronics, science committee (admittedly we do share part of the blame), and various other parts of the makerspace that we all know kind of look like the ass end of a frat party.
You’re right about the documentation. I found the documentation (or lack thereof) to be extraordinarily frustrating as a new member. Science is no exception to this and so we are really trying to get things serious and stable over there for future DMS members.
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I swear to God, this is going on my next heat transfer t-shirt.
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