One could argue that the event calendar, including fees, is accessible without being a member, so making an informed membership decision is already possible.
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They may not be aware of it. When I did my tour I didn’t know anything of the website, was just told to show up at 7 on a Thursday and someone would show me the place.
Even if they’ve been to the DMS site they may still not be aware of the calendar or have enough context to know what’s normal for it in terms of course load/availability.
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I get it, and I agree. But wait and see: “it’s public information” will be the argument made for not being more up-front about the situation.
Up until recently this really wasn’t a thing. There were maybe two teachers using the pay to play model for tool training. So no, it isn’t something called out on tours. The teachers that were the ones bleeding out the honorarium system have found a new system. But instead of making DMS pay, they are now bleeding the students dry.
My current suggestion is to help encourage new teachers.
I would also like to point out that we don’t tell anyone on tours that our classes are free.
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So now y’all think the teachers (who have little or no actual time to be members) should not only pay dues like everyone else, AND give the majority of their “free” time at the space answering non-class related questions, BUT ALSO pay DMS half of what they earn from helping with the backlog of tool access training requests, AND give right of way to the members who ARE NOT paying extra dues or providing a service to DMS to use the machines.
That’s rich guys.
Imagine for a moment if the instructors get tired of constantly being abused by this completely impotent line of thinking and stopped teaching altogether.
Whenever the current or future BoD realizes how bad they screwed up by limiting the cash flow and the class flow, classes can hopefully get back to normal.
It costs more per month to have lost more than 300 members from our base than it did to teach 160 separate classes to around 500 members under the scalable and equitable sytem that was in place before.
Hard to pay bills with empty chairs, huh guys?
Continuing to try and make teachers feel shitty when they seek compensation for doing more work collectively than ANY OTHER group of contract employees at the space is shallow, shortsighted and downright dumb, especially when instructors make up such a large part of your volunteer pool outside of class time.
DMS leadership, stop devaluing your most valuable asset, we are not your property, we are the most effective tool you have to promote member retention (which, by the way, is the solution to all your money problems).
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EXACTLY!!!
I get that everything is in flux right now because DMS is trying to figure out a sustainable way to deal with classes and payments. I just hope we can figure something out that will allow people to take classes without being charged so much while still giving the teachers something that shows their time and effort is valuable. It’s just annoying how many people have turned this into a money-making venture. The teachers who stopped teaching when the honorarium was cut figured out how to make even more money when they were allowed to charge a separate fee. That definitely needs to get cut off. Nothing should be charged outside of the DMS system even if we move to a percentage model.
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So I’m also a proponent of if someone volunteers X number of hours in a year, their dues for the next year should be free. Only a small percentage of people at a makerspace volunteer at all and even fewer volunteer as much as you are talking about. That top 1-5% of people shouldn’t have to pay dues because of how much of their time they invest at DMS. You’re a perfect example of what I’m talking about with this.
There’s a very fine balance between financially showing a teacher appreciation for teaching a class and teaching as part of what you live off of. Making $70-80/hour for a class (even if half goes to DMS) is kind of crazy. People will always find a way to milk a system no matter what it is. I took many 1 hour long scheduled classes in the old system where the teacher spent 10 minutes explaining something and then the class was over. Cha-ching! They just earned $50 for 10 minutes of teaching. 
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There’s actually no comparison at all, as the first is how the space compensates for something, while the other is what the compensated party does with said compensation.
That’s like saying there is a fine balance between your job and a toilet bowl.
I guess it’s all how you look at it. (Or where you work)
How narcissistic would someone have to be to feel like they should have control over what someone elae does with the money they earned?
And saying that a person can only make money in an organization if they don’t need extra money to pay bills is socioeconomic discrimination in its purest form.
Outstanding job being excellent to each other. (Read: being excellent only to the wealthy)
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That isn’t at all what I’m saying! 
I don’t care how you use your money, but teaching at a makerspace shouldn’t be a gig job. If you want to earn a living teaching, then become a private teacher or go work at a for-profit makerspace or other business. Teaching at a makerspace should be about helping people get the skills they need to make on their own. Yes…give teachers something to show appreciation for their time, but this isn’t meant to be a consistent place of employment and a job. It’s not supposed to be a vein of regular/expected income over a long period of time. That’s what over extended the budget.
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What about a rule stating that no sign-off (i.e., required) classes can be taught in a committee’s area by “privately operating” instructors until ‘x’ free (with honorarium) classes are offered by that committee for that month?
Maybe crazy, I dunno. Just an idea.
ETA that I shouldn’t have said free. I know there are some required classes that collect a fee that goes to the committee for supplies, maintenance, etc. and that shouldn’t change.
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I’d like to see your source(s) information on this. The financials tell a different story: Repairs are classified in the consumable tooling category in quickbooks. Here is high level data from this category in the woodshop:
2016- $8,383.92
2017- $11,208.75
2018- $17,504.46
2019- $39,736.08
Anybody think woodshop consumable tooling has changed so much in one year to require $22,000 in extra funds? Mark, I think you took over in what, September of 2018? Oh, and $10,394.36 of the 2018 spending happened between September and the end of the year. The Great Training Experiment first appears in the January of 2019 woodshop meeting minutes.
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I do not care nor am interested in politics I am seeing in this thread, but I do wish to address your tour question from my personal experience.
I am explaining it in the tours I give and have been since I started giving tours. I have been building the documentation for tour guides to also cover this. It all depends what someone is looking to do at DMS and I make that clear. With that being said, I also inform that essentially anything that’s a “consumable” in most cases have a cost. Filament, supplies in CA, lasers, etc.
I cannot speak on other tour guides, but I explain to the tours that we’re volunteer run and that sometimes life happens, value of our time changes, etc. I essentially tell them be prepared some classes may be free, some may be for cost, some may thrive and be taught for a while, then go away. Often the way I explain it is it all depends where DMS falls on an individual person’s priorities, value, time, etc.
With that being said I do have those that walk through the door and wonder what they can do to teach classes if they become knowledgeable about a “thing” or already know about a “thing”. I explain to them they have the option of running a class w/ honorarium or using another service such as EventBrite. I’m not going to coach them on which way to do it, but that there’s options.
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Actually, at this point an economics concept called “utils” come into play. Every person makes their own decision on the value that they receive, and whether or not that value is worth the cost. If the cost is too high for the perceived value, you have negative utils, and nobody buys. I remember being excited about Lance’s Etsy classes, which gave me quite a bit of valuable information, because the last person teaching Etsy had been charging $20/student. I was feeling broke, and didn’t participate in the $20 classes, although I do believe that there were quite a few students. $20 is, really, pretty affordable for the average fully-employed person.
So, if the cost gets too high, nobody takes those classes. At that point (and $20/person isn’t there), somebody should be taking note, and watching for the number of attendees. If an instructor isn’t getting a sufficient number of attendees, then they shouldn’t be approved for additional classes. I know that dumps this on the Honorarium Auditors, but it should be a minor problem. Not many here are (really) likely to charge so much that they won’t get the current requisite of 3. I know the stained glass classes are/were $50, but that’s for the glass. Pretty glass is expensive.
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But see – this is in large part one of the problems we’re having. For some things, we really do need a person who is willing to make teaching their full-time job. Woodshop is simply too big for volunteer labor to adequately train all the customers who just want to make a project. I do understand that we’re not (really) charging folks enough to cover a full time teacher. Putting the extra expense of paying for a teacher (and just compare to the classes taught by the for-profit place to see what a bargain we are) on the student. That makes the “customers” pay for what they’re getting, since it does seem to be the huge wash of short-term members that create the problem. They won’t be paying dues for years, so hit them for the cost of the classes WE need to help keep them from breaking the equipment.
And, don’t forget – Woodshop had to start charging a nominal amount to keep customers from registering for multiple classes just so that they had options.
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This is not that. A teacher has the ability to remove students through the calendar system. The 5 bucks per class used to go back to the committee.
Our multicam is also a very expensive class at $50 plus a $20 test out.
That money used to go toward fixing and maintaining a very expensive machine. Now that the instructor is using eventbrite, do you think the committee is getting any of that? Please explain what portion of that fee is being donated back to fix the machine.
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So – the whole “honorarium vs student pay” thing is an enormous red herring when you consider “paying for tool time and wear and tear”.
If I teach a class for honorarium, DMS pays me money and allocates some funds they’ve already received to the committee. No extra money enters DMS.
If I teach a class that the students pay me for, no money leaves DMS. In this way of looking at it, I am benefitting DMS because they don’t pay me. DMS receives exactly the same amount of money in either scenario. Thusly, I am helping DMS fulfill their stated non-profit status by teaching classes, and the students are paying.
I’d have to go back and re-read my class to quote exactly, but a non-profit is supposed to make at least 50% of their income from the thing that they are providing – usually education. It’s perfectly legitimate to pay people for work performed. We are incredibly goofy to be a non-profit who doesn’t have ANY true employees.
I hate to keep bringing up the Dallas Craft Guild as an example, because I vastly prefer our model of charging. DCG charges a much smaller annual fee, which basically just gives you access to pay for things. They charge a much bigger fee for classes (although you get more teaching for that – closer to a semester), and you pay for any studio time you might want. They pay their instructors hourly, and it’s a decent hourly rate. Now, those instructors are “independent contractors”, not employees, so they just get a 1099-MISC, like instructors that receive over $600 in honorarium for the year.
Still – the idea that you can run a 2000 person organization on strictly unpaid volunteer labor is bogus.
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I mean, we are managing to make it work.
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Actually, no, we’re not. We are paying volunteers – the argument nowadays is more around how much we pay said volunteers. Granted, we’re only paying for teaching, but it is possible to get paid for something. Yeah, folks do all sorts of unpaid volunteer stuff. If we looked at what @Mrksls2 got, he was probably Damn Cheap for the amount of time he put into the Space above and beyond what he was getting for the classes. Affordable for us, no, but still a bargain.
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