Request for historical DMS membership data

DMS General
#1

I am trying to better understand the membership history from start-up to the present and would like to be able to see actual data rather than generalizations. I assume that at least at the time of annual elections the following would be documented somewhere:
Election date
Total membership count including add-ons
Total membership count without add-ons
Total number of members authorized to vote
Total number of votes cast.

Given all the IT and other members who have access to DMS records, I’m hoping someone can find and share this. Thanks in advance.

#2

We do have this forum category: https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/c/dms-members-only/membership-trends

But like so many of the niche categories that have been generated here on Talk for reasons hard to discern, it is rarely used and therefore barely useful. But there is some info here, if you are interested.

#3

I don’t know if the data you are seeking exist - at least not in a manner that someone can retrieve without a lot of digging. However, I can give you some approximate information for some of the older historical periods, based on some facts. I looked up actual revenue from dues for 2012 - 2014 (monthly). I assumed that the average member due was $35, as an informed guess but with limited factual basis (however, I know the actual membership growth was 176 persons in 2013, and this suggests the $35 number is fairly close). I wouldn’t arm wrestle anyone for $33 or $34.

I aggregated the information by quarter in an attempts to slightly smooth the effect of annual memberships. In the earlier months, a single annual membership would swing the dues by 10% of more. The yellow month is the month when we moved from Ladybird to Monetary.

image
image.png377×631 31.2 KB

If you use my approximate $35/member, then the following graph results:

image

If the $35 is wrong, the curve shape is still correct but the numbers change a little.

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#4

We really need a way for members to get access to data.

Any developers out there and administrators that are willing to go through all the data and provide raw data that can be made available through an automated process that doesn’t have private data included?

@bhouse @Mary_Mathias

#5

If I simplify the request to just this, is it more likely to be available without a huge effort?

Best estimate of total members as of the date of each annual election
Total number of voters participating in each annual election.

Here’s the concept I’m trying to understand: If I go by general conversation, DMS started with a small group (~100?) where a high percentage are remembered as being very engaged and active in virtually all decision-making. Today I gather we are somewhere north of 2200 and a good bit less than 15% have done what is required to be eligible to vote. I would like to see if the gap developed proportionally or if it happened by the potential voter pool just slowly creeping up while the total took off like a rocket.

My hunch is the latter, but my hunch and $5 will usually get you a coffee. If my hunch is correct, I would interpret it to mean there are really two parties within the organization: 1) a passionate, “need to know lots” party that has slowly gone from majority to minority; and 2) a larger and growing “Johnny come later” party that accepts (and maybe even expects) a “representative governing style” and is content with less communication.

I think a history review in the larger world would show that just about anytime a majority becomes a minority … and especially if it happens rapidly … it’s an emotional, troubling transition. It’s that thing about “change” … everybody is for it as long as somebody else is doing the “changing”.

To reiterate … hunches are worth squat until hard data shows them to be valid or false. Can we find it?

#6

The header image for Membership Trends looks to have ~4 months of relatively granular historical data November 2017 through February 2018…

Some other data points I was able to find:

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#7

Going through the early wiki pages there are … wild swings … in formatting and gaps in what’s recorded. i.e. in 2015 there were 102 voting members, in 2016 we listed 98 votes, and in 2017 and 2018 we just tallied vote totals per candidate. Prior to 2015 I’m not seeing mention of much anything relevant to elections.

#8

2018? :blankspace:

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#9

One reason for this, but maybe not only, is that for a while members with voting rights were growing as one would expect, but not all members with voting rights were showing up for the annual meeting to vote, thereby making our ability to achieve the quorum necessary more difficult. The solution was to remove all members’ voting rights prior to voting season and make those that that were engaged enough to notice their voting rights had been removed re-request their voting rights. I think it was just one or two years this happened until we started using an online voting service (or close…DMS historians may have a slightly better remembrance of what this was about).

#10

I recall that the voting rights reset member meeting initiative is what tested the limits of what business member meetings can enact and was found to be improper, thus we don’t perform the reset any more.

Electronic voting for Board elections has largely been normalized. If we’d adopt some sort of reasonable cutoff / publication requirement for member meeting initiatives (namely bylaw updates and Director recalls) I suspect we could have electronic voting on those as well.

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#11

Indeed it was. I have corrected the transcription error.

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