Selling Items in DMS Gift shop

I’m going to take your statement and make it more general …

The makerspace membership should not buy piece of equipment to fund a member’s business. If they want to do [insert anything here] - let them buy their own [piece of equipment] and rent their own location

This includes things like Laser cutters, Plasma Cutters, HAAS Mills, 3d Printers and I’m sure many others … that people use for business. If you want to ban business then lets talk about it.

I’m of the opinion that many things can be used for business and as long as that doesn’t take time out from classes and education AND it doesn’t cause any other problems, it should be fine. There have been many that have brought this topic up in the past and many discussions about it. I think we should teach skills that people might use in business using whatever tools that people need to use. I don’t think we should buy them for just one member and without considering the bigger scope of use. I don’t think things should be bought and not used. I’m a bit weary of buying a large printer for this reason. The last few were not used often. I am aware that mostly because of problems with the printers.

1 Like

A post was merged into an existing topic: What do you want in a printer at DMS?

Draco,

I’m not a fan of folks using the equipment as their business. Not long ago some of the creative folks asked for a “craft type sale” and it was defeated because the “space” might catch the fish eye from the IRS - yet the Space turns a blind eye to those actively using / abusing the member funded equipment at this NON profit (laser has had to implement more and more rules due to this)
I’m no fan of “banning” people either.

Let’s use laser as an example - if you took a look at the log in data ( this is for you data folks(not me) ) separate the heavy production users from the others and then compare that list of folks to the classroom calendar, how many classes have the “commercial users” taught? Any?

I believe the expansion will have a gift shop in it to allow people to buy member made works. As long as it doesn’t go over a certain percentage, there shouldn’t be any problem with the IRS.

I think it is because it is a large draw to the space that it is a community workshop that you can make things and sell them. It is the over-use that is the abuse. It is those few people that want to hog the machines to finish their run. That is why we have queues and classes take priority. We don’t disallow it but we want it to give everyone else time to use the machines for education first.

We can certainly look up who uses the most hours and who teaches the most classes. However, I’m not sure that everyone should be teaching classes. There is already a rule in place for over-use.

Commercial Use - Rules and Policies - Dallas Makerspace

  1. The Dallas Makerspace is based on open source ideals and thus encourages its membership to embrace those ideals as well, however members reserve the rights to all of their creations.
  2. DMS may invoice members for incurring costs to DMS significantly in excess of their monthly dues. Determination of excess to be submitted by Committee Chairs and the member billed by resolution of the Board…
1 Like

That will be interesting to work out. Who pays the sales tax and what income is reported to the IRS? Personally I think this is a bad idea as it puts a burden on DMS to comply with tax and IRS issues with no real benefit to DMS. Unless the maker is donating the “products” and DMS keeps the money.

Unfortunately it is always an issue with the IRS and the State of Texas. SoT will come after you over $0.03!

4 Likes

This is the idea. Or a portion gets back to the person and a portion to DMS.

My second/third/fourth hand understanding is that DMS gets 30% of the listed price of the item.

Normal art gallery commissions are in the 50% (and up) range.

That is even worse and should not happen, more to keep track of. DMS financial goals are to automate or reduce the cash flows that have weird rules/parameters.

We are going to have to stop putting additional burdens on the finance group and book keeping just for “how cool” or “wouldn’t it be nice” stuff.

Certainly not even very well aligned with our mission.

6 Likes

I believe they do make accounting packages that take care of things like Point of Sale … we already have Quickbooks
Perhaps, that may help track everything …

Whoever collects the money generally has the obligation to collect sales tax.
Texas Sales tax We also need start saying it is included in sales price. This is how we do it, but it is not stated anywhere. This would also include Materials fees for classes.

Let me address the alleged issue with member sales and the IRS. There is no problem, particularly at the $ levels we’re talking. I’ve heard that the IRS told someone they don’t even start looking unless someone is getting more than $50K in an unfair manner.

Case in point: Dallas Craft Guild. They’re a 501c3 just like we are. They hold a semi-annual (annual??) sale for members. You’ve got to BE a member to sell your art/crafts at this sale. A substantial quantity of the things sold are made on the Craft Guild machines/equipment. The DCG has a more profit-motivated structure than we do. They have a few employees. They do a lot of education, but not a bit of it is free. They have been operating in this manner since … um… the 1950’s (at least – I looked it up last time, but I don’t remember for sure).

So long as there is no “inurement” (one machine being totally hogged by one person), there is no problem.

[quote=“Lampy, post:5, topic:44265, full:true”]

Wait. What??? While what I pay is 2 decimal places, all the sales amounts are rounded into whole dollars. That means my paid amount can vary as much as $.08 and be fully legal. So – huh??

1 Like

The Craft guild has been having shows for at least 30 years
If most of our income came from the sales of products that might be a question

Out income mainly comes from memberships

A story I heard recently, the person helping Anne choose items for the space had a project
that they needed a rolling mill for so they encouraged her to order one They used it for their
project and then sold the item for over a grand (and that was too cheap in their opinion for tha amount of work

However that rolling mill is what caused me and and another person to join DMS We are both active members in teaching and volunteering

As long as someone besides me has to keep the bookkeeping straight.

Actually we will have some discussions after open house. I’m not wanting to kill the idea of a gift store. I just want people to understand there is work and planning needed, as well as a cost to DMS.

4 Likes

While I’ve not been overly enthusiastic in the past about applying my real-world skills for free, I want the gift shop to happen enough that I’d volunteer for this. I’ve already been thinking about joining Finance and maybe volunteering to input the honorariums. Using the generic “Bill” for each class is making me a bit crazy…

@Kriskat30 @dr_cee @Diplomat @LukeStrickland @Photomancer
Under what committee(s) will the gift shop construction and operation be funded?

I don’t think we discussed it in that great of detail. It may be a separate group that manages it. IMO the sales profits wouldn’t belong to a separate committee.

Just initial thinking off the the top of my head, I’d like to see it profits go towards a capital fund for the benefit of the entire DMS membership.

Items traditionally sold by PR, tee-shirts, bags, mugs, could have funds allocated to them as a way of raising some funds since they don’t “teach” honorarium classes (some do allocate to them).

So it’s an unfunded, unstaffed mandate at this point.

2 Likes

“Mandate”? how did you jump to that? Very loaded verbiage.

Not sure why this ended up in a different thread. Has nothing to do with selling stuff in DMS gift shop.
But then, it’s DMS Talk, so I know better than to actually ask the question.

smh

At least I know not much has changed.

1 Like