I see no reason we can’t have a broad scope and narrow focus. I will be submitting a BOD agenda item for creation of a committee. Based on that we will see our next steps.
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Nice bit of wordsmithing but you know that’s not was people are talking about. If a thank you is all that is needed, then adopt @StanSimmons plan and cut all honorarium payments to zero until the expansion is over in 2025 or whatever. But DO send a personal thank you to the teachers. Lets see if attitudes change without the money. A thank you is certainly nice and the teachers surely should be thanked, but it’s no substitute for cash which is a big part of the expectation (except for a few that are truly generous with their time. So stop calling ‘it’ what it isn’t anymore. It is an expectation of payment.
'nuf said. Mute on.
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I expect nothing, yes nothing from volunteering that I do. For me its part of the greater cause. But that’s just me. If things attempted to be given to me, I try to refuse. I’m doing it because I enjoy doing it. I can not tell others how to act or how to feel, just how I feel.
Ignite your PASSION.
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I truly have no earthly idea what you’re talking about. Happy to further discuss offline.
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BoD agenda item for establishment of the comittee to make the recognition efforts a real boy is in the docket and in Talk. I can adjust if we have done it wrong. Thank you to @indytruks138 for helping kick start this and I hope it passes so we can begin working on it!
Incidentally thank you notes are an excellent idea along with random acts of kindness for our known volunteers.
I popped off an email to the head of our Sunshine Squad at work to see if they do anything we haven’t thought about as well .
I assume youse already know, but just in case, here’s the rules for forming a committee:
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Rules_and_Policies#Committees
I think there’s something somewhere about making a wiki page for the committee and populating it before the BoD is asked recognize it, too, thus demonstrating membership, engagement, intention to meet regularly, etc. but I’m not finding that just now (might be a worthy goal, all the same).
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I agree with what Nick is saying. When I started I saw someone making a livelihood off Makerspace. I thought that’s what people with time and passion to teach their skills were able to do here. So I started to work my job less and started loading up classes. I was kinda sold a false sense of what Makerspace is or what the honorarium was intended for. If I had been shown by an instructor that you can teach a couple classes a month instead of 4 to 6 classes a day, I would not signed up to teach a class and expect the honorarium.
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…recognize, honor and support our volunteers (teachers, HA’s, Moderators, expansion leads, spreadsheet weed-sifters, data analysts, Chairs, Vice-Chairs, and dare I say it?..Officers and Directors).
And to align with the theme that we need a constant influx of new awesome volunteers we should have a “Newbie (volunteer) of the Month” category of recognition as well.
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Our new member messaging (for example Tour Nights) has been largely unregulated/unreviewed/unscripted/not practiced (whatever you want to call it). We haven’t been messaging the gospel of the global Maker Movement as we should have. This has led to the wrong message going out to many of the newer members. I apologize that you ended up getting caught in this errant messaging.
Can you make a living as a Maker? Heck yes! Is that the primary mission at DMS? No, not at all.
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I think you should be on that emerging ‘Sunshine Squad’ (Volunteer Recognition) group. Great idea!
I’ll get a meeting up when I get back. I figured the 30 day grace period will cover us if people cannot make the first meeting. (I’ll get it on calendar when I’m back from Nebraska unless @indytruks138 wanted to pick a day/time)
Making wiki pages is something I’m not sure how to do. I’ll try to con someone into showing me tonight. I also was not sure if that came before or after the decision in if we exist or not
To support the idea of needing 5 people to request creation of a committee, I am asking for committments from anyone willing to be on this new committee we are proposing. I count myself and @MrsMoose as the first two. @Adam_Oas you seem to have some great ideas, are you in as part of the committee?
@eadams1971 want to be a part of this movement?
@nicksilva have any interest?
@uglyknees this seems up your alley, I know you are busy but we’d love to have you.
@heyheymama looking your way, you did such a great job organizing laser volunteers.
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I formally request to be designated #2 because my eyes are brown which I’m told means I’m full of…
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At the end of the day, DMS has ~2200 members paying an average of ~$40 a month or around $88k/month gross revenue. Revenues from machine time, sales of materials gross a few thousand - and typically skip the general fund. Donations to the General Fund are intermittent. Mandatory expenses - rent, utilities, insurance, housekeeping, etc - are a goodly percentage of this. Committee allocations are another chunk of the gross margin. Toss in thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month worth of expansion then you have available cashflow which is markedly less than half of our gross revenues. Membership numbers have subsequently flatlined at best, thus finances are tightening.
Against this reality it baffles the mind that there’s a seemingly widely-held impression that the honorarium program has been seen as a way to supplement one’s income to a significant degree.
A better path to making a living as a maker is to make things and sell them on the open market. This is a more viable path than teaching classes at DMS for honorarium because there’s orders of magnitude more opportunity out there than the meager tens of thousands of potential free cashflow through DMS.
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I already made things and sold them well before Makerspace. I understand things differently now that I have had my Talk account and can see what the original idea of honorarium was for. At the time, I thought, if this person is making the same of what I make at my job and can stay here all day, then I can teach classes, get paid and also make things I was going to sell anyways.
I have no issues selling what I make and especially now that I have access to such great tools. Some people’s actions at makerspace have a trickle down effect and can be impressionable to new members not aware of the past or current issues with money.
So I dropped all my classes for the month and am now only focusing on my projects. Seems like there is much more to deal with, I dont need to add to the problems. I’ll teach when things are straightened out
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Some of these problems are inherent to a volunteer organization - especially one as large and that has grown as fast as DMS. Growth covers numerous sins, but the growth ended right as our expenses have risen dramatically. Thus we are being forced to make changes quickly rather than making them slowly by choice.
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I think that the idea being proposed is ultimately going to be another focal point of contention, argument and disagreement. I applaud and understand the sentiment, though.
Edit: intended as a reply to the thread, not to Adam specifically.
I would have taken Lance’s classes to learn how to sell them on the open market 
But perhaps he will come back and this time charge for them.
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The solution to all our problems may be just a dose of Capitalism. The “safety” training may qualify for an honorarium but everything else will end up as “Free market”. There is a choice of volunteering your time or charging whatever the market will bare. The Maker space would administer the fees and take a piece of the action for the use of the hall. There would have to be a review process with a grading system, hopefully give an indication of who knows something about what they are teaching. Think of it as a tutoring program.
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