"What are your goals for the new year?"

-Run an Earn-A-Bike/after school pilot program
-Develop our Board of Directors (currently 5 members, hope to expand to 10-12)
-Open more hours (currently 5.5 hrs per week, 2 days, hope to have at least 1 more day and 7.5 hours)
-Expand our Free Bike Program
-Better manage youth during open shop hours (signed permission slip with emergency information, and parts limits for kids who need a new set of wheels twice per month)

" Tracking sales. right now all of our cash just goes into the donation box, and not all new parts are *necessarily* paid for in full. We need to ensure we charge for all new items as well as (gulp) starting to charge all applicable taxes and track these sales!"

We have a good spreadsheet sales/donation form which I can share (don't have it here at work). It tracks sales (new, used, bike, shop time) and expenses then breaks it all out per month, expense and sale type. Pretty spiffy.

" Volunteer training. Right now we just have an orientation to introduce people to the space. We would like to have some basic training, including some anti-o/sensitivity and some way of designating who is a volunteer and who is a participant in the space."

We have a volunteer orientation as well which we do once per month. Generally 1-2 people are at each session and it takes about a half hour. No mechanical training is done, this just familiarizes volunteers with the shop space and goes over our philosophies and different volunteer roles. We then start volunteers as greeters or part sorters and teach them skills during the times they volunteer. The problem being that no skills are tracked so it's hard to remember what volunteers can and can't do and in the summer when we're busy, there is no time or space to train volunteers during a swamped open shop.

I can say that we did get very good last year at specifying who is a volunteer and who is not a volunteer. Absolutely no one is allowed to volunteer or assist customers without being oriented (this ensures that our hands-off policy is followed). Drop-in volunteers (unscheduled) may be refused entry to the shop if we're super busy. This happens in the summer mainly when there can be too many volunteers that are just getting in the way. They can still come in but will have to wait like regular customers to stop "volunteers" who really just want to work on their own stuff.

Good luck everyone in the new year,

Brian
UBP

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Ainsley Naylor <needleandthread@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all,
Really I just want to see the subject change, so I'd like to see folks throw out some ideas of wishes, dreams, plans and schemes they are hoping for in the new year. We at Pirates have a few - it always seems hard to implement drastic changes, so the new year seems a good excuse. Here's some things on our list:
Changing our locks. there have been a number of key-holders who have come and gone, and we never changed the locks when we first moved into our building. Better security and a better system of designating key-holders is a top priority.

Tracking sales. right now all of our cash just goes into the donation box, and not all new parts are *necessarily* paid for in full. We need to ensure we charge for all new items as well as (gulp) starting to charge all applicable taxes and track these sales!

Do our taxes for the first time!!!

Volunteer training. Right now we just have an orientation to introduce people to the space. We would like to have some basic training, including some anti-o/sensitivity and some way of designating who is a volunteer and who is a participant in the space.

Any suggestions or input on the best way to implement any of these changes would be most appreciated. What are your goals for the new year?
Ainsley and The Pirates.

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--
Urban Bike Project of Wilmington
-a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop-
1908 N. Market Street
Wilmington, DE 19802

http://urbanbikeproject.org