In our case it's entirely on the honor system, so we leave it up to customers/members to decide what they pay to use the shop, and therefore to keep track of what they should be paying. Partly we do it like this so as to remove any financial barrier to using our shop for those who can't afford it, but it also is intended to relieve us of the responsibility of tracking what's owed in terms of dues/shop fees. Of course we still need to keep track of sales of bikes and parts, but previously we were trying to maintain a membership folder, and that just got unwieldy. the theory was we can make as much or more from this donation model as we previously did with our annual memberships, but without the headache, or perceived barriers of requiring membership to use the shop.
On Jun 7, 2010, at 12:24 PM, Brian wrote:
P.S. We don't have a monthy/yearly rate. It was interesting to hear of the $35/yr maximum idea. Does mean that you have to keep track of a customer database...