Nice stuff pays the bills! End of story
rachael spiewak wrote:
We toss nice stuff in a cabinet and try not to make a big deal out of it. Some savvy folks know about it and ask if they can take a look, and they usually give more than our $5/part suggested donation. We'll offer some of those parts to folks doing a bike build when we just can't find anything that will work for them from our ordinary pool of parts. We'd rather see that stuff go on a bike and get someone on the road than let it sit and have someone be stuck. And that's why some of our frankenbikes have strange aerodynamic carbon fiber forks sometimes. It's pretty amusing. Of course, there's the usual volunteer cherrypicking, and that's fine. We don't log hours, so it's all on an honor system, which still seems to work for us.
We did have sort of a long conversation about whether we should have a glass case or an ebay account, and we landed on not doing those things because we'd rather keep our resources circulating locally and we don't want to make an obvious visual distinction between classes of parts. We do struggle with having varied access to parts and tools depending upon fragility, ability to wreck your bike, safety issues, and cost, so the system isn't perfect, but it's good enough for now.
-rachael
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE <urbanbikeproject@gmail.com mailto:urbanbikeproject@gmail.com> wrote:
"you can ONLY buy the good parts with labor" That's interesting. At UBP we have almost a surplus of un-skilled labor already, so work-trade actually takes skilled volunteer away from more skilled tasks to supervise. That's why we don't really do it anymore and would rather have the cash for rent, especially from the nice stuff. We have bikes starting at $5 which take more time/parts to fix, and are subsidized by us getting money from the fancy stuff. Brian (the tax/paying mechanic replies were spot on, thanks!) Urban Bike Project of Wilmington -a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop- 1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the building) Wilmington, DE 19802 Hours: Thursday 6:30-9:00 Saturday 1:00-4:00 Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Joshua Goran <joshuagoran@gmail.com <mailto:joshuagoran@gmail.com>> wrote: I know that the co-op I am most familiar with, Ohio City Bike Co-op in Cleveland, OH has a showcase(s) or bin that the good parts go in, and it is used along with work-trading so that you can ONLY buy the good parts with labor, so that people can't just come in, flash money, and take all the goods that could be used as incentive for volunteers. That system makes the most sense to me. Josh On May 12, 2009, at 4:08 PM, thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> wrote:What to do with the nice stuff?_______________________________________________ Thethinktank mailing list Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org> To unsubscribe, send a blank email to TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org <mailto:TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org> To manage your subscription, plase visit: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org _______________________________________________ Thethinktank mailing list Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org> To unsubscribe, send a blank email to TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org <mailto:TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org> To manage your subscription, plase visit: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org-- Sopo Bicycle Cooperative 404-425-9989 www.sopobikes.org http://www.sopobikes.org
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