My only advice would be to get a wholesale ordering account now, or find a friendly co-op/LBS who will bring some things in for you. And while Park stuff is nice, you can often get a complete metric wrench set at Home Depot for $10 instead of Park's $30-40. Start with one mega tool board and arrange the space so there is lots of easy access to it. If you have a low enough ceiling, hang bikes from tubes instead of dropping hundreds on the fancy stands.
- Bookkeeping. We definitely would've saved ourselves some grief if we had either hired a bookkeeper earlier on, or just got a few hours of intensive accounting mentorship. Our current bookkeeper works bills us ludicrously low rates (>$20/month) for keeping our Quickbooks up to date, and having all that stuff makes applying for quick one-off grants so much simpler. If nothing else, just keep all your bills/receipts/invoices/whatever in folders or shoeboxes, organized by month.
- Grant writing / non-profit mentorship. We were fortunate to have this early on, and it was (and continues to be) an invaluable educational experience. It helped us build a really strong relationship with one of the major local NGOs, and without a doubt enabled us to sucessfully understand the grant writing climate.
- Avoid burnout. Still working on this one...but the key point is to call on volunteers to help shoulder the load. There have been several lean years where B!KE was essentially my partner and I, and in retrospect we should've been building a volunteer core instead of always focusing on growth of services.
- Seriously think about how the core of the organization will make money. This may be controversial on this list, but I don't think there is any way around it without having the most spectacular, innovative, and lifelong committed volunteer core conceivable.
Perhaps that happens in other orgs, but that is not the case here. With over 600 members and thousands of drop-ins, B!KE has basically always been kept open by 1-2 people (even though 5-15 volunteers may be in the wings).
No bike co-op will ever make anyone rich. But stressing about how best to provide and improve the core services the organization will always be more productive and less soul destroying than the eyebrow furrowing insomnia anxiety of "how will I keep the doors open?".
Figure out a strategy for a core income stream - a renewable grant? a partnership with a local university/school funded by a student levy? selling bikes?
I think the predominate model of non-profit granting agencies (at least around here) only funding new, fixed-term, measureable obsessed, project-based programs is a disempowering and energy-sucking endentureship that needs a widespread institutional restructuring. But that's another story. The point is we started out looking for big 1-2 year grants, and after getting them, have realized they're absolutely not what we need to stay strong and true to our purpose.
Like some of the others who have been doing this for a while, I feel like I could write a book about this now. Enough paternalism. The best advice we ever got when we were starting up is the same advice I always end off when chatting to people about this stuff: The best way to start is just by showing up, persistently, and working with people. Just find a space and set up with a multi tool for starts if it comes to it. The most important thing is just to be there, and keep being there.
And if it really gets to grind, permit me one cheesy quote here, ok?
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful
people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is
almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of
educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are
omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will
solve the problems of the human race"
Calvin Cooledge
Best of luck,
Clifford