The knowledge share part seems already covered with the Bike Collective Wiki, or would you be trying to organize the information a different way?

This is definitely organized differently. The wiki is great, and it does already exist, and exist with a shit ton of info in it. We discussed this. The main difference being that this is a simple spreadsheet, so that it can be referenced by newer projects or existing shops to see things like how many hours other places are open, who has a women/trans/other specific time, and other things. We discussed having the fields in the spreadsheet link to specific webpages.
The wiki format is a little different, but still valuable.

The example that came up was a project somewhere that was thinking of starting a youth program. With the spreadsheet, interested youth organizers can just scroll down that one column and see who does what and how.

Have you thought about funding the organization itself through dues paid by member organizations or other means? Thunderhead works with a percentage of annual revenue and a minimum of $75, I think. The fiscal sponsorship and insurance offering would be huge.

This also came up. The issue of "who's going to run it" is the underlying reason it's not moved forward past this, but we talked about the infoshare/spreadsheet being a great start to getting lots of people on the same page, and their info in one place. I have no experience with that level of organization, and can't afford the time to take it on right now.
The fiscal sponsorship thing may be stickier than we realize. Imagine this juggernaut of a bike umbrella org that has 100 startup shops under it's wing. What happens when one of those shops does something that is cause for someone to sue them? They would go after the umbrella org. Which would/could negatively affect the other 99 orgs...That's just one issue. Several others came up.

An aside, I would love for some other organizations to "Woof" to us, haha. It would offer more specific and in-depth idea sharing than can be had in a classroom setting or bouncing ideas back and forth by email.

This came up as well, in one or two of the workshops. In my mind, it's basically up to the individual shops to organize it, and there's nothing stopping anyone from going for it right now. I wasn't clear on what a larger organization would bring to that table, as it wouldn't take much for me to email or call another project and line up a month long swap independently of thinktank or any other...

I can offer my help, as much as I can, during my paid job which sometimes has a lot of downtime. Let me know what specifically you need help with.

At this point, if we're going to form a larger organization, we need some research. What would it take to be a fiscal sponsor? If it is too sticky a proposition to handle on a volunteer basis, we talked about making the "umbrella" org less of a fiscal sponsor and more of a clearing house for information. Instead of offering it's services as a fiscal sponsor, just have apacket of "here's how the hell your org can file for 501c3, incorporate as a collective, or whatever the other options are. Someone who's just coming into it would see different options and which forms mean what, and what different options mean as far as responsibilities and rights. That, to me, seems like the easiest setup, as the information would need to be found once, and updated fairly regularly, but there wouldn't really be a need for a physical space or office.

Brian

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 Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:01 PM, <veganboyjosh@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for coming to bikebike! and being so participatory. I got home, went over my notes, and realized I have two lists of email addresses.

Apologies to everyone who's already on the thinktank list for receiving this twice. Just wanted to get this out to as many of you as possible. Please forward to those you think might be interested.

One is folks who didn't know about or how to sign up for the Think Tank email listserv. To do that, just click the link below this paragraph, and you'll be added. It's not moderated, so if ever you decide that you don't want to receive emails anymore you'll need to unsubscribe yourself.

To manage your subscription, plase visit: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org

The other list I have, and I suspect some folks who aren't on ThinkTank will be interested in, is those of us who spoke about joining forces as collective bike shops into one big organization, or a federation, or something. The three big things this organization would do are:

Serve as a (501c3) fiscal sponsor for startups. Of course, this would only be offered to bike projects in the US, as other countries have other systems and requirements. Insurance also was mentioned as a possible benefit.

Be able to potentially approach tool and/or part manufacturers directly for lower cost for frequently ordered consumables like cables, brake pads, etc.
Offer some sort of structure for a "Woofing" type program, where mechanics and organizers from one organization could visit and stay with another organization to check out their systems and organization.

Lastly, and the most easily doled out benefit this group could offer would be startup help for burgeoning projects. Either in the form of money that's collected from existing projects, grants, sales of parts to for-profit shops, etc...; and/or wisdom through offering sample paperwork from other orgs, such as sign up sheets, flyers, curricula, etc.

The last one there seemed like the easiest place to start, since a knowledge share wouldn't require all that much infrastructure to establish. In fact, it's already in the works. There is a google spreadsheet here that hopefully will grow as folks add their information and add columns to track info for other shops, and we can use this to network with shops doing similar work, or with similar programs. Please add your project's name, and it's details when you get a chance.

I've volunteered to be the lead person in getting this process started, but I have no experience organizing a group of existing organizations, so hopefully someone else can step in and offer up some expertise and keep the momentum going.

Thanks to everyone who came to the workshops, discussed options and potential conflicts. I don't think any of the bulleted list above is out of our reach, but navigating through some of the trickier bits via email could eat up some time.

josh.

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