There is no guarantee against crumbling, but you can minimize your exposure and increase your chances of success by being scrappy, as most all have done to get their community shops going. Borrowed space, donated tools and many volunteers are common strategies.

I agree that without specifics on your community, it is hard to know what the potential is. Let's look at it a different way: I've found that established community bike shops typically have income/donations equal to about 10-15% of the larger area commercial bike shop's income. One of the cool things about community bike shops is that they are scalable, growing their client base, service and program offerings as they develop. Community bike shops typically have the community/open shop and donations for parts and bicycles as their principal income/activity, with programs (e.g.Trips for Kids) and services (Bike Valet) developing as the org grows. As service groups, labor/wages is usually the largest expense for those out of the volunteer-only phase, sometimes amounting to half of income or more.

Partnering with a local allied non-profit and talking to an attorney will increase your chances of getting off on the right foot, especially if you are new at this.

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Marissa Pherson <marissapherson@gmail.com> wrote:

I think the problem with answering this is that there is such a wide variety of organizations, and we don't know anything about your situation. What size is your city, what kind of programs do you foresee, do you have a board of directors, do you have a space yet, etc.

There are very small shoestring budget co-ops that operate on volunteers and unpredictable donations, and there are very strong co-ops that receive a variety of grant funding and have well-defined programming and staff to match. The bigger it gets, the more you bring in and the more you can spend (more tools to buy, improvement ideas, website, part-time staff, etc.). Are you going to incorporate? Apply for 501c3 status?

You can look up any 501c3 organization's 990-N form via Guidestar to get an idea. These will be established organizations, with a board of directors and all the benefits of 501c3 status and established community contacts.

Marissa Pherson

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 7:06 PM, tenaya goldsmith <tenayagoldsmith@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm trying to start up a bike co-op where I live and I would like to know what the average amount of income is for a bike co-op and what the financials typically look like.
I want to make sure that when I start this that I am financially ok so that it all doesn't crumble beneath me.

~ Tenaya Goldsmith

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