I want to thank everyone who has joined in this discussion. With my first set of basic questions I expected to receive two or three replies but instead the response has been amazing. Everything from a custom built bakfiets to homemade "Pig" trike. There have been great tool lists supplied, spare parts suggestions, and more.
This is clearly a "business model" that is proving popular for collectives and I believe it will be beneficial to cull this data together into the Wiki at bikecollectives.org to share with organizations (like mine) that are going down this path. I am collecting all the data sent to this list regarding this topic and plan to share it in an organized fashion once my collective's project is complete.
Cheers, Sam
-- bozemanbikekitchen.org