I'm sure the topic of bike rental has been discussed here before, but if anyone has a link, personal experience, or just some solid advice to share, I'd really appreciate it. 

I am part of a non-profit community bike shop in Jackson, MI and we are looking into starting a bike rental service through our shop to get more people riding and to generate a bit of income to resource our work.  The primary purpose of our rental will be recreation, not transportation. 

What I'm looking for are some starting points in the insurance/liability/waiver arena.  What are my choices, what is most cost effective, what are some specific companies worth looking into, should I just look into a rider for our current insurance, does anyone have a good template waiver to share, etc...?

Any other info. about starting a bike rental service would be super helpful.

Thanks,
Corey Grazul
The Fitness Council of Jackson

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:11 PM, <thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Chris Wells)
  2. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Scott Gibson)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:20:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chris Wells <re-cycles@rogers.com>
To: The Think Tank <thethinktank@bikecollectives.org>
Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work
Message-ID: <510696.86702.qm@web88207.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

At re-Cycles we decided since (at the time) all of our labour was volunteer that we should only consider paying wages for a service that we we unable to accomplish with volunteer labour. So far we have applied this to?4 services.
?
1) Day to day contact with other organizations and media which tends to occur during 9-5 weekdays. Most of our senior volunteer resources have full time jobs which make them unavailable weekdays.
?
2) We needed to find a new shop location, move and incorporate. Arranging all that was a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate.
?
3) Corrdinating the day-to-day running of the organization and doing all the stuff that no volunteers offered to do in a timely manner. Again a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate.
?
4) Extending our hours to days and weekends. We were getting overwhelmed on the evenings we were open as well as getting many requests to be open outside of our evening hours. We knew from past experience we did not have any senior volunteers available/willing to work days or weekends so we decided to offer some paid hours.
?
Services 1-3 ended up being combied into a Director's Honararium allowing Mark to dedicate the hours required to accomplish those tasks. The need for service 4 is reviewed twice a year. Thus far no volunteers have come forward to work those shifts and the work accomplished has relieved some of the pressure from the evening shifts while also proving to be revenue positive (after paying the wages).

Chris Wells
(Email Handler & one of many Volunteer Head Mechanics)

re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op
473 Bronson Ave. Ottawa
info@re-cycles.ca
http://www.re-cycles.ca/

--- On Sun, 4/11/10, Ainsley Naylor <needleandthread@gmail.com> wrote:


From: Ainsley Naylor <needleandthread@gmail.com>
Subject: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work
To: thethinktank@bikecollectives.org
Date: Sunday, April 11, 2010, 10:55 AM


Hey folks
We have been avoiding the very loaded *paid position* conversation for about 2 years here at Pirates. As we are getting even busier than every before, and making more than enough money to cover our operation costs, I think it is time to start hashing out various ideas for ways to pay for certain tasks to be done.

I don't think we are in the market to have a paid coordinator or shop manager, as it would be too likely to lead to authoritarian issues and would take up too much of our extra cash. Do folks have suggestions or examples of small-scale employment or honorarium models that have worked for them?

To give you a guideline let's talk about paying out less than $600 a month.

thanks!
ainsley.

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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:45:55 -0400
From: Scott Gibson <ssssscott@gmail.com>
To: The Think Tank <thethinktank@bikecollectives.org>
Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work
Message-ID:
       <v2h106405501004131245te1e8c20bq7c8250b27ed774fc@mail.gmail.com>
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At Free Ride Pittsburgh we continue to have an entirely volunteer-run open
shop.  For a few years now we have paid some of our Collective Council
members (basically anyone who volunteers 20 hours per quarter and attends 1
monthly meeting) to teach adult classes, run youth programs and occasionally
fix up a few bikes for sale.  All of these things do have associated
incomes.

We have training processes for each of these and there are no formal
positions.  Anyone collective council member can enter the training process
at any time and enter the pool of trained instructors to share the work that
is available.   It has never been more than 3 or so steady instructors for
us at any time.

We have always admired the Santa Cruz Bike Church Clerkship system for a
while now.  It is really cool.  We have been discussing it on and off for
about 3 years now, but still haven't... I don't know, just made it fit for
us.  Really, in my opinion, I think we have been a bit resistant to spending
that much money.

Anyway, its one other option to consider.

Scott
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End of Thethinktank Digest, Vol 44, Issue 12
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