At the bike church is Santa Cruz we ask "$5/ hour, no one turned away for lack of funds" and further: "if you are unable to pay for our services, please check in with a mechanic to make other arrangements before you start"
By other arrangements, we mean volunteer work-trade and tasks are usually easily found. In case the shop is too busy to handle more work trade or other barriers to worktrade, we leave these decisions as to whether to engage worktrade etc up to the mechanic on shift.
We have a sign up listing common used-parts price ranges to help keep mechanics on the same page, but in the end the price and value of services is up to the mechanic.
josh
On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Paul Nagel paul@thebicycletree.org wrote:
At our volunteer meeting last night, someone shared an anecdote where a group offering to pump up people's bike tires raised far more money when they asked only that people pay what they thought the service was worth, rather than asking for $1 per pumping (this was something he heard in a business class of some sort). This volunteer went on to suggest we not post our current $5 suggested donation per hour for DIY repair, but rather use language along the lines of "donate what you think the service is worth".
This is in a context where, even on a busier day, with about 12 visitors, we usually receive less than $60, even though many of those people will stay for two hours or more. Also, being *more* firm about payment is not of interest to us.
As with most of you, we serve a wide variety of people. I can see "donate what you think the service is worth" being fine for people of even modest income, but I'm concerned about how that concept can be communicated without causing bad feelings in people who *can't* pay what they think the service is worth.
In the past, when we were just getting started, we advertised our services as being "free", but accepted donations. That is somewhat different from the idea presented here, as "free" implies people need not/ought not to pay.
Does anyone here have experience with having no suggested donation? If so, have you utilized both methods in a similar context, and how did the income compare? Also, how did you word your pricing policy?
Thank you,
Paul
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