Free Ride has a rather extensive "work-trade" program where used parts, bikes and classes can be paid for by volunteer hours. We have a binder called the "member log book" where anybody volunteering can start their own member sheet and log hours. We say $8/hr.
We used to have volunteering tasks like processing donations performed during open shop nights. However, it is now given its own night each week. The downside is one less open shop night. The upside is that we can do pretty much any major project each week. We process donations, make signs, check over paperwork, organize tools, organize parts, clean the shop, take out trash/recycling, set aside bikes for special programs, replace lightbulbs, build shevles, paint, have meetings, and do pretty much anything else.
It gets crazy sometimes when we open the doors and find 20 people who this is their first time to the shop...
Having a dedicated night is good because the newest people work with people who are more familiar with how things are done. They learn bike mechanics and just how the shop works in general. And we can get a lot accomplished too!
Its tough knowing what tasks people can work on. If you run volunteer night often you get a good sense of what to do. We try to keep lists going and will sometimes send emails out the the volunteer list for ideas or to check if anybody is working on any special projects.
-Will
On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:01 AM,
<veganboyjosh@gmail.com> wrote:
Community Cycles in Boulder has started to offer work/trade more often lately. We offer $10/per hour for work trade. Any parts that someone wants to work for must be agreed upon in advance, and must be used, donated parts. (IE, any parts that we buy new from a distributor are not available to work/trade for.) Agreeing on parts to be worked for in advance does several things:
1. It doesn't allow for people to "bank" hours. If they're doing work/trade, it's very clear what they're working towards. No one can come up to us after 6 months of working and say "ok, i'm ready to cash out my $5,000 of work hours now."
2. It makes very clear to all parties what the agreement is up front and eliminates some ambiguity later on. If some parts get donated while they're in the process of earning hours that they're also interested in, that becomes a different transaction. In other words, hours are not transferrable. That's the official policy. In actuality, we take it on a case by case basis.
How to delegate jobs? Our flow of bikes through our shop is such that we always have "new donations" that need to be processed: Cleaned, complete, any broken parts removed, any computer/light/lock mounts removed, tires pumped up and/or fixed, and finally bars turned sideways and pedals removed and tied to bars. These are simple enough mechanical things that anyone can do, which assist us in reclaiming our shop space from the mountains of bikes, move the bikes through our system, and like Jonathon mentioned, teach some very basic mechanics and tool use to unskilled mechanics.
There's not really ever a time when we don't have new donations that need to be processed.
If we find ourselves in such a situation, we'll have someone do some sort of sorting or cleaning project:
1. Tuneups (customer bikes left with us to be tuned up) always need to be cleaned thoroughly, and not necessarily by an expert mechanic.
2. Small parts in the "Random Parts" bin can be sorted. We recently had one person spend several hours sorting this, and
i kept apologizing for giving her such a boring tedious task. She thanked me at the end of the day, for she had learned a ton of bike anatomy just from sorting and figuring out where these parts go, both in our shop, and on a bike.
3. Small parts in their respective bins--headset parts, BB parts, hubs/axles/cones/etc--always need to be cleaned of old chunky grease. Again, tedious and boring, but soooo needed for the shop.
4. Tubes to be checked. We have a bin in the shop for tubes that get donated or come off of a stripper bike. When it gets full, or even half full, we have someone check the tubes. Pump them all up first. Then see which ones still hold air. This could even be an over night task. Fill them one night, see which ones are still inflated tomorrow. Those are the good ones. Fix or toss the old ones.
5. Keep a log of projects your team would like to do. Keep it updated, and add to it. These could be things like "outline tools on the pegboard" or something like that. The kinds of projects that you'd like to get done eventually, but the daily needs of the shop and your customers are too pressing to allow for. See if there's some element of that that can be delegated to an unskilled person. We're in the process of putting together a wheel building class. We have lots of hubs, rims, and spokes, and a need for rear wheels. We had one group of two or three people measure our rims' Essential Rim Diameter and number of spoke holes. An expert mechanic sorted out a group of quality hubs. Another group of unskilled folks counted spoke holes in the hubs, and measured and marked the important specs on each hub. We'll soon have someone pair up same numbered hubs and rims. Then someone will enter this info into a spoke calculator, and we'll find those length spokes. The plan is then to sit down with whichever volunteers are interested in a basic wheelbuilding class, and have them learn as they build us some wheels.
This is a project that is taking some time to get through, but is made much easier--and delegatable to unskilled folks--because we broke it down into manageable chunks, and trained the people in the one thing they needed to know in order to do it, ie, measuring Essential Rim Diameter.
6. Dunno about your shop, but our bathroom is pretty much constantly in need of a wipe down and a mop. This is always a good go-to for someone looking for 30 minutes of work time.
We don't have a separate space for them to work. They work side by side with volunteers, Earn-A-Bikers, and staff.
Hope that helps.
josh.
this goes out to any organization who does work trade... ie, people
can buy things in the shop in exchange for volunteering.
-how do you delegate jobs to volunteers who don't know how to work on bikes?
-what jobs do you have for that kind of volunteer (drop-in) to do?
-is there a space separate from functioning Open Shop space where they work?
We have thought about this idea as both a good way to compensate
volunteers and also a good incentive to recruit volunteer hours, but
we have found that the delegation of tasks, the increased volume in
the shop, and the lack of bicycle related knowledge in volunteers has
made this more work for us than it is worth. Any ideas or suggestions
would be welcomed!
Sarah
Urban Bike Project
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