Hey Godwin, 

I think this is a great idea!  It'd be great to get up-to-date, standardized info just to compare where each of us are at compared to others and give ideas for future initiatives.

Some suggested additions:

Services
Possible additions to the list of possible services offered:
- Off-site bike repair (eg. at community events, festivals)
- Bike trailer sharing and temporary bike parking racks (short-term rentals or lending)
- Recycled bike frame bike racks (pic here)
- Social events related to bike (eg. bike movie screenings, 
- Metal and rubber recycling for unusable bikes/parts and tires/tubes
- Bicycle education (eg. CANBIKE on-road commuter cycling courses, tabling at events with cycling info)
- Recycled bike frame bike racks
- Website resources

Income
Charitable status allows the organization to issue tax deductible receipts for any private donations received. It may be worth including a section to account for private donations (not just private institutions).


Anna Vesala
Edmonton Bicycle Commuters' Society
780.433.BIKE
edmontonbikes.ca
.




On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Godwin! <goodgodwin@hotmail.com> wrote:
So, I have been tasked to perform a competitive analysis of similar organizations by an economist in our group. I'm realizing now that a genuine competitive analysis is probably not exactly what we need but a general survey on many of our shops may be useful to all of us. Since we are gearing up to lobby our university to support a DIY bike shop on campus again, our goal is to see what other similar organizations offer and what it takes to run them so that we can bargain reasonably. This data might also be useful for a number of other reasons to any bike collective.

I have put up a draft of a survey, please take a look. (I put this together pretty quickly, the ordering is probably not the best)

I am by no means an economist, so some of the terminology could probably be improved, same goes for US specific information. I would eventually like to offer up the data in such a way that any sensitive information could be untied from the organization information to keep information confidential, but I'm not sure of any other way than to simply query me after it is complete, I can also provide a relevant breakdown afterwards. I'm not sure if people would find giving information about income and expenditures too confidential even in that scenario.

If it interests you, I would like to hear back about a few things:
  • If you think I'm wasting my time
  • If you have any suggested amendments, improvements or additions of any questions or extraction of irrelevant or far too confidential questions
  • Suggestions for a host other than google forms

Thanks everyone,
.godwin of the Bike Root





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