Broke Spoke Folk,

We have a similar configuration as you do, except our hours are of course different, we don't charge anything for stand time, we regard every participant in open shop as a sort of volunteer-in-waiting, and we don't service bikes for people unless it's warranty service on a bike they bought from us. Our shop is heavily skillshare/mutual aid oriented.

Our volunteer nights are pretty much invitation only. I say pretty much because we do post advertisements for it from time on Facebook (eww), but there we specify that we need trained mechanics or at least people with some mechanical experience. If we're doing construction or such, we'll advertise that we need people with experience with those kinds of tools.

Generally when we feel someone is coming up to speed in terms of skills during normal open shop time, we tell them about volunteer night (sometimes called Monday Night Work Party) and ask them to show up; by making it invitation only, we can also do a bit of screening at these times for gender and cultural balance. If we're severely white-dude-heavy at a given time, we may refrain from invites until someone capable and not a white dude presents themselves. This is not because white dudes suck, it's to keep the social chemistry of the shop more representative of the city demographics. Our mission is to use cycling, community, and knowledge of bicycle mechanics to empower all people, but explicitly has a mandate to reach out to, include, and ultimately in part comprise ourselves of communities of color and marginalized/threatened people in general. We are explicitly working to dismantle patriarchy.

Volunteers are also welcome during open shop, many of the people helping other people on any given night are volunteers. We also often have people sorting parts and whatnot during open shop. As long as it doesn't get in the way, sometimes people even do things like mow the lawn or cut back vines. Since open shop is not invitation only, open shop is often when we get unskilled volunteers that just want to do small or simple things.

Open shop nights are also great times for volunteer training; people who want to learn something typically don't have to stand around long before some fundamental process like truing a wheel or repacking a bottom bracket is getting taught to a participant. The volunteer can sit in and learn at the same time as the participant. The line between participant and volunteer is very thin; basically it comes down to whether you're working on your own bike or not.

We get totally random turnout with these methods. Some volunteer nights, we have five dedicated people tasking it up, other nights it's just staff (often literally just me), but it still really is useful because work can be done without distraction. Some open shop days we have several volunteers, others we have none and it's just staff.

Full disclosure: we are also not a volunteer-run shop. We have dedicated paid staff, volunteers are auxiliary.

cyclista Nicholas

Director, Recycle Ithaca's Bicycles

On 2018-10-09 15:05, Edward Kirkwood wrote:

I volunteer at Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop here in Lexington, KY. We are currently a 100% volunteer run community bike shop that is open the following hours: Wednesday 6-9 pm Volunteer Only Night, Thursday 6-9 pm Open Shift and Sunday 1-5 pm Open Shift. To clarify, our Volunteer Night is for volunteers to come in and work on bikes that have been donated to us along with other tasks such as parts sorting. We do not offer sales or service to the public on Wednesdays. Open shifts are open to the public for individuals to come in rent our workstands and do work on their own bikes and shop for bikes and/or parts. Open shifts are staffed by a manager and trained volunteer mechanics. Volunteer Nights are staffed with a manager and 1-2 long term volunteers along with an unlimited number of volunteers that range from complete novices to regular volunteers. My questions for the ThinkTank is regarding our Volunteer Night, if you have a similar volunteer-only night: (1) Do you limit the number of volunteers? and if so (2) How do you implement this limitation? The reason for my questions is that sometime we have more volunteers than we can find quality tasks for them to do. It also limits the amount of in-shift training that we can provide to each volunteer. In addition, space and tools become a limitation.  Allen KirkwoodBroke Spoke Community Bike Shop

---

The ThinkTank mailing List

Unsubscribe from this list here: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/options.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.or...