---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark H Hendricks mhendri961@gmail.com Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:17 AM Subject: A Little Help Please! To: coordinator@fcbikecoop.org
Dear Friends:
It's time to start a cooperative here in The Quad Cities (border of Iowa and Illinois). Please tell me what I am up against and the pitfalls you might help me avoid. I am 52 and very experienced at helping businesses market and sell. I used to run the largest independent Raleigh distributorship (ancient days) and have over twenty years of winter cylecommuting experience. Any advice you might offer would be greatly appreciated.
Mark: Sounds like you are bringing a great background to the coop you hope to establish. First, I think you will need 501(c)(3) status. Either get it yourself or umbrella under another non-profit. Second, stay friendly with all neighborhood bike shops. This can help you initially get the parts you will need at a low mark up. Or if you can, establish an account with a wholesaler. Third, create a dynamic website and business cards as well as other means to get the word out. Fourth, surround yourself with like minded tremendous core of volunteers. Fifth, develop a sense of mission and identity. This will help you target just what you wish to accomplish with your coop. Sixth, determine how you are going to fund your coop. Grants, donations, a rich uncle? Best of luck and remember to always keep it fun. This will help you to stay the course and not get burned out. Bruce
--- On Mon, 10/20/08, bike against bikeagainst@gmail.com wrote: From: bike against bikeagainst@gmail.com Subject: [TheThinkTank] Fwd: A Little Help Please! To: "The Think Tank" thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Date: Monday, October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark H Hendricks mhendri961@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:17 AM Subject: A Little Help Please! To: coordinator@fcbikecoop.org
Dear Friends: It's time to start a cooperative here in The Quad Cities (border of Iowa and Illinois). Please tell me what I am up against and the pitfalls you might help me avoid. I am 52 and very experienced at helping businesses market and sell. I used to run the largest independent Raleigh distributorship (ancient days) and have over twenty years of winter cylecommuting experience. Any advice you might offer would be greatly appreciated.
I think that establishing the crew of people committed to the organization is key. Burnout can happen pretty early on and its important to have incentives or a conversation together to talk about motives for the project. Are you starting a worker onwed bike shop? or a volunteer-run collective? There's a pretty big difference in structure based on whether you're paying your staff or not.... Coop implies some sort of economic stake in the organization... like profit sharing. In our non-profit it's entirely volunteer run, and we call ourselves simply a collectively run business. There's tons of useful documents on the bike collectives wiki. good luck!
Hey all. I just want to start off by saying I am so glad I joined the list! I am a founding member of Cincinnati's co-op MOBO and we so often feel like we're all alone out there and have no mentorship. So, it's great to actually feel like we're part of something bigger, not just ogle over other people's sites on the internet. So, I have a few questions to start off with How do other organizations manage to purchase inventory? One company? Two? Whoever's got the best deal? We've tried going through bike shops and because we're not priority---it just takes forever.
How do you log volunteer hours? Reward volunteers? Keep contact with them?
Anybody have a tiered system of volunteers, where you have a member, an active member and a board member?
What about open meetings? How can you be a collective but also not let jo-one-timer go on and on at the meeting about how we wouldn't sell him some campy brakes but asked for volunteer time instead and how stupid that is?
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 2:05 PM, bike against bikeagainst@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark H Hendricks mhendri961@gmail.com Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:17 AM Subject: A Little Help Please! To: coordinator@fcbikecoop.org
Dear Friends:
It's time to start a cooperative here in The Quad Cities (border of Iowa and Illinois). Please tell me what I am up against and the pitfalls you might help me avoid. I am 52 and very experienced at helping businesses market and sell. I used to run the largest independent Raleigh distributorship (ancient days) and have over twenty years of winter cylecommuting experience. Any advice you might offer would be greatly appreciated. -- Best Regards Mark H. Hendricks Mhendri961@gmail.com 1-309-762-3252 (direct)
-- Rafael Cletero Project Coordinator Fort Collins Bicycle Co-op ph (970) 484 38 04 www.fcbikecoop.org
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--- On Mon, 10/20/08, MoBo Bicycle Co-op mobobicyclecoop@gmail.com wrote:
From: MoBo Bicycle Co-op mobobicyclecoop@gmail.com Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Fwd: A Little Help Please! To: "The Think Tank" thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Received: Monday, October 20, 2008, 5:20 PM Hey all. I just want to start off by saying I am so glad I joined the list! I am a founding member of Cincinnati's co-op MOBO and we so often feel like we're all alone out there and have no mentorship. So, it's great to actually feel like we're part of something bigger, not just ogle over other people's sites on the internet. So, I have a few questions to start off with How do other organizations manage to purchase inventory? One company? Two? Whoever's got the best deal? We've tried going through bike shops and because we're not priority---it just takes forever.
Thus far we have just ordered through sympathetic bike shops. The shops tend to order from several suppliers but only once they accumulate the minimum order. They tend to order more frequently from their preferred supplier so try to order stuff they can get through that supplier if you are in a rush. Until your orders get close to the supplier's minimum it is probably faster (and much cheaper) to piggyback on a local shops order.
How do you log volunteer hours? Reward volunteers? Keep contact with them?
We issue our volunteers a "membership" card in exchange for them filling out a form with their contact info, interests and skills. Then for each hour they volunteer we place a stamp on the back of their card. Volunteers can exchange a stamp for an hour of free DIY time in our shop. We also coach our volunteers in repair skills while they are volunteering. Our main contact with the volunteers is via email. On their contact form they indicate areas of interest/skills and we may target some of these specifically if we need help. (For example we recently had to replace our bookkeeper and were able to source a new one from our volunteer database.) We also post volunteer information in the shop and on our website.
Anybody have a tiered system of volunteers, where you have a member, an active member and a board member?
Currently we have a informal tiered system which consists of 4 levels.
- Joe volunteer who has a "membership" card and can accumulate DIY hours
- Shop Assistant volunteers who are scheduled to help the Head Mechanic run the shop when we are open (this was made an absolute necessity when we recently moved into a 2 room shop where one person could no longer keep track of both rooms)
- Head Mechanics and other Core Volunteers who run the organization, have keys to the shop
- Director who is paid a small stipend to keep everything running smoothly, be the primary point of contact for external organizations, be available most days when all the volunteers tend to be at their real jobs and put in more than double the hours of anyone else.
We are moving to incorporate as a non-profit (in Canada) so we plan to formalize this with 3 & 4 becoming the board of directors and 1 & 2 likely having no legal role.
What about open meetings? How can you be a collective but also not let jo-one-timer go on and on at the meeting about how we wouldn't sell him some campy brakes but asked for volunteer time instead and how stupid that is?
Most of our meetings 5-10 per year are attended by the director plus about 1/2 of group 3 above. 95% or more of our decisions are made by consensus with unanimous approval of those in attendance. Many agenda items are hashed out via an email group in advance of the meetings. Over the years we have had a few crusty members that were constantly in opposition to the rest of the group but they all wore down and quit. Now we are a little more careful on who we invite to become a core member. Once a year at our AGM we open up attendance to anyone that wants to attend but have rarely had anyone outside the core group show up (perhaps due to a lack of advertising on our part).
-- MoBo Bicycle Co-op a project of The Village Green Foundation 1415 Knowlton Ave Northside Cincinnati, OH _______________________________________________
Chris Wells (Head Mechanic & Email Handler)
re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op 477 Bronson Ave. Ottawa
info@re-cycles.ca http://www.re-cycles.ca/
Mark. Welcome to the Northern Alliance, man. BikeBike is gonna be in Minneapolis next year, and Fargo will be there to back you up (as will everybody). Build Coalitions, first and foremost. Beat down the door of the park board, local colleges, city, community centers, youth serving agencies, and folks who serve the homeless and the under-represented. Share the ideas around, get a feel for the landscape of your community. And gather like minded people for bike rides and coffee. Be fearless when approaching folks on bikes. Your idea will be contagious, I promise. Develop a mission statement together, then a business plan, then shop it shop it to everybody. And read the blog. So many great tools and templates.
People first, then bikes.
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 1:05 PM, bike against bikeagainst@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark H Hendricks mhendri961@gmail.com Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:17 AM Subject: A Little Help Please! To: coordinator@fcbikecoop.org
Dear Friends:
It's time to start a cooperative here in The Quad Cities (border of Iowa and Illinois). Please tell me what I am up against and the pitfalls you might help me avoid. I am 52 and very experienced at helping businesses market and sell. I used to run the largest independent Raleigh distributorship (ancient days) and have over twenty years of winter cylecommuting experience. Any advice you might offer would be greatly appreciated. -- Best Regards Mark H. Hendricks Mhendri961@gmail.com 1-309-762-3252 (direct)
-- Rafael Cletero Project Coordinator Fort Collins Bicycle Co-op ph (970) 484 38 04 www.fcbikecoop.org
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