This is an interesting question, and I'm wondering if you have the same motivation as we in Austin are finding: we have WAY more people coming to use our shop than we can handle anymore. We don't want to send folks away, but we are starting to see 45 - 50 people coming in per four hour open shop. This is compared to maybe 20 - 25 folks a couple years ago.

If we pull out all the portable stands, we have about thirteen stands and only eight complete tool sets; so it's pretty overwhelming to get so many people at once, and really diminishes everyone's experience. We've been toying with the idea of requiring folks to become collective members (volunteer 24 hours every three months) in order to gain free access to the shop, then charging others for shop use. But this might effectively increase demand for shop time since lots of folks who mostly work on their own bikes would now be trying to maintain 24 volunteer hours per season on top of their own personal time.

On the other hand, more collective members means our all-volunteer run organization would potentially attract more coordinators to run shops, which would mean the shop could be open more often to accommodate all the hoards.

We're planning on setting up a waiting area with reference library, magazines, coffee, social atmosphere at our new shop that we're hoping to move into this summer and just having folks take a number and get in line.

What are people's experiences with this "problem?"

Jennifer (Yellow Bike Project, Austin Texas)

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Jessica McPherson jessica_mcp@yahoo.com wrote:

Hello everyone,

I am wondering who out there has tried having membership requirements, and how that has worked. Has it resulted in greater volunteer committment? How has it affected the demographics of the people that use the shop? Has anyone tried a set-up kind of like a food cooperative, where you have to volunteer hours at the shop in order to be able to use it?

thanks, Jessica (Free Ride, Pittsburgh)

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When I joined re-Cycles in 2001 we had a membership. Our shop rate
for DIYers was $4 per hour, but if one bought a $10 membership the
rate dropped to $2, and the first session was free. This brought
people in, but did little for attracting volunteers. Then we
realized that a lot of people were buying a membership to get the
free session, as the four hours would cost them $10 instead of $16.
So we had a great big database of people that were members, but most
did not volunteer, and many perhaps were not even that interested in
us as a co-op, but had been happy to save money that one evening.

So we dropped the membership, and now have a flat rate of $5 per hour
(still a bargain). But this also means we're not really a co-op
anymore... What we do now is offer an hour for hour deal, where
every hour of volunteering earns an hour's free time in the shop.
This has worked really well, and we now seem to have a steady stream
of volunteers.

We have a core group of about 16 people, and since we still operate
under the auspices of a larger non-profit we can get away without
having a Board. But we have our own bank account and set all our own
policies, and we are very happy that the main org. is completely
hands-off (and they are very happy with how successful we are). Our
shop is not that large, with about 700 sq. ft. of space, with another
200 upstairs for storage, and we pay $500 in rent.

Our core group consists mainly of the Head Mechanics that staff each
shift, and each one has a key. But we only have one HM per shift, so
on busy nights it can get a bit much for the one person. We have
only four workstations, but do have a few folding stands for the
overflow. We're trying to recruit more HMs of course, and are always
gently cajoling regular volunteers into becoming Shop Assistants
while they gain knowledge.

And we are quite pleased to have just signed on our first female HM!
She has been running some trial "women-only" sessions (dubbed
"Wenches with Wrenches") and will run those as a once-a-month thing
(or more often) come Spring in addition to running regular shifts.

Mark