Doncaster Hack and Makerspace has now been running for just over a year. We are still fairly small ( about 12 members ) but we have a brilliant core group.
Currently we are meeting in another groups building. We can meet once a week and have a bit of storage space. But we have restrictions like we can’t do any wood work. We are really grateful for them letting us meet there but the current location is simply a stepping stone to the next phase, our own venue.
We have a few of questions and I hope some of you can give us a bit of advice.
How have you found your venues?
Do you raise all necessary finances via membership contributions or are you using grants / other income sources ( would really be interested in these )?
Is anyone letting other local community groups meet in your venues or is it strictly for the Hackspace.
Are there any utility companies that gave you any discount?
Thanks
PS really hoping someone will actually read this as the last post seem quiet a while ago.
When you have your own space, you then potentially hit restrictions based on insurance requirements and needing to follow risk assessments and such health and safety guidelines.
Leeds Hackspace managed to find their venue many years ago, managed to get a reasonably long lease and half way renewed it recently. It’s difficult though because they tried to raise the rent significantly despite changes made.
Other hackspaces may chime in here, but it varies from location to location. Some manage to have help from their council, but the type of ‘company’ they are also lends themselves to being a charity which gives other benefits/persuasion powers.
Varies from hackspace to hackspace. Leeds had it from membership, and then covid had grants/support for businesses which has allowed further floating support.
Leeds has considered other groups, such as repair cafés but what limits it is the insurance and working with that, since the insurance typically has to cover ‘members’, so it boils down to the type of company you incorporate as, and then what the premises is like and what it allows, and then what types of groups want to also share or work in the same location.
One of our founders was part of a local club/community group/CIC that was using the building on a pepercorn rent. It was originally the groundsman hut but was by then being used as storage a meeting place. The founder proposed that it could be use for the community to fix electronics such as computers and everybody thought it was a good idea. RML is still a project under the CIC called Ham United Group.
We currently get rent, electricity, water for free by the the landlord. Broadband funded by AAISP. and the expenses such as consumables are paid for by voluntary donations. We are going to be given a new building and we might set up a more formal request for donations.
One of our members arranged for access to REMAP meetings who help people with solutions to address their accessibility issues.
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For Everyones Warehouse
initially the charity had a deal with the council to get a building in the new “made in dagenham studios” but the build was delayed so the charity was offered by the council a larger warehouse (3000sqm) for a small rent £5k.
Everyone’s warehouse was a part of a bigger charity called Participatory City Foundation/Every One Every Day. They got lots of funding for a 5 year research project from big funders like National Lotery, bloomberg filantropies, … and the local council of Barking and Dagenham. Access was provided for free to all members. Members were technically only people from the boroughou of Barking and Dagenham but we were fuzzy on the limits of the borough. If you auntie lived on the other side of the street which was newham of course the could come. Some basic materials were available for protoyping but once you got into production it was expected that you bought your own materials. We operated in the principle of scarcity.
At the end of the project the equipment was redistributed across the different organisations in the borough, including lessons learnt, documentation, risk assessments and community groups. We allowed for other community groups and organisations from Barking and Dagenham to use the spaces for free. We had a big event space.
Since we were a charity we could get the Green levy discounted from our electricity bills.
We kinda gave up on the council for any sort of help. We did have a small grant to buy a few things but besides that we just get words and nothing happens.
Thanks for the input so far. Hope to get some more feedback from others.
Sure thing, I was in touch with someone from your group more than a year ago but then got busy setting up our group. Feel free to drop me a mail at hello@doncasterhackspace.org.uk
Was planning to reach out to Yorkshire hackspaces at some point to see if we can get some collaboration going.
I’d strongly recommend funding your operational costs from membership subscriptions. You can get grants/sponsorship for equipment, but if you rely on those for your ongoing running costs then you run the risk of having the rug pulled out from under you, or losing your independence.
Of course if you’re getting a new space or upsizing, it might be worth the risk of running at a loss for a while if you expect the new space to attract more members, but in general I think it’s good to aim to cover your operational expenses from membership.
