This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 1 (North of England, UK)
This CTP refers to the decision to create a more heavily structured set of membership funding options as a way to support community cohesion. As described in previous CTPs, this hackspace originally started life as a Facebook group, run on a free platform. The first physical space that the organization took had free rents and, as a result, the co-founders decided to try and continue to keep membership fees low:
“When we were in the original shop it was free, and our overheads were pretty much zero. We said, ‘Look, with our maximum socialist heads on, we want to encompass everyone who would want a hackspace; so, we will expect everyone to pay something, but we won’t say what that is’”.
The initial ‘pay-what-you-want’ model worked throughout 2015, whilst the hackspace was based in the shop. At this time, the founders intimated that £10 per month would be suitable, but did not explicitly codify this amount. However, the move to larger premises, in a converted cotton mill, in early 2016, necessitated a shift in the system. Firstly, the rents became higher, meaning that the organization had higher levels of outgoings. Secondly, because the organization was using the online payment mediators PayPal to arrange payments, membership dues of less than £1 actually cost the organization more to process than they received in fees. Finally, the co-founders felt that the discrepancy between different member contributions was beginning to cause frictions between across the hackspace community. In response, the co-founders decided to both formalize the payment system, raise the fees themselves, and make use of a different payment processer. The new fee structure includes £20/month standard membership; £15 concession membership for students, pensioners and unemployed people; and £25/month membership for “voluntary higher payment which helps us develop and grow faster [to build] better facilities and more events”. Each membership offers the same access to the hackspace facilities and tools.
The new system still permits members to make a choice about how much they want to pay, but raises more income for the space whilst emphasizing the equitable contribution of members: “People still pay what they can afford – we still have the same ethos we did when we started, that people who can pay more do, and support those who can pay less. They all get the exact same membership from that so they’re all equal”.
This CTP was shaped by the move to new, larger facilities (as described in more detail in CTP2), raising the financial outgoings of the organization and increasing the need for greater income. It was also co-produced by the business model of PayPal, an online payment system that supports online money transfer, serving as an electronic alternative to traditional paper-based tools such as money orders and checks. Such online payment systems are well-suited to dispersed and grassroots organisations such as hackspaces, as they permit participants to set up membership and regular away from more formal and geo-located banking institutes. The business model of these systems is often built around small fees, which render them inefficient for small payments, as one of the hackspace co-founders explained:
“We originally suggested people pay around £10 a month. But if you can’t pay that then pay what you can afford. And it was mostly great – we had some people on £5 a month, some people on £3. But then some people on PayPal dropped their contribution to £1. And because we were using PayPal, that mean that what we got was actually 77p. And that was sort of fine when we were in the other space, but once we moved here, it just couldn’t work any more”.
By shifting to the GoCardless payment system – which (at the time of writing) charged 1% per transaction, up to a maximum of £2 – the organization was able to reap a higher level of income from membership fees.
This CTP was co-produced by events including the move to the new, larger facilities; and the business model of different online payment systems .
This CTP was introduced to mediate the tensions that were emerging around the use of space by members, and the concurrent level of fees paid. As one of the co-founders identified, there was an inverse correlation between members’ disposable income (and thus the amount they were able to donate), and the amount of time they spent in the hackspace. In the case of this CTP, the issues had been raised around one particular member but were, as one co-founder explained, indicative of wider issues:
“There were a number of issues with one member in terms of their use of the space. It gets quite complicated…We didn’t want there to be bad feeling about people paying virtually nothing to be in the space because often those people are, unfortunately, are some of the biggest users of the space because they don’t work, so they come in and use the space all day every day. The people who are paying the most are the ones who actually can’t take the time to come in once a week. Even if we don’t talk about it, it becomes obvious. The people who have less money go to less social things – they advertise the fact that they haven’t got money in other ways”.
To handle these tensions, the co-founders were forced to to have a series of sensitive conversations around the difficult topic of money:
“It resulted in us having to talk to that member and say, look, you have to be a normal member. There are no special memberships. It always feels bad talking money with people. You know they don’t have much money and that they want to be a member. They’re not trying to pull a fast one on you. But at the same time we have to ensure there isn’t bad feeling amongst the hackspace members about who pays what.”
Following these discussions, the co-founders felt that some of the difficult frictions that had started to rise up in the hackspace community had mediated and “everyone else now accepts that [that member] had to step up and pay a more normal monthly membership fee”.
Creating a more formalized set of rules about membership was understood to be a critical point in the organisation’s development, codifying a set of rules that had until then been intangible; and generating a higher income stream which allowed the organization to make and enact longer-term planning.
This particular CTP is still a work in progress. As the co-founders identify, balancing income, accessibility, and notions of fairness is ongoing:
“It’s a delicate balance. I don’t think there’s a right answer. We’re hoping to make it equitable and fair without making people feeling deterred by the fact that they don’t have much money. Are we getting it right? I don’t know”.
One unintended consequence following the introduction of the fee structure was that the need for a super-cheap option still persisted for some members. The co-founders chose to create this lower tier-membership strand – but, unlike the other tiers, did not openly publicise it:
“It’s true – we do have some people who are paying £5 per month, but that does have to be negotiated. It’s not something which is available to everyone, you can’t just go onto the payment page and find the £5 per month slot”.
This CTP was essential in supporting two of the hackspace’s transformational aims – and mediating between the conflict between them – that the space be as accessible to as many people as possible; and that members felt that they were contributing equitably to it. As described in previous CTPs, the town that the hackspace is based in is extremely economically deprived, and the organization wanted to make their resources as openly available as possible to those with minimal resources, to spur education and achievement. This CTP was instrumental in addressing the material and social limits of meeting this aim. The CTP has also forced the organization to address issues around transparency. The co-founders made explicit commitments to make the operations and finances of the hackspace as transparent as possible, including through discussions on the online forums:
“We do try to do as much of our discussion as openly as we can. We want total transparency on how the hackspace is run. Anyone can take up any role, and anyone can see the accounts or the inventory”. However, as an ongoing strategy, the sensitive details of individual membership payments were kept private: “We don’t publish who pays what, it all goes into the pot”.
The fees themselves complements the donations of material goods to the space – at the time of interview, the woodwork shop contained £1500 worth of equipement (“We got given a nice lathe, which is the most expensive piece of kit in there. We had to start small and go for the most key pieces of equipment so that you can do something”). By building up a pool of liquid finance, the organisers had greater freedom in making choices about how they could build up the hackspace over the longer term; rather than having to make reactive choices in response to lack of money. This resource pool also allowed the organisers to make payments for service investments such public liability insurance which cost several hundred pounds per year, but was critical for covering the perceived accident rate in a machine shop.
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