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| A bit about our organization's history. We've always planned to become a non-profit. We're working through the paperwork on that now. Before we had a space of our own, we met at another non-profit that was willing to host us for free. It was basically two nights a month, and we had one open house and one structured class. It's important to get together to know how many folks will actually stick it out. At that time we tried to collect dues, but it was hard because we didn't have much to offer. It was helpful, however, in telling us who was really serious about having a hackerspace. We started banking a little money that way, but it didn't amount to much. We ended up collecting about $1800 dollars that way over the course of 8 months. Finally, Sam threw down the gauntlet and offered a 1000 dollar donation if we could move into our space in three months. We had a few other folks match with similar offers, and we ended up with about 7500 in total collections to help us get moving. We put together an analysis, and our estimates showed that we could end up renting our space for a year if we spent all of that money, and the dues we knew we could get. At that point, we were reasonably expecting to have about 8 or 9 paying members. The idea, though, was to get a space. We had heard lots of people on the fence say that they would pay if we had a space. So, we got a few big donations to get the space going. So far, we've been successful beyond what we would have hoped. It's only in the last month or two that we've had enough members to put us in the black. As mentioned before, we were just hoping to be able to maybe make it to the end of our first year on our lease. It seems very much like "A Field of Dreams": If you build it, they will come. :)
| | The genesis of Knox Makers was a 2011 Craigslist post pitching the idea of forming a hackerspace in Knoxville. The CCC Mainz space in Germany and i3 in Chicago were direct inspirations. Eight folks responded and a dinner at Cafe 4 was arranged to discuss the idea. A loose-knit group formed and began meeting at each others' homes. |
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| Some notes about our start up that may be useful. You'll be setting up business accounts for your utilities. Basically, everything is going to want at least 1 month's deposit. The utilities will look at the history of previous tenants and charge you a deposit equal to the largest bill in their history. Your land lord will probably want one month's rent deposit, plus the first month's rent in advance. We sent out SO MANY DOLLARS just to get ready to move in. Having a big cash cushion is going to be necessary. We weren't really expecting that, but we were fortunately well prepared with several of our members making big deposits. It cost us almost $3,000 to cover all the deposits, etc, before we even moved in.
| | Before we had a space of our own, we also met at another non-profit that was willing to host us for free. It was basically two nights a month, and we had one open house and one structured class. It was important to get together to know how many folks will actually stick it out. At that time we tried to collect dues, but it was hard because we didn't have much to offer. It was helpful, however, in telling us who was really serious about having a hackerspace. We started banking a little money that way, but it didn't amount to much. We ended up collecting about $1800 dollars that way over the course of 8 months. Finally, someone threw down the gauntlet and offered a 1000 dollar donation if we could move into our space in three months. We had a few other folks match with similar offers, and we ended up with about 7500 in total collections to help us get moving. A lease was signed for a 1,000 sq ft unit in the Tech 2020 incubator in Oak Ridge. |
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| Anyway, to address your questions:
| | We outgrew the Tech 2020 space quickly; it simply wasn't enough room for the tools and projects we wanted to accomodate. Most of our potential community was actually in Knoxville, and most of them told us they were unwilling to make the drive to Oak Ridge on a regular basis. These factors limited our growth and spurred us to look for a larger facility within Knoxville. We looked at quite a few places, even got close to signing some leases, and then they would fall through. The search went on for several years before we finally found a home with ETTAC. Cost was often the limiting factor. It was serendipitous that we ended up with ETTAC, really. Like us, they're a small nonprofit driven with more passion than money, so we understand each other well. We have already worked on projects together, mainly their Toy Tech program. |
| Insurance requirements vary from state to state. I had no luck at all getting any big corporate insurer to get back with me. I talked with about a dozen. The reality is that they have risk categories for stuff, and hackerspace doesn't fit into their risk categories very well, so they weren't willing to work with us at all. I ended up getting a recommendation for insurance from some local folks that own their own small business. It was another local small business, and they were super helpful. They end up categorizing us as a vocational school, which I think is a perfect fit. It covers the teaching the public to use dangerous tools that can kill or maim. I suppose it's possible that if I told a big commercial insurer to treat us like a vocational school, they'd be able to make that work. The exact amount and type of insurance that you need will be specified by your landlord. We got a pretty standard $1M blanket liability policy, and it cost us just under $700 per year. There's a discount for paying all at once, so that's another benefit to getting your cash together up front.
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| Our utilities are driven by our HVAC. We have electric DX cooling with a gas furnace heater. Summer time our electric hit close to $150/month. Our gas bill hit $100 once, but has been less than that otherwise. Recently it was less that $20. That's really going to be driven by the weather. When you get a space, make sure everyone knows that the closeup policy means turning out the lights, turning off the AC, and locking up. That'll help keep costs down. Our space is about 1000 square feet, and we haven't broken over $150 in total monthly utility costs yet. Water is free where we are, so we're not using much there. For internet, you pay whatever the local monopoly charges.
| | When we originally moved into ETTAC, only one of the three downstairs bays was available -- about 3,400 sq ft. We leased it and spent months installing our equipment, bolstering the electrical service, installing air conditioning, etc. Just as we got it all set up and ready to go, they offered us a second bay. We couldn't say no to all that extra space. But there was a lot of work to be done there too. We had to redesign the whole workshop, expand our electrical capacity again, rework the lighting, and install dust collection and air filtration systems. It was absolutely worth it though; the workshop has benefited tremendously from having all that room to work. |
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| As mentioned, the space we are renting is about 1000 s.f., and we're paying 675 in monthly rent. That's going to be very location dependent. We could get cheaper per s.f. cost if we went with a larger space, but we couldn't afford that at the time. In newer/more convenient places we could very easily spend way more than that.
| | Our membership and public Tuesday nights have exploded since moving. The bigger space plus being in Knoxville was just what we needed to take Knox Makers to the next level. We lost a few members who live in Oak Ridge, which we regret, but we're able to serve the larger community far more effectively in our new location. |
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| I track monthly income and expenses to track cash flow. I also calculate a monthly cost, which is all our annual costs divided by 12. That's to make sure that I don't forget to account for once per year costs like insurance and registration fees when seeing whether or not we're making money. A given month may show positive cash flow, but I want to make sure we're actually sustainable. Our break even number right now is about $1,000 per month. You should know what that number is before you sign the lease. See how many members that works out to so you know how many people you need to reach. You don't need to start there (we were honestly under half that when we started, but we had a fair cash pile), but you need to end up there before the money runs out. You can do a cash forecast pretty easily in a spreadsheet.
| | As of March of 2017, we have grown to 100 members and expect membership to continue to grow in the coming months. |
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| We've done our best to keep other expenses very near to zero while we were working towards sustainability. There are some costs for hosting/registering domains. We've paid for a bit of advertising (mostly in the form of printing flyers that our members distribute). There's been some safety equipment, too. And PayPal fees. Man, everyone wants to pay dues electronically, but right now we're paying PayPal more than $50/month, so that's a whole membership right there.
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| Our finances from 2012 showed that about 40% of our collections were donations, and the rest were member dues. A large part of that had to do with the big donations that we received to get us going. For the past several months we have had mostly just member dues as our collections. So far, our members have shown no shortage of generosity when we ask for special donations. We wanted to get a 3D printer that belonged to the Space, and we had several people donate $100 on top of their usual dues to help purchase a printer. Even more recently, we needed to have some electrical upgrades made for the new Cray XT4, and when we put out the calls for donations on that, we had all we needed in 12 minutes. We try not to abuse passing around the hat, and so far it's gone well.
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| Our dues are set at $50/month. It fits well with the gym membership model. We've not really had much in the way of push back on it. There are lots of places that charge more. That's going to be driven by cost of living. You'll need to find a number that works for you.
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| I hope that helps. Let us know if you have any more questions, and good luck starting up a new space! It's pretty intimidating before you do it, but it's really amazing how it works out once you make the leap.
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The genesis of Knox Makers was a 2011 Craigslist post pitching the idea of forming a hackerspace in Knoxville. The CCC Mainz space in Germany and i3 in Chicago were direct inspirations. Eight folks responded and a dinner at Cafe 4 was arranged to discuss the idea. A loose-knit group formed and began meeting at each others' homes.
Before we had a space of our own, we also met at another non-profit that was willing to host us for free. It was basically two nights a month, and we had one open house and one structured class. It was important to get together to know how many folks will actually stick it out. At that time we tried to collect dues, but it was hard because we didn't have much to offer. It was helpful, however, in telling us who was really serious about having a hackerspace. We started banking a little money that way, but it didn't amount to much. We ended up collecting about $1800 dollars that way over the course of 8 months. Finally, someone threw down the gauntlet and offered a 1000 dollar donation if we could move into our space in three months. We had a few other folks match with similar offers, and we ended up with about 7500 in total collections to help us get moving. A lease was signed for a 1,000 sq ft unit in the Tech 2020 incubator in Oak Ridge.
We outgrew the Tech 2020 space quickly; it simply wasn't enough room for the tools and projects we wanted to accomodate. Most of our potential community was actually in Knoxville, and most of them told us they were unwilling to make the drive to Oak Ridge on a regular basis. These factors limited our growth and spurred us to look for a larger facility within Knoxville. We looked at quite a few places, even got close to signing some leases, and then they would fall through. The search went on for several years before we finally found a home with ETTAC. Cost was often the limiting factor. It was serendipitous that we ended up with ETTAC, really. Like us, they're a small nonprofit driven with more passion than money, so we understand each other well. We have already worked on projects together, mainly their Toy Tech program.
When we originally moved into ETTAC, only one of the three downstairs bays was available -- about 3,400 sq ft. We leased it and spent months installing our equipment, bolstering the electrical service, installing air conditioning, etc. Just as we got it all set up and ready to go, they offered us a second bay. We couldn't say no to all that extra space. But there was a lot of work to be done there too. We had to redesign the whole workshop, expand our electrical capacity again, rework the lighting, and install dust collection and air filtration systems. It was absolutely worth it though; the workshop has benefited tremendously from having all that room to work.
Our membership and public Tuesday nights have exploded since moving. The bigger space plus being in Knoxville was just what we needed to take Knox Makers to the next level. We lost a few members who live in Oak Ridge, which we regret, but we're able to serve the larger community far more effectively in our new location.
As of March of 2017, we have grown to 100 members and expect membership to continue to grow in the coming months.