Sudo room/income

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This is a shared knowledge commons on our options to bring in income to cover costs for Sudo Room. These may be shorter responses than for decisions, so a template may not be necessary (we may end up choosing multiple or many options), but also feel free to contribute a free-form response below.

Income-bringing Options

Thought from 5/16 meeting: There seem to be three categories to bring in income (below). The discussion group thought that membership fees and services/goods offered would be the main sources of income, with the quality of the goods/services offered greatly affecting the energy and support of membership.

1. Membership Fees (perhaps $50-$100/mo, with sliding scale available for starving students / unemployed)

• From 5/16 meeting:

-- Should a driving principle be to separate membership fee-paying from perception of having influence in SudoRoom? Or, to what extent should financial contribution be separate from 1) governance privileges 2) access to the space?

-- Should "member" be the term used? What about participant/ supporter/ Sudo-Agent? (Patrik: we can call them whatever we want internally, but for the elevator pitch we should refer to them as "members", because that is what people understand.)

-- Accept in-kind donations if cash not available? What would the list of acceptable trades be?

1.1 Possible membership benefits - what reason do we give people to donate on a regular basis?

• Governance privileges
• Access to the space
• Access to shared tools
• Maybe a substantive membership benefit would be that members get to invite speakers & have classes at the space without having to get larger group approval
  • would anyone pay for that privilege?
• Discount for classes or other goods/services

2. Services/ Goods Offered to Community (Classes/ SkillShares; Events: Speakers, Conferences, Movie Nights; Goods: DIYbio kits, repair workshops, etc)

• From 5/16 meeting: Selling goods/services can fuel and support membership (ie, members can provide goods/host events/teach classes/act as speakers + these activities can bring new members); but does charging for these opportunities run counter to the sudo open + accessible principle?
  • Not being able to pay the rent also runs counter to the open + accessible principle

3. Fundraising (Grants: city/state/federal/private; Straight Donations, ex Donate button on website; Parties; Crowdfunding)

• From 5/16 meeting: fundraising is time-consuming and difficult and will be more likely if membership is solid (also, goods/services provided by the community can inform the viability of grants/crowdfunding)

-- Also: crowdfunding vs funding portal (eg; Sudo Room as Kickstarter Project vs. Sudo Room as Kickstarter :)

Free-form Income-bringing Responses

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