Membership Benefits Discussion

Andrew: "One of the questions that I get asked a lot is 'what do I get if I become a member?'. I'd like to have a really clear answer to that question."

The "member benefits" section of the articles of association indicates:

The following are benefits available to all members:

• Usable assets and resources available within reasonable constraints of time and under the condition of sharing.
  • sudo room strives to make assets and resources available to as many non-member participants and beneficiaries as possible.
  • Note: no personal property should be stored in sudo room unless a system for personal storage can be provided by sudo room.
  • Note: the use of sudo room environments for habitation and/or domestic use is strongly discouraged.
• Approved discounts and services negotiated through the collective purchasing power of sudo room.
  • Items are up to the discretion of sudo room to determine through its budgeting and decision-making processes.
• A safe space, which is defined as:
  • "A place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability; a place where the rules guard each person's self-respect and dignity and strongly encourage everyone to respect others." — Advocates for Youth via Wikipedia.

However, we don't have a clear list of items that people get when they become a member. Here are a few proposals for more concrete member benefits:

Potential Member Benefits

• Personal access to the space (either through an rfid fob or through a private password that you enter into a site via your phone).
• lockers/cubbies/personal storage space
  • there is currently very limited space to store things in the current space, but this is still a benefit we can offer
  • there was a proposal to rent another room in the building for storage and designate part or all of that room as personal storage available for extra money.
  • more detailed suggestions: i'm just going to regurgitate my suggestion that lockers/cubbies for secure storage be made available to members who regularly pay the suggested donation or more. That gives an incentive beyond access; though it reduces access to a small portion of the space for everyone else, it's quite likely that there are some projects being stored in the communal space now (which is everything but the cubbies which are default DNH, right?) that would be moved to cubbies, as well as a number of projects and materials that are taking up space and aren't being supported by their creators, dues aside. So to the point, I think given the amount of space that is already not available for use by everyone, it is totally worthwhile to set aside a bit of space if it means offering the carrot or vegan donut that gets people signed up to fiscally ensure the continued existence of sudoroom in its entirety.
• some kind of gift: tshirts, stickers, custom access fobs, etc.

Incentives for membership

• donors page
  • this is just to have the name of the member listed on a donors page (if they want to be listed). the idea is to provide an incentive to being a member/paying

Notes

• We ran a brief membership & access survey. Here are the results: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCaEAVVjLwMrWcoPlGb09-G6bvaaiewi33FTz3OBptE/viewanalytics#start=publishanalytics