
Rescue shackspace, the german hackerspace in Stuttgart - pfleidi
http://rescue.shackspace.de/
======
Deadsunrise
I'm starting a hackerspace in Bilbao and will probably find myself in the same
situation in 1-2 years. We have a huge awesome space (944m^2) for free but if
it gets sold or rented we'll have to move out. The plan is to use this year to
recruit members and save money to be able to rent a smaller place when we move
out.

What you should do is just raise the fees for the members. 20e (8 for
students) is a really low monthly fee for a hackerspace. Lots of spaces have
monthly fees around 80$ with some reduced memberships (40-50$) for students or
"starving hackers". Until now you were able to keep the membership cheap since
you weren't paying rent but you should definitely raise the fees, a lot, if
you want to survive.

I guess that you have already debated and voted on this. If you raise the fee
so drastically you will probably lose half the members but at least you won't
have to depend on donations. A couple years ago I was part of local Linux
Users Group, we had a nice space with only 20 members and a 75e monthly fee.
Raising the fee to pay the rent filtered the the people who didn't really
commit to the project.

Find a smaller place if you need to but reducing the group to people who
really "get it" will probably get you a smaller and much nicer hackerspace. Of
course, if someone cannot pay but is really interested and can help around,
you should make some exceptions.

The site says that you need 3000-3500e to move. If you have 80 members it's
just 40euros per member, if the members really want to have a hackerspace it
shouldn't be too hard to reach.

~~~
pfleidi
To be clear: It isn't true that we where not paying any rent until now. Our
monthly costs are ~1000EUR a month at the moment and we are able to afford
that.

Th problem is also not the money we have to pay for rent. It is the money we
need to pay for moving and renovation costs.

