Looking for a few good volunteers

Hello!

SnoCo Makerspace is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and its daily affairs are governed by a board of directors. We want to be upfront with the membership and potential board volunteers about the current state of the space. With the uncertainty in the market, and signs of our economy heading toward a recession, SnoCo is in a perilous position.

More impactful is that we've lost tenants in our business park location, which affects our monthly operational costs. In January of this year, our landlord raised our rent by $250 a month without warning due to increased common area maintenance (CAM) fees - and we also were hit with an additional $1500 bill in April for CAM adjustments on top of our normal rent amount. Our lease does not have an upper limit as to how much we have to pay for CAM fees. Right now we pay over $1500 a month - more than all our utilities and insurance combined - in our "Common area maintenance" alone, and this can go up even further if we lose another tenant in the business park.  Adding in increasing rates for utilities + insurance with the annual rent increase in September, and it has been a perfect storm of financial issues. Membership dues alone cannot keep up with the swiftly rising costs. 

All of this has made being in leadership challenging. We are looking for volunteers to serve on the board.

We are being honest with you because we want the right people for the board:

1)  You understand that there is no compensation or "bonus perks" serving on the board for SnoCo.  We want people who can lead by example: We expect you to play an active role in carrying out execution of ideas, not just rattle off ideas with the expectation that other people will implement them.  You should be motivated to help our community, which is an incredible resource for a lot of people - survive this economic downturn.  

2)  We are asking for 10-15 hours per month of volunteer time.  Of the time you volunteer, at least 3-5 hours per month should be on specific board-determined projects such as running inventory, teaching a class, paperwork, selling excess items, doing social media to promote the space/events, or cleaning.

3)  You are willing to dive into the nitty-gritty, "how the sausage gets made" part of running the space. This includes looking at income projections and liabilities and budget and helping chart a course towards financial stability. It requires an ability to have tough conversations because that’s what is needed when making tough decisions. 

4)  You are a forward thinker. We are not running an organization just to endure or shutter it.  Your ideas and work should move the makerspace forward for another 10 years. 

5)  Disagreement is natural and expected, but we expect you to be able to "agree to disagree" and "disagree and commit".  There will be plenty of time to discuss the variety of opinions and more often than not we reach a consensus everyone can live with. We expect all board members to have discussions in good faith and in a timely manner and once a decision is made to respect the board’s decision.

If you are still interested, please let us know - snocoleadership@snocomakers.org.

And if you are interested in general volunteering, but don’t want to commit to the rigors of serving on the board, please let us know also.  There are many volunteer opportunities as we look to improve our Makerspace to make it more attractive to members.