Make cool stuff at Hive13 Grant - Vote

General
1

As mentioned at tonight’s meeting I am putting up a vote for a recurring expenditure.

This will be for a grant given out by the hive on a quarterly basis. Each will be for three months of full membership to the hive & $100 dollars of materials, tools, paints, electronics etc.(Total value of each grant is $250.)

A few notes about this
Who can apply: Any current member or Anyone eligible to become a member if you are not one.
How to apply: Fill out an application (to be made)

How will you be accepted: A council of 5 volunteers will review the applications based on specified criteria. The 5 reviewers will be picked and voted on by the current board of directors.
“Catches”: You must document your work twice a month on the Hive Website, social media, wiki or Youtube etc & You must work on the items regularly at the hive.
The head of the “Make cool stuff at Hive13 Grant” (Name can be updated) will use the hive funds allocated to approve or deny materials &

I was wanting to start it with 2 grants a quarter totaling 8 a year with this possibility to increase this number if we see it works.

Math time
Total Cash Cost Quarterly: $200

Total Free membership Cost Quarterly: $300
Total Cost quarterly: $500

Total Cash Cost Yearly: $800

Total Free membership Cost Yearly: $1200
Total Cost Yearly: $2000

I would like the vote to cover 1 year of scholarships for a trial period .

2

I VOTE YES

Marvin

3

Love this concept. I’ve wanted to have these “residencies for makers” for such a long time. Thanks for getting the ball rolling! However I have some suggestions/concerns.

I think we should do a much shorter, one time trial period, before jumping into this for a year and at such regular intervals. We can always vote it in for the year, after some results and evaluation from the first trial period.

Originally when this was discussed, it had a less exclusive vibe to it. I thought part of the whole point of the sponsorship was to support anyone who wants to create, not just keeping it exclusive to hive membership/future members. Part of the point was to bring in new people from the community at large to work with us. Engaging the community outside the Hive membership expands our influence on the community, and also shows our commitment to helping Cincinnati with the maker education movement. This would be a beneficial and concrete demonstration for grants that we (the Hive) will be applying to in the future as well.

4

A few responses in line

Love this concept. I’ve wanted to have these “residencies for makers” for such a long time. Thanks for getting the ball rolling! However I have some suggestions/concerns.

I think we should do a much shorter, one time trial period, before jumping into this for a year and at such regular intervals. We can always vote it in for the year, after some results and evaluation from the first trial period.

With this being 2 grants per, I figured 8 people will be a good trial, we shouldn’t base this off of just 2 people… we have a risk the first 2 may be bad choices or not right where the other 6 may be perfect.

Originally when this was discussed, it had a less exclusive vibe to it. I thought part of the whole point of the sponsorship was to support anyone who wants to create, not just keeping it exclusive to hive membership/future members. Part of the point was to bring in new people from the community at large to work with us. Engaging the community outside the Hive membership expands our influence on the community, and also shows our commitment to helping Cincinnati with the maker education movement. This would be a beneficial and concrete demonstration for grants that we (the Hive) will be applying to in the future as well.

This is open to the outside and by having the statement of eligible for hive membership it basicly removes any potential of having a membership granted to someone who has been banned (which currently is the only way of not being eligible for the a membership. I don’t even think we have a restriction for underage if given approval through legal guardians) on a side note I don’t think anyone has been banned from the Hive13 (I do know one or a few has been banned from the property by garden street)
I do not like the idea of not allowing hive members to apply for this opportunity which is why I placed it as open to current members also.

5

While I like the concept, I do think that a shorter trial period might be more appropriate. A year seems like a lot for something we are just testing. Additionally I noticed that this is quite similar to the LVL1 “Makerships” program, but with one noticable difference. The program at LVL1 is entirely funded through crowd-sourced micro-donations rather than out of the makerspaces budget. Thus instead of giving out a set number of “makerships” per month/quarter/year, they instead offer however many the donations allow for. Perhaps a similar setup would be a better option for us? Just throwing ideas out there. Overall it seems like a pretty good starting point but I think it needs a bit more fleshing out prior to full year commitment.

  • Ian B.
6

Response inline.

As mentioned at tonight’s meeting I am putting up a vote for a recurring expenditure.

This will be for a grant given out by the hive on a quarterly basis. Each will be for three months of full membership to the hive & $100 dollars of materials, tools, paints, electronics etc.(Total value of each grant is $250.)

I like the idea of giving out on a quarterly basis, and giving full membership to ‘grant winner’. However I disagree with a fixed budget for each ‘makership’ (which herein I shall refer to as the makership for simplicity’s sake). The reason is that if the money is used up, that requires the recipient to put in their money or vote to get more. The purpose of having this grant is to see more completed projects. I believe a better system is for the application to have space to include list of materials and tools needed to complete, with an estimated cost of the items. Then the hive can buy all the supplies for the project and then there will be a higher likelihood of completing their project. It can be left up to the ‘council of volunteers’ to determine if a proposal is too expensive and/or physically impossible and have it discarded. If the recipient fails to follow through with the project, then we at least have the supplies for someone to finish the project (better than having a half finished project with no materials to finish it)

Instead of hive funded, a crowd sourcing option would be a great alternative to generate funds that are too expensive for the hive to comfortably fund.

A few notes about this
Who can apply: Any current member or Anyone eligible to become a member if you are not one.

This wording is convoluted for its purpose. If the intent is to keep banned members from participating, then just state that everyone can apply excluding banned members.

How to apply: Fill out an application (to be made)

I would like to see this made before any vote is made tbh.

How will you be accepted: A council of 5 volunteers will review the applications based on specified criteria. The 5 reviewers will be picked and voted on by the current board of directors.

I don’t mind having a group of volunteers reviewing the applicants, but I would like to have final say be voted for through the membership. After all, its their money paying for it. It also limits the chance of the volunteers selecting a winner for the hackership based of favoritism/bias. A mentor would be a great way to help keep the project on track and help the recipient to achieve their goal.

“Catches”: You must document your work twice a month on the Hive Website, social media, wiki or Youtube etc & You must work on the items regularly at the hive.

Documentation should be a stipulation for the recipient. I believe once the project is completed, a post can be made to all our social media of the process, the struggle, and the completion of the project on our main wordpress, and thus showing intrigued people what sort of stuff we do around here.

The head of the “Make cool stuff at Hive13 Grant” (Name can be updated) will use the hive funds allocated to approve or deny materials &

I like the name ‘Hackership’ better, but that’s not as big of a deal right now.

I was wanting to start it with 2 grants a quarter totaling 8 a year with this possibility to increase this number if we see it works.

Math time
Total Cash Cost Quarterly: $200
Total Free membership Cost Quarterly: $300
Total Cost quarterly: $500

Total Cash Cost Yearly: $800
Total Free membership Cost Yearly: $1200
Total Cost Yearly: $2000

I would like the vote to cover 1 year of scholarships for a trial period .

One year trial period is way to long to budget for a test period. The area wardens only lasted 3 months for a trial period, and we extended the period easy enough. I feel like once a plan is fleshed out better, a three month trial period is sufficient to start testing this program. From there, we can consider what worked, what didn’t, and tailor the program better for the next trial run. Then we can determine what worked and what didn’t. I do agree it will take a year of testing to figure out whether we are getting what we want from this hackership program.

–
Daniel McNamara

Final thoughts:
I think having this program is a great idea, but needs more thought to make sure the purpose of the hackership is achieved when setting the parameters of the program.

Tl;dr
The entire point of the hackership is for more people to build cool stuff at our space, and document so we can show others what cool things are built here and opening people to the idea of what is possible. Bonus points if we get a non-member receiving this hackership to become a member because they had the opportunity to immerse themselves in our culture. But I will have to vote no on the current $800 dollar proposal for a one year trial period, and propose the plan to be fully fleshed out and discussed before voting on the budget for said plan.

7

I’m pretty much with Dustin on every count here.

-shorter than 1 year test period. One quarter sounds great.
-variable costs, to be approved along with the person, submitted with application
-vote on by membership as they’re paying for it. perhaps if more than X submissions, narrowed to 2N (where N = number of winners) candidates by Board / volunteer comittee

-D

8

This would really allow people who want to further themselves in a field and drive incentive to make our membership have more items to display “of look what we can do”. Honestly I see these items be a staple in the hive community other than just the everyday thing everyone is doing…I would actually love to apply for a grant/whatever the name will be but i think there should be the option on the application for if you choose to seek the money to cover membership for 3 months if I read correctly. Personally if I ended up getting support from the hive to pick up something and learn something material wise to learn something I have fallen so far behind in over the years would be flat out amazing in itself. Plus if the projects were able to be “moved” bringing a build porfollio as well as having a digital record would be an huge attention get er for drawing in new members that are looking for something more than just a space to work.

9

this idea is really neat. I do think that the project should be updated more often than every two weeks. I feel like they should be trying to update it every week at least, and in the application it should have a reasonable timeline to completion as most grants do. So those that apply and receive the money have well thought-out projects, with time budgeted as well as expenses. Of course hiccups do occur, but I think having little goals per week will help the person stay on target and allow for weekly updates, which can be posted on social media/written about. it would be great to have these projects and documentation to take to makerspaces/fairs/etc to show off what the hive is all about and what people can achieve at the hive.

speaking of documentation - what method will be the preferred method of documenting their progress? wiki? twitter? hive13.org blog posts? etc? pictures? videos? etc.

who will be in charge of making sure they are documenting their project? what happens if they don’t? if they fail to meet the guidelines of the grant?

i agree that a one quarter trial period should be initially sufficient. than based on those results, we can evaluate, tweak it, and continue/discontinue. I agree that there should be an initial panel of reviewers to review the grants and determine feasibility of the project within the stated period of time/money. However, I do agree that once they have weeded through the initial applications, the ultimate vote should be upto the hive membership at large.

tiffany

10

A small trial frame is reasonable but I do not think 2 people would be enough for a fair representation for a trial. I would recommend raising it to 4+ if we do a 1 quarter for the trial period, then if approved lower it to a workable number (the 2 for example.)

I didn’t want this to be a we will pay for your full project, more of a here is a jump start. It it why I limited it to $100. After that it will be out of their own funds. I don’t recommend this to become a membership vote each time (reasons listed below.) I like the idea to allow crowd funding, but I do not want this to be pure sufficient on crowd funding, at our location we currently have difficulties with crowd funding (current example is the big laser, we approved the full cost then crowdfunded to offset the cost)

With a set amount there is no reason to bother the membership with possibly hundreds of applications. If we do bring it to a vote of the general membership for Every grant application, this vote is not important as there is no cash expenditure. Also I would recommend removing personal contact information from the application for the sake of privacy and “favoritism.” (really I would recommend that the 5 reviewers do not base this off personal contact information either)

A group of 5 reviews helps eliminate favoritism, on top of that the 5 reviewers are selected by 5 elected officials voted in by the membership. This would be the most group oriented idea we have, our internship was decided behind closed doors, the Area wardens are handled purely by one person with no set checks and balances for favoritism. (The idea to remove that possibility was brought up at the last Board meeting and was shot down.)

The wording used for who is eligible allows for changes to our membership policy without rewriting the grant eligibility. I do not feel comfortable changing this without someone with more legal background coming up with better wording.

Documentation is a stipulation. Thats why it says you must document. Time frames if needed can be adjusted to once a week. I set this for biweekly because we already have a lack of updating for other projects that were promised to have updating. I thought biweekly would give enough time to have a meaningful update.

Regarding who checks that they are documenting their project, a head of this grant process or an officer can be selected (If we select an officer I would recommend the president) they would handle all that, similar to how the COO is suppose to check to make sure the area wardens are doing their job. I am currently willing to volunteer for this but if our soon to be president would like to handle it, I will gladly allow Ryan to if he wants that responsibility.

The Name: I am not a fan of “Makership” but as Dustin stated not a big deal right now.

The Application: I planned to have this done before maker faire so we can have people apply there. I have not had time to work on it yet, and I am hoping to have it available online so that there will be no paper documents needed (then we just have a laptop set up on the webpage for the application. If someone is willing to assist me with getting a page up and running on the website I will be more than happy to work on it through out the week, I am not familiar enough with the coding to set that up. This will consist of contact and personal info and a few questions (not a final draft):

  • “do you meet the criteria listed for membership or are you already a member” (list any requirements the hive current has to become a member.)

  • “If this will be used publicly are you willing to put up a sign stating this was made at HIVE13?” (We can easily make a few different signs stickers etc for them to post with that.)

  • “Explain your idea for the project.”

  • “What materials will you need?”

  • Do you understand you will be required to post on updates to the project to a publicly available source? (For example Wiki, Blog posts, facebook & twitter updates on the Hive’s account, videos on Hive13’s Youtube.)

  • Do you understand that after the Hive funded materials run out you will be required to provide any additional materials to finish the project?

  • How long will this project take to finish?

  • If you decided to remain with a hive membership after the grant period, do you understand our pricing system?

  • Have you read the Hive13 bylaws?
    The Reviewers would just see the answers to the questions not contact information to avoid favoritism, certain responses would be automatic denial. (Not willing to document, doesn’t meet the criteria for membership. hasn’t read bylaws.)

11

I love the idea of 'artist in residence' though I don't think we have
room for more than one at a time.. I also think this is kind of
short notice for voting on next week. I would like to suggest that
we talk about it and come up with some plans but do it sometime after
elections... Its a little unfair to drop this immediatley on new
officers.