Update membership tier titles and descriptions

[valentine]

Original text:

For discussion at the 2020-11-11 plenum.

Link to screen capture of changed content. (3.2MB PNG)

Background

HackerspaceSG has not changed its membership tiers much since its inception.

Our running costs are around $4,600 a month, and our current layout allows for around ~17 desks at peak. This means that each desk costs roughly $270 a month, and any membership rate that is significantly lower is effectively a subsidised rate, including the standard $128/month tier.

As we are currently losing around $1,500 a month, it is high time for us to review our membership tiers, and see if we can align usage with contributions.

Goals

• Make HackerspaceSG's current financial situation better.
• Better align the usage of resources (desk space, floor space, time in space) with contributions (both financial and in-kind).
• Encourage members with lower financial contributions to contribute other forms of effort towards maintaining and promoting the space.
  • Develop a sense of ownership in more members (see: the IKEA effect).
• Nudge members who are more hands-off towards contribute more financially, especially if they require almost daily use of the space.
• Continue to be financially inclusive to people who cannot afford it.
  • Create opportunities to contribute for people who are cash-poor, but time-rich. (The opportunities should hopefully align with their interests, and help build either their resumes or networks.)
• Remove unrealistic membership plans, and the potential confusion that the lower contribution tiers might be membership plans.

Proposed changes

• Most significant change: $128/month (our most common offering) is now our Community tier, and allows for ~9 hours a week (roughly 1 day a week, or ~3 days of hanging out in the evenings) of space usage.
  • Most suitable for: occasional co-workers; people who come in after work or school to hang out.
• $256/month will be our Co-working tier, allowing for daily, near unlimited use of the space. (Members are still not allowed to live out of the space, as we are not a licensed accommodation provider.)
  • Most suitable for: freelancers and small companies using the space daily during regular business hours; members who frequently spend the night at the space.
• $64/month is our Concessionary tier, for people who self-profess to be earning under a reasonable amount expected of technical professionals (currently proposed at $2,500/month).
  • Most suitable for: full-time students, NSFs, underemployed, unemployed.
  • (The current Students and NSFs categories will be removed — it is assumed that full-time students and NSFs will be included under the income criteria. It doesn't make sense for professionals taking on part-time degrees to be eligible for concessionary rates.)
• Opportunities for time/effort contributions in-lieu of money: members at the $64/month and $128/month tier will still be able to use the space for more than 9 hours a week, as long as they contribute [30 minutes for $128; 60 minutes for $64] per 8 additional hours towards HSG "duties" (cleaning up after others, or doing pro-space activities like showing guests around or hosting events from the larger tech community).
  • One ancillary goal is to develop the abovementioned stronger sense of ownership and giving back in HSG members. It is ideal if most members give back more than they take.
• No proposed changes to the $512/month Dedicated Desk tier, but we might have to demarcate the "dedicated" area on our floor plan to prevent storage overflow.
• The $1,337/month tier will be removed. We may look at incorporating a "Talk to Us" section for potential generous benefactors.
• The $16/month and $32/month tiers will be moved to a separate Contribute (exact term to be worked on) section, to avoid confusion from potential and current members.

[valentine]

@rolandturner I've updated the descriptions further to reflect my proposal following our offline discussion.

I agree with you on the <$64 tiers, and we can table their removal or renaming at the January plenum. I believe that the spirit of it is to allow the community to contribute what they can, but it makes sense to split them out into a separate "Support Us" subsection to avoid giving off an impression that people are able to join as members at those rates.

[dyanawu]

I'd recommend switching this entire thing over into a feature matrix format to ensure the same information is available for all tiers; a paragraph each is not a great way to ~have~ make comparisons now that there's extra discrete information relevant to each tier.