I think we can all agree makerspaces should serve their members with a variety of services intended to help them be successful.

That could mean the successful completion of a project, successfully learning a new skill, or successfully starting a new business.

In all those cases, a person is starting at a lower level of knowledge or engagement and you need to ascend them to the level they desire.

Your services must ascend with them creating what we call the “Value ladder”.

The value ladder, when plotted out, looks like a staircase. You can ascend up the stairs one step at a time until you reach the top, your “goal”. You can also do it at your own pace and go as far up as you want or need to.

But the point is, the structure is there to help them succeed at increasingly difficult tasks or projects. For example, we have structured the adult education program at Urban Workshop in this way.

New members get a free New Member Success Coaching Session within 48 hours of signing up. This session lasts about 30 minutes with one of our lead instructors where we get to know the desires of the new members and can make class recommendations and personal introductions to other members.

Next they take the recommended classes. If they find an area they love and want to learn more, we enroll them in a class track. Class tracks are pre-arranged groupings of classes designed to provide a deeper understanding and skill set in a particular area.

At this point most members have what they need and are successfully working on their projects. Some however desire even more guidance. For them we have 1 to 1 Maker Mentoring they can schedule in 2 hour blocks. These sessions team up our most experienced instructors with the student to council them on advanced techniques and tips to solve a specific problem.

You can see how the offerings get more specific as they the level of the instruction increases. This ensures members always have the support they need and ensures the makerspace has great offerings that provide a steady revenue stream.

This same principle can be applied to membership and youth programs.

For new members we have a discounted one month Groupon offering, which leads to a month to month recurring membership. Once the members have taken some classes some will upgrade to an annual membership. Then they start to build bigger projects or start a business and need to rent storage space.

The Youth Program students are very similar to the adults in that they wish to learn more and increasingly challenging skills. So we offer 4 levels of programming that students take formatted into 12 week “semesters” or one week summer camps. Graduates from that program are eligible to take 4 to 6 week class tracks developed for the younger students but based heavily on the adult class tracks.

These class tracks can be taken until the student is old enough and gained enough experience to become a full fledged member when they turn 16 years old.

Now I am not going to lie, it takes a TON of preparation to planning and documentation to build a structure like we described, but once it is done you have a machine that can make a huge impact in your community and provide the revenue your makerspace need to be sustainable.

It took us 7 years and nearly a million dollars to develop over 150 fully documented adult classes and another 50+ for the youth program. But now our education blueprints sustainably generate over $850,000 annually while we continue to add more classes and services. That’s a little more than half the revenue of the entire makerspace!

I hope you found this helpful. If you want to short cut your way to sustainability and provide the most impact for your community, go to
www.MakerspaceBlueprint.com for more info or click the button below to schedule a free 1-hour consultation call now.

Makerspace Blueprint offers classes and licensing of procedures, standard documents, and class curriculum that will save you years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is the secret weapon to running a sustainable makerspace that provides the impact you want.