(…continued, beginning is here)
Most community workshops (makerspaces) in GTA are non-profit organizations. Check the list here. The government gives some tax exemption to such organizations, it's good, but at the same time, the same government sticks its nose into every aspect of the day-to-day life of non-profit organizations. It dictates what structure of this NGO should be, how they should elect a board of director, how they should vote and so on…
The BBTB project is not (and will never be) dependent on any sponsorship money or government grants. It is and it always will be a financially independent entity. Yes, freedom is not free, but it worth it. Any commercial company has a much broader autonomy. That's just why the BBTB project is a commercial enterprise.
[{anchor}{safeInvestment}]BBTB-project, among all others, has one very important feature, it cannot go bankrupt. Please refer to the operational concept. So it is safe to invest your time, money, efforts and equipment into this project. All other public workshops (makerspaces) are located in some properties. This obviously means that they have to pay monthly rent, utilities bills and property taxes. As a consequence, all other makerspaces must have a minimum monthly budget of CAD 3,000-8,000. BBTB-unit is not a real-estate property, we will never pay rent or property taxes, so a BBTB-unit shouldn't have a multi-thousand monthly budget. This means that the BBTB-project does not have to pass on these monthly costs to its members.
Because of this, BBTB-members do not have to pay a monthly membership fee of CAD 60-100. The basic concept of the BBTB-project is pay-as-you-go. If you have some project in mind, if you need some equipment to use, book your time slot in one of the available BBTB-unit and pay only for use. If you don't need anything in the next week/month/year, you don't have to pay anything. Yes, it's some kind of nominal membership fee. BBTB needs to charge it because there are some costs that are independent of whether you use BBTB equipment or not. Here are some examples. We must keep the temperature inside the BBTB-unit above zero in winter. We need to connect all your units to the Internet. We need to maintain our IT infrastructure, but this fee will range from $1/week to $1/month, depending on how many members there are in the project.
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