Contribute, Support, Donate
This weeks sprint has been about finding ways that Make Works can be supported through the contributions and donations of those that use the service.
Make Works is a service that should be run for free and the information should be accessible to anyone for free. However, as we currently only have financial ‘fuel’ for another 9 months or so, finding a way to sustain ourselves through a pay what you think, or tip jar mentality from those that use and value the service, is something that I am drawn towards.
I love it as a way of thinking, because it means that we make sure anyone can access the service whether or not they have the means to - and that people will only ever make an exchange for that work if they think we are actually doing brilliant job. I could never understand why those in the startup / tech world seemed to look down on it so much as a model - concerned this route leads to little profit and/or power being created, which I actually think is a good thing.
Over 1,000 people use Make Works each week to source local manufacturers and this activity brings work to the 150 factories, workshops and makers listed. Whilst by no means the expectation is that all these people would contribute; the idea is that even if those who have a success in finding a factory match could give us something back - this would be paying forward the operational costs for the next artist, designer, engineer, small business or student that is then on the long and frustrating hunt for finding local fabricators.
It also means that we can start to look at other things we need support for, and see whether this can be contributed by our users. Things like reporting bugs, spreading the word about our work, or contributing time to helping us research and find local manufacturers can all come into play - building the service up as a collective resource.
Introducing a pay-what-you-think donation encourages us to keep finding brilliant factories to list on the site (until we’ve found every production process possible); and to continue bringing more users in so that those listed factories get more work. It also encourages us to keep creating useful, relevant content, that inspires people to start manufacturing locally.
It is an alternative to commercial models like introducing a paywall, a compulsory commission fee, or even a listing or factory filming fee.
We’ve looked at countless other platforms that use this model as a way to fuel open access work, especially online. Places like Wikipedia, The Internet Archive, Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons - all organisations that function using the donations and support of those that use it, alongside grants from various foundations and individuals. It is how public radio works, how you can listen to the stories on This American Life every week. It is also how you can use software like or AdBlocker, VLC without worrying about your data being sold for ad space.
It costs over £100,000 to run Make Works each year when you add up technology costs, filming and listing overheads and paying our team a fair wage.
You can look at this years budget here.
With donations, we are dealing with an element of guesswork in how much we can raise (and we are bearing in mind that we are pretty small) - so by no means anticipate making that amount completely through these.
What has been important has been understanding what would make somebody want to contribute (or not), which of our users might do so, how much they might be able to add in.
We have also been looking into how we can design this into the site without disrupting the user experience (balanced with making sure not to shy away from it so far, that it goes unnoticed) and making sure we are explaining transparently where and how the money is used.
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