There's a lot of great ideas in this thread, I'm taking notes - thanks y'all.
At Indy Hall, we allow for "pausing" of a membership with the same notice that we require for canceling: 30 days. Naturally, not everyone will give 30 days notice. To minimize the impact on cashflow, upon signup we collect a deposit that's equal to the level of membership the person is enrolling in. ($175 month membership = $175 deposit). When people upgrade, we upgrade their deposit. We explain that this deposit is in lieu of any formal contracts, allowing them to flexibly stay at Indy Hall month to month. MOST people change very little. As some of you have noted, some change a lot. Somewhat like Jeannine, it's more common that members downgrade to our "basic" membership to help them stay connected to the community when they're not here. In all cases, if someone gives us 30 days minimum notice of their membership change, we happily refund that deposit. If they do not give notice, we keep the deposit to help support cashflow. Internally, this gives us a month before losing a member impacts our bottom line...and ideally, we're adding more members each month than we're losing. Net effect: cashflow stays positive with minimal impact on everyone. We do whatever we can to change a cancel/pause into a downgrade. One thing we didn't do before recently was keeping track of paused memberships effectively - and making sure we follow up. Pausing is only pausing if they actually come back :) It should be obvious, but this is the #1 mistake I see in any business, not just coworking. Unmanaged cashflow can (and probably will) kill you. Related sidenote: there are some seasonal things you should plan for. Summertime and holidays are generally when we see the most downgrades. Our cancel reasons have also yielded a lot of interesting data in the last year and a half, with some dramatic changes compared to the years prior. I'll have more to share on that soon. -Alex -- /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 11:11 PM, Alex Linsker <[email protected]>wrote: > Do you get requests from members to "pause membership" at your coworking > place? Many of our members at Collective Agency travel a lot, some for > several months or more at a time. What policies do you have with members > quitting and rejoining, or pausing membership? > > Do any coworking places require a year lease, or is everywhere > month-to-month, some with two months payment required up front? > > What do you do to increase the amount of time people stay members? > Expressing appreciation to people for who/how they are, and having a vision > for the place that's something big people can be part of and contribute to > somehow, are two ways that work for us. > > I'm also interested in how much your members like variety in their life? > Ours tend to like a lot. > > And how long your average member stays a member for less than 3 months? We > get a percentage who are between jobs, or just moved to Portland and are > looking for jobs. > > And for more than 2 years? We've had 16 people stay members for the past 2 > years, out of 50 members currently. > > What are the main reasons people stop being members? Ours is members > travel to another city, and after that, the top reason is getting a job at > another company. > > Thanks, > > Alex > -- > Alex Linsker > Collective Agency's Community Organizer / Proprietor > (503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co > Tax and Conversation's Statewide Community Organizer > (503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com > (503) 369-9174 mobile (503) 517-6901 fax > 322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209 > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
