Author: ted@thebrickyard.org

This is moving really fast, and as it moves and changes, there are a lot of questions.  Here are some answers that will hopefully help.  We’ll keep updating this list, so check back.

What is a MakerSpace/STEAM/Incubator, exactly?  Think of it like a health club for tools.  You join, pay a fee, and get access to all sorts of tools, space and resources. Most important, it’s a co-op.  Everybody has a share in it and a stake in keeping it running.  Teaming with STEAM programs, we can share it with the schools in the area, and teaming with a business incubator, we can help make ideas turn into businesses and income.

Is there an actual place, yet?  Nope, but we’re working on it.  With the help of a bunch of people in the city, including MassDevelopment, the EDIC and LHAND, we have several locations in the downtown Lynn area targeted.

Who is behind The Brickyard Collaborative?  We’re a team of people here in Lynn – artists, fabricators, builders and makers, community organizers and activists, as well as city and state officials and administrators, all pulling together to make this happen.  Some names:

• Community Organizers: *Ted Dillard, *Jaime Figuroa, *Lisa Wallace, *JoBeth Williams
• Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development: *Charles Gaeta, *Jeff Weeden
• Mayor: *Judith Flanagan Kennedy
• Lynn EDIC: *Jim Cowdell
• Lynn Department of Community Development: *James Marsh
• EforAll: Kevin Moforte
• Impact Lynn: *Norm Cole
• Lynn Chamber of Commerce, St. Mary’s Board of Directors: Glenn Morris
• Beyond Walls (Community Mural Project): Al Wilson, Amanda Hill, *Pedro Soto
• Lynn Arts/Lynn Museum: *Drew Russo
• MassDevelopment: Joe Mulligan
• Lynn School Committee: *Michael A. Satterwhite
• The Haven Project: Gini Mazman
• North Shore Community College
• Lynn’s State Delegation: Senator *Tom McGee, Representative *Brendan Crighton, Representative *Dan Cahill

(*residents of Lynn)

How soon do you expect to be operational?  We plan to start offering “pop-up” classes and workshops as early as mid-January, using various facilities and locations around the city.  By Spring, we’re hoping to have some solid funding in place, and will be hosting a Mini Maker Faire downtown.  By the start of Summer, we hope to be open and operating.

How can I help?  If you’re interested in helping out, contact us via email, here and let us know.  We need help organizing, teaching and sharing skills and resources.

How can I join?  We also will start enrolling members soon, so stay in touch.  Follow us on Facebook, check back here, or sign up for our mailing list here.

How do you get all that equipment together?  We rely on a combination of things to pull together the facility, and use a lot of tried and true tactics, proven out through the hundreds of MakerSpaces throughout the country.  We are working to get investors, grants, loans and donations to buy equipment outright.  We’re pros at scanning auction sites and CraigsList for the best deals on great used equipment, so we’re pulling hard on that front.

The Artisan’s Asylum has a strategy they’ve found to be particularly successful – offer pro-rated memberships in exchange for placement of equipment to companies and small shops.  A company gets a space, puts a few of their machines in there, and not only has a ready-made showroom and demo area, but they get access to the rest of the stuff in the MakerSpace as well.  Everybody wins.

Is The Brickyard Collaborative a Non-Profit?  Yes.  We’re a fully registered 501(c)3 Non-Profit.  All contributions are tax-deductible.

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We’ll be adding to the list constantly, and especially in the week leading up to our Meet and Greet event at Land of a Thousand Hills on Dec 30.  Check back!

A lot has been going on in the last few weeks.  First off, don’t miss our “Meet and Greet” at Land of a Thousand Hills on Saturday, Dec 30th – (11AM-1PM)  It’s just going to be kind of an informal coffee-social, so we can get together, swap some ideas around, meet some of our instructors, talk about what classes we want to see, and, oh yeah, have a cuppa coffee together.  That prompted the first legit EVENT on our calendar page, as well as the Facebook page and even an EventBrite event as well.  (I’m here to tell you the website stuff all seems to work!)

As a result of this little event, suddenly we’ve been getting some press, like in LynnHappens, which is awesome.  All of which is leading us to tidy up the website a little more, and to officially remove “Proposal” from the header.  Yes.  We’re going legit!

Grants, grants and more grants!  The Lynn Cultural Council had a grant deadline a while back that we found out about at the very last moment, and tossed our hat in the ring for some support of a Mini Maker Faire this Spring.  Alas, we missed a few of the requirements in the hurry to get in, and got bounced.  Still, we met the folks over at the LCC, learned a little more about the process, and had a chance to talk to them a little about what we are doing – its all good, and we’ll be back next year with all our ducks in a row.

In the meantime, yesterday was the deadline for the Massachusetts Urban Agenda Grant, aimed at the “Gateway Cities” – the cities flagged by the state as having some of the greatest potential for economic growth.  Read all about that here.  In particular, the grant is about collaboration within the community:

The grant is intended to help urban communities as they unlock economic opportunities through collective impact and shared accountability. Specifically, it will support projects that are based on collaborative work models to achieve economic progress, which are particularly promising according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank Boston and the Working Cities Challenge:

“Small cities in Massachusetts and across New England possess unique assets and face a unique set of challenges. …Notwithstanding these challenges, research on small cities conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has found that eight cities out of a peer group of 26 nationwide have been able to either maintain or recover much of their economic stability, as measured by income, reduced poverty rates, population, and economic vitality. Several factors drove the rebound of these “resurgent” cities: collaborative leadership, the role of anchor institutions, investment in infrastructure, and extension of benefits to the community as a whole. Of these, collaborative leadership – the ability to work together across sectors over a sustained period with a comprehensive vision – was most crucial.

The findings are strikingly similar to those of the Living Cities Integration Initiative, deployed in five larger cities with substantial inner-city populations. Both sets of findings elevate the importance of collaborative leadership in creating systems-level changes that will enable small cities to reach their full potential as places to live, work, and raise a family.” (From Working Cities Challenge website: https://www.bostonfed.org/workingcities/about/research.htm)

It seems like a perfect fit for our project.

With some serious efforts pulling together the coalition we have, and some hard work behind the scenes and the support of the guys over at LHAND (Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development), we got that in last night, just under the wire.  Everybody pitched in, including the Mayor’s office, MassDevelopment, The Haven Project and the Beyond Walls guys to lend a hand and give some insight.  It went in with 4 letters of support, one of which had 4 members of the Massachusetts state delegation.

So yeah.  Pretty exciting.  Stay tuned – they announce their decision in only a few weeks.

Let’s see you next Saturday!

 

We’ve done a fair amount of work on the Boards of a few non-profits, and tried to set up a few ourselves…  yet still, we look for sage advice on how to best establish a Board of Directors for a fledgeling 501(c)3 corporation.  The best we’ve found is in a post on the Harvard Law Forum.  You can read  the article in it’s entirety, here.  Here are a few points worth noting:

“The board of a well-governed nonprofit organization, like the board of a well-governed profit-making company, will do all of the following:

• Formulate key corporate policies and strategic goals, focusing both on near-term and longer-term challenges and opportunities.
• Authorize major transactions or other actions.
• Oversee matters critical to the health of the organization— not decisions or approvals about specific matters, which is management’s role—but instead those involving fundamental matters such as the viability of its business model, the integrity of its internal systems and controls, and the accuracy of its financial statements.
• Evaluate and help manage risk.
• Steward the resources of the organization for the longer run, not just by carefully reviewing annual budgets and evaluating operations but also by encouraging foresight through several budget cycles, considering investments in light of future evolution, and planning for future capital needs.
• Mentor senior management, provide resources, advice and introductions to help facilitate operations.”

Here’s some additional important advice about exactly what kind of individual makes a good choice for the Board:

“Board independence and board attention are of paramount importance in good nonprofit governance.  The independence of the board is key because of the non-distribution constraint – nonprofits exist to serve the public interest, not to benefit owners or other private parties.  Business or family relationships between the organization or its executives and a board member or her firm are frowned upon and should be strictly scrutinized under a conflict of interest policy administered by independent directors.  Even absent outright business or family relationships, a common shortcoming of nonprofit boards is that they are too small, too insular, or too deferential to the founder or chief executive.

Another frequent error of nonprofit boards is inviting new members because of their marquee name within a certain field of endeavor (e.g., a famous dancer on the board of a dance organization) or their means and inclination to donate, without due consideration to the person’s ability and availability to fulfill fiduciary duties, providing the critical oversight function. The governing body of a nonprofit must be made up entirely of people in a position to govern it—setting the strategic direction of the organization and overseeing management’s execution of the mission. Wealthy or prominent persons— donors, artists, scientists, public officials, and others—with an interest in the organization’s program but lacking the time, availability, or expertise to provide meaningful oversight may serve the organization in a non-fiduciary capacity, such as an honorary or advisory board, donors’ circle, or professional council.”

Rosenthal sums up with an interesting comparison to a for-profit Board:

“By a number of measures, nonprofit and for-profit board governance are similar: the board’s oversight role, its decision-making power, its structural place within the organization, and its members’ legal duties. The similarities end, however, where shareholder interest in maximizing returns gives way to mission fulfillment, a multiplicity of stakeholders, more complex business models, and self-accountability rather than external accountability.”

Putting together a Board for a start-up non-profit may seem like almost an afterthought, or a necessary legal hurdle along the complicated road to putting together a successful MakerSpace – especially to the founders, awash in a sea of decisions and challenges, both financial and practical.  However, it’s pretty obvious that from a legal as well as a practical perspective, a well-chosen Board with seasoned mentors could be the difference between a successful startup and a flash in the pan.

Good advice, indeed.

In a little more lighthearted note, Joan Garry has some advice in her post, “How to Select First Rate Board Members“, including questions she’d like to ask in the interview:

• “Are you rich?  I mean, like really rich. We need really rich people on our board.
• Can you assure us that you won’t ask any really stupid questions at a board meeting?
• Do you really like to hear yourself talk?
• When someone says something you disagree with, do you either sigh or roll your eyes?
• How many times in the last month have you been on a conference call, hit the MUTE button, and checked your email?
• Will you commit to agreeing with absolutely everything I say? (Asked by the E.D.)
• Do you tend to assume that someone is doing a terrible job until proven otherwise?
• Does the idea of asking someone for money make your skin crawl?
• Do you care if you are late for stuff?”