Re: location options - please vote

[Dan Brosemer <odin@svartalfheim.net>]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 07:51:42PM -0400, Peter McLarty wrote:
> The Bingo Hall sounds like the better of the two options...as long as we
> have lots of strong young bodies to lift everything onto the truck.

I agree there, especially given there's _no_ room at the mall.  Is it
sufficiently better that it's possible, though?  That's the information we
need from you and/or Jack.

> I have always had difficultty charging the general public just to enter. I
> would prefer to charge people for the privilege of us disposing of their
> garbage...especially the monitors.

I disagree with this.  If they won't pay a dollar to get in, they're not
going to buy a two dollar stick of RAM from us, they'll just raid the free
table, steal our beer, and leave their socks on our sofa.

The loonie is to cover our costs for running the event.  The homeshow does
this too.  They charge $5, and you can't bring them junk... you just shop.
If no-one buys anything, it still costs us to run the thing, so we try to
cover those costs with an entrance fee.  For these two reasons, this is the
last thing I'd change, unless it was to increase the price.

> How about $2/monitor...and we could put their name in a "hat" for a draw

Since we're not charged for monitors by the recycler, I'd be more than a
little leery of this.

> (say we get some gift certificates from some of the Computer dealers....like
> $25 off a purchase over $100...or a credit towards a purchase from our own
> sale...thus encouraging RE-USE!)

Now here's a good idea... maybe people wouldn't haggle so hard, if they had
such a thing... "sure, you can have it for $99... no, that coupon isn't any
good now. :)"

> By charging people to enter, we are discouraging some of the browser/impulse
> buyers.

We're also discouraging a lot of people that would make our door-guards'
jobs a lot harder.  I think this is a good thing.

> How are we going to deal with Corporations, school boards and
> institutions??? We should be charging $5-10 for any system that is not
> re-useable eg. anything less than a pentium.

I just don't think we should be accepting from school boards and large
institutions.  Small businesses and individuals is what the program is for,
right?

> What about those few people who have already pirated the good parts off used
> systems and bring us all of their junk???

That _is_ part of the point of the event, you realize?

> We cannot continue to rely on charity for the shipping costs. The community
> is looking to us to handle their garbage and we have to find a long term
> solution that is self-sustaining financially. What happens if we end up with
> more than a truckload???? We still have 22 pallets of books looking for
> charity to be delivered to a recycler!!!!

I don't want to expand this to include larger institutions.  If we don't do
that, we don't grow very much.  If we don't grow very much, we still have
only one truckload.  If we still only have one truckload, we aren't
self-destructing financially.

The event has generated more and more fundraising money each time, yet we
still just fill one truckload of stuff.  I think this means we're doing
something right.

I can't speak to the books, I wasn't here for that, and this isn't the right
list to discuss it on as I don't think most of the subscribers were involved
in that at all.

-Dan

-- 
"Burnished gallows set with red
 Caress the fevered, empty mind
 Of man who hangs bloodied and blind
 To reach for wisdom, not for bread."  -- Deoridhe Grimsdaughter