Makerspace Update: September

Posted September 21, 2017 by in News

Hello, fellow makers! I thought I’d post a quick update here to let you know how things are progressing with the project. Here’s what happened in September.

First of All – Thank You

First of all, the support we’ve received from the community thus far has been overwhelming and encouraging. Thank you! Once we started telling people about our project, ears perked up and hands went up asking “How can we help?” We certainly appreciate the positive feedback and support thus far, and hope to engage with you in the coming months to make this project a reality. We do have a lot of work ahead of us, so be prepared.

We would also like to acknowledge Miriam Mahnic of Alberta Culture & Tourism for providing our board with guidance and facilitation in developing our structure, by-laws, vision and mission. This is a free service offered to non-profits by the Government of Alberta, and we’re grateful for the support.

Business Plan & Space

In September, we’ve been working hard to develop the initial business plan for the space and completed our first version of that. We also had a unique opportunity for a space drop into our lap at the very last minute, which we shot for the moon and managed to submit our proposal and business plan for. We can’t share the details of this opportunity yet (it’s bound by confidentiality at this time), but once we get word we’ll be sure to provide an update. Hopefully we have good news for you.

Community Survey

We launched a survey to gather community feedback and input, and have received over a hundred responses so far. We certainly hope to get more—our goal is to get as much input as we can so we can build a makerspace the community wants. If you haven’t already, take a moment to fill it out at makegp.org/survey.

Volunteer Registration

We have added a Volunteer Registration Form on our website. If you’re interested in helping out, complete the form to let us know your strengths and how you can help. Be sure to also sign up to the mailing list while submitting to be notified of any future events. We’ve got a bit more organizing to do on our end before we can call on you—we’d like to be organized and have concrete things you can help us with before we do.  But as soon as we’re ready, we’ll be reaching out to individual people and/or sending notices to our mailing list.

Next Steps: October

We’re now working on the next steps in starting up our fundraising and communications campaign. The first step is for us to seek some seed funding to get help with refining our business plan, particularly the numbers. Our goal is for this project to be as self-sustainable as possible, and it looks like that may be possible. Later in this process, we’ll be forming committees and that’s when we’ll start calling on volunteers to help us with a variety of tasks.

Spread the Word!

There’s lots of work ahead, but we’re excited and energized to tackle it head on. And of course, we’ll need your continued support. For now, you can do a lot by simply spreading the word. Tell your friends, family, colleagues and co-workers about this project. Send them to our website. Get them to fill out our survey. This will go a long way to making this a reality!

Thank you, from everybody here at make:gp.

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