I’m glad you’ve been able to make it into the shop recently @Thismatters and see the Asmbly transformation firsthand. I get the sense from the points you keep trying to make here that you simply don’t trust, which is reasonable given you haven’t been engaging with the community lately and aren’t all that familiar with Asmbly as an organization or its leaders (if you were, you’d know we’re constantly cultivating volunteer fruit we spot before the flower buds even open). The volunteers @buzmeg and I were referring to are the ones who do that crazy level of work — cultivating other volunteers and treating their volunteer role as if it were a full time job. The transformation you see physically in the space occurred as a direct result of that unrealistic level of leadership volunteerism in addition to a large amount of sustained community volunteerism. That ties into another piece you may be missing — that there is an incredible amount of volunteerism throughout the Asmbly community well beyond anything I ever saw at ATXHS. That isn’t something that is going away. There will still be volunteer leaders. There will always be members on the board keeping any paid employees that exist in check and ensuring salaries are fair, reasonable, and not excessive (nonprofit work is not where people go to get rich). Again, we’re trying to grow this space, not simply sustain it. I want to see Asmbly providing all the various interesting crafts members are interested in learning/trying. I want to see Asmbly inspiring and empowering more people to be creative, experiment, and try new things. I want to see Asmbly enabling makers to launch new careers and pursuing their ideas and passions. I could go on and on, but I need to move on and I mainly wanted to post this more relevant update here —
As promised in the FAQs above, here is some more info on the new On Duty Volunteer Program we’ll be starting soon. Check out the details in this post and be sure to fill out the form if you are interested in participating to earn free membership!