Thoughts on Increasing Sales Income

Plan for increasing revenue at Free Geek

Income Streams
There are several revenue streams at Free Geek, but three are sizable enough to dominate:


 * 1) Collections at the Front Desk
 * 2) Retail Sales
 * 3) Wholesale and Recycling Income

These can be easily subdivided into chunks:


 * 1) Collections at the Front Desk
 * 2) * Monitor Fees
 * 3) * Solicited Donations
 * 4) * Other (very small)
 * 5) Retail Sales
 * 6) * Store
 * 7) * Online (eBay)
 * 8) Wholesale and Recycling Income
 * 9) * Wholesale untested gizmos for refurbishing
 * 10) * Scrap materials

Any of these income streams that can be significantly increased in a sustainable way without negatively impacting our mission should be. We should approach this by selecting the most likely streams for increase first and reengineering Free Geek to make that happen. We should try to protect those that are already likely operating mostly in an efficient manner. In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but if it is broke rethink Free Geek as a whole to see how it can be fixed.

Monitor fees and solicited donations seem to be doing well, and minor tweaks aside will probably not grow much outside of overall growth. That is, as we get more donations in, these income streams will likely grow proportionally. The same can likely be said of scrap material income, though economies of scale might come into play there.

This leaves the sales categories, and to be honest, I don't know what the potential of wholesale gizmo sales is, so I'll focus my comments on retail sales.

The Problem with Sales
gotta ID and test too much crap to sift through looking for the gem hard to reach a market

Other Problems that can be addressed
testing is often broken without enough oversight

people in the adoption program are not getting a quality educational experience

Basic Receiving
Better and simpler documentation
 * Diagram and pictures of basic computer externals:
 * System
 * Monitor
 * Keyboard
 * Mouse
 * Printer
 * Scanner
 * Joystick
 * External Modems
 * etc.
 * Diagram and pictures of basic computer internals:
 * Cards
 * Motherboard
 * Power supplies
 * Processors
 * Memory
 * etc.
 * Diagram and pictures of other things we get (that are easy to identify):
 * Hubs/Routers
 * Stereos
 * Phones
 * etc.

Each picture would have a spot explaining what it is and where it goes.

Big map of Free Geek and where the various locations are.

Simpler triage process with the default for unknowns going to Advance Receiving.

Inflow would be donations from the public.

This area would feed:
 * Evaluation
 * Card and Mobo Sorting
 * The Black Hole
 * Printerland
 * Recycling

Advanced Receiving
Build a mini-program around this with a pool of proven volunteers, for example: These folks would be encouraged to spend an hour in the advanced receiving area once a week. We could easily find ten people, making an average of twice a day.
 * Ted
 * Joe
 * Jeff
 * Tim
 * Jayne

Inflow would be from Basic Receiving.

This area would feed:
 * The White Hole
 * The Black Hole
 * The Thrift Store
 * Recycling

Establish a Reuse Coordinator Job
Might be shared by existing staff members until we can afford to hire (or hire for another job and shuffle people into it).

To staff the area, coordinate between Basic Receiving and Advanced Receiving and Basic Testing (maybe even Advanced Testing eventually, but that remains no man's land for now).

To maintain documentation for those areas.

To recruit new volunteers into Advanced Receiving and determine which adoption volunteers fit into which jobs the best. Some could be put on certain tasks in Advanced Receiving. Others should stick with the simpler Basic Receiving.

Basic Adoption volunteers would be given an orientation to the job similar to the spiel we give card sorters and evaluators.

This job replaces the Busy Bee shift.