Thoughts on Increasing Sales Income

Plan for increasing revenue at Free Geek

Definitions and Basic Concepts

Structural problems

These are problems that cause us to on average spend more than we earn. Ways to fix structural problems are to reduce spending or increase income or both. Solutions in this category need to be long term sustainable. For example, we can't decide to sell all our computers to pay the rent this month and call it a good month. Each solution comes with a risk that it may not help or that it may actually hurt more than it helps. Therefore solutions for these problems need to be well planned out and everyone needs to understand the risks and agree to take them on.

Cash flow problems

These are problems that have to do with not having enough money at the time it is needed, even though the money is assured to arrive. These problems can be addressed by shifting what gets paid when (for instance paying rent late), but there are costs associated with that (for instance losing the confidence of our landlord). A better solution is to have a cushion of money set aside for lean cash flow months that can be replenished in better times. The bigger the cushion, the less grief cash flow problems will cause us.

Structual problems need to be addressed before or at least in conjunction with cash flow problems.

Costs

Free Geek has many costs, but from the beginning we've striven to keep them all as low as possible, living off of donated supplies and raw materials, emphasizing volunteer labor, and paying our staff low wages. There is probably very little fat to trim from the budget in that area.

Income Streams

An income stream is a way that Free Geek makes money in an ongoing way (see list below). There are major income streams and minor ones. Many of the minor income streams can be grown, but whether they will ever become significant is generally a larger gamble than focusing on the established income streams.

The highest priority in addressing structural financial problems should be to concentrate on the income streams with the most potential, starting with the largest.

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
   • Monitor Fees
   • Solicited Donations
   • Other (very small)
2. Retail Sales
   • Store
   • Online (eBay)
3. Wholesale and Recycling Income
   • Wholesale untested gizmos for refurbishing
   • 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

The Solutions

Redesign Receiving from the Ground up

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:

• Ted
• Joe
• Jeff
• Tim
• Jayne

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.

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.