When we opened our doors nearly 3 years ago, our mission was to create Baltimore’s most affordable, accessible, and capable makerspace, with the ultimate goal of becoming self-sufficient, without charitable contributions or corporate subsidies. 2018 was a banner year for us, with over 1,000 classes held and more than 10,000 individual member visits. Although we also generated record revenues, they weren’t sufficient to overcome our operating deficit. We were unable to secure additional funding and now have to cease operations in City Garage.
Always sad to see a makerspace close up shop.
This one certainly had an interesting model… looking at their archive, rather than a monthly membership people would get authorized on their tools then purchase a day pass for any day they’d like to come in and use a machine.
http://web.archive.org/web/20180624021659/http://foundery.com/get-access/
Weekdays – Full day (9a-10p) : $20
Weekdays – Evening (4p – 10p) : $10
Weekend – Full day (10a – 5p) : $10
I feel like this would discourage continuous use, I wonder what percentage of their day pass visitors never came back for another one or used it very occasionally. We get asked about day passes a lot, but with a model like this I wonder if they had to continuously staff the place any time somebody bought a day pass?
Well, 3 evenings in a month and you would have paid for a membership to MakeICT. The Foundery sounds like it is a middle ground between MakeICT and GoCreate - kind of aimed at the industrial or commercial maker but still allowed you to do your own work.
It is amazing looking at their auction and all the equipment. Somehow they acquired all of that in 3yrs… and this is the stuff they weren’t able to take to their new location? I’m curious if they decided to auction this equipment based on amount of usage, cost of maintenance, size of the equipment, or a little bit of different reasons.
They are actually closing their doors.
@kim great thinking to use wayback machine to look at their site, that didn’t cross my mind.
Okay, I was a bit confused by their first sentence on the link: ‘The Foundery is auctioning off tools and equipment we do not expect to store and move to the new location’…
Looks like they are moving to a new location later this year according to their Facebook page. Also looks like a few short years ago Baltimore had 14 different makerspaces. The foundry tried to cater to small business and entrepreneurial use. I believe it was a private company rather than a 501c3.