In light of Dan Hocking’s post yesterday about charging registration fees to reduce event no-shows (and Joseph Thornley’s post as well) or more specifically, @alkerton’s comment, I wanted to post some additional thoughts about why we are considering such a move, and where the money would go.
It is not our intention to generate revenue from our monthly gatherings. Our monthly gatherings are free, and will remain that way for as long as we can sustain it. However, we have seen an increasing number of no-shows to our free events, as we alluded to in yesterday’s post.
For our next event (which we’ll be announcing shortly), we’d like to try an experiment. Tickets for our next event will be $5. Upon arrival at our event, you will have the option of having your $5 refunded in full, or you can choose to donate it to a charity decided upon by the community. (Because we’re all about democracy and the right to choose.) Students (with valid ID) will be able to register free of charge, and have the option of donating to said charity.
We know that this something of a sensitive issue and we’d like to get hear your thoughts. Post up in the comments below ↓ or hit us up on Twitter.
Sounds like a good move from my end.
I certainly wouldn’t mind donating the fee and I would think that it would definitely help with the no-shows issue. I can’t help but wonder though if it would mean a much smaller crowd would come out, but that being goods or bad is highly subjective.
We definitely don’t want to discourage people from coming out, but only time will tell how people react (at least for this experiment).
That’s what I like to call a carrot AND a stick. Good on you Justin.