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Paying for LUG Meeting Space?
Johann asks: "Our LUG has been fortunate to hold meetings for the past two years in a corporate-sponsored basement auditorium. The sponsor pays for us to use this room, which seats around 50-60 comfortably. We normally fill the room. We have an offer to move to a meeting room in a Radisson hotel at a highly-reduced rate. This room has many advantages over our current 'free' one, such as better handicapped and after-hours access, internet connectivity, better temperature control, and room for more people. The only problem: the members likely will have to bear the costs of this room ourselves. So, my question to other LUGs: Are you paying for your meeting space? If so, by what means? Donations? Sponsors? Passing-the-Hat? How have the members taken to paying for space?"
The Austin Linux Users Group gets meeting space for free from the city. The city allows groups like this to sign up to use conference rooms in city buildings, when the building is open after hours but the room is not being used; a member of the group works for the city in that building and takes care of all that. You do have to sign in and out on a visitor guest sheet, which is unfortunate, but the room is very nice, and has white boards and a projector that can hook up to a laptop.
If you read gnu.misc.discuss, you can see the announcements of the New York group -- they have to sign up ahead of time, and present ID, it's even more facist than a guest list, where at least you can lie.
It depends on what your group wants to do. I would suggest having an install fest or two at the new place, just to check it out, seeing what the sense of the group is on the mailing list.
Personally, I would prefer a meeting place at a public library or community center which is absolutely free and open at the right time. It's less likely to give the marginally curious an excuse not to come to your group. If you can get net access from some leaking wireless point, great, but it's not at all a necessary part of a LUG meeting.
Many colleges and universities allow user groups to make use of their facilities. Their facilities are generally really nice and include high speed Internet access. Check with your membership to see if anyone has a higher education affiliation that might be able to help.
Libraries: Free, very accessible, and easy to deal with. Surprisingly, all of the libraries in our county allow light refreshments in the meeting room.
Community Centers: Expensive. Even for a non-profit, all of them wanted $50 per hour. Way out of our budget.
Police Stations: Free, accessible, and safe. Apparently all of the stations with meeting rooms cannot charge for them. While I've never been to a meeting at one, everyone who has says they're quite nice. (I guess they were expecting bars :)
Large Bookstores: We contacted several bookstores in the area, but none of them were willing to allow the LUG to meet. One would think that the prospect of selling more computer books would be sufficient incentive.
Churches, Fire Halls, Union Halls: Most of these places view their large areas as a means for profit, and may charge serious money to rent them.
Other options. You may be able to get space at a college (four-year or community). Also, have you considered talking to other companies about a meeting space?
Also, is your group able to pay anything toward a meeting place? We're still pretty new, and have almost nothing in the treasury; there isn't any way for us to pay for a meeting place currently, and we're not willing to start charging.