Sasha
November 25, 2024

Library of Stuff Co op Open Day Sat 30th November

We are holding an Open Day this Saturday:)

We turned 5 earlier this year.

We’ve loaned our assets (more than 1000) over 21 000 times to over 500 families, community groups, schools and other non profit orgs for their events.

Wowzers is right.  We’ve been busy!

In April 2019 we went digital and started recording our activities and offered formal memberships to households and non profit events and organisations.  Memberships grew steadily until Covid hit.  We refused to be shut down while Bunnings was allowed to stay open!  With legal advise on our side and sound practices in place we soldiered on and home delivered and collected items to and from our members homes.  Imagine having board games, gardening gear,  kitchen gadgets,  musical instruments, even hair curlers just for the fun of it, delivered to keep you entertained.  It was epic!!

Then in Feb 22 our town flooded and we immediately offered free memberships.  We got cash donations to help us co ordinate the demand from flooded residents but the funding dried up at the end of 2023 but the demand didn’t wane. We tried doubling the annual fee for members who couldn’t give time but that didn’t help any where near enough. We were the busiest share library in the country from March 22 – June 24.  But the wheels began to wobble.

So we restructured into a co op from July 1st and are now on the lookout for a wave of shiny new members who are psyched to take advantage of the opportunity we offer!


We are 
striving for self sufficiency to insulate us from the ups and down of funding for initiatives like our.  By sharing the load as well as the benefit we believe we can take our award winning share economy jugganaught to the next level!

What this means in practice is we need to replace the 50 members who dropped off when we introduced a 5 hour a month time cost to the membership with people who think that’s worth it.  We exist to mitigate climate change and plastic pollution so our target market are passionate conservationists who are looking for more ways to reduce their own impacts but also help others. 

The cost of the opportunity is $1 per week plus a little over an hour a week – memberships are currently a 6 month commitment = $26 with a 5 hour per month time contribution.  Most of our members find it easiest to do their time by attending the shed fortnightly on set rosters of 2.5 hours or one day a month of 5 hours.


What do our members get for their money and efforts? The ability to radically reign in their consumption footprint and ensure our sponsorship of many other non profit orgs, their events, community groups, schools and even neighbourhood resilience groups continues. All beneficiaries save loads of money as well as saving the planet from the habitat destruction, water and energy use, carbon intensive extraction, transport, manufacturing process, transport again and then the end of life disposal of thousands of products avoided by all who borrow instead of buy:)
 

Buy Now just released on Netflix.

Our Library of Stuff, and share libraries all over the world, are a practical way everyone can reduce their contribution to the madness that is hyperc-onsumption.  It’s not just our problem to solve no doubt.  But it feels great to be able to ‘have’ stuff without feeling guilty.
The Northern Rivers is awash with environmental groups doing great things!  Just in our hood there’s Brunswick Valley Landcare, Organic Landcare Inc. Save Wallam, Mullum SEED, Mullum Community Garden, Shedding Community Workshop, Positive Change for Marine Life, Santos Organics, Reforest Now and Zero Emissions Byron It’s no wonder there’s many ways our community can contribute to acting on climate change and plastic pollution.
 
Our pitch centres on the double banger benefit of making us your number one volunteer job!  YOU benefit directly by being able to borrow any of our 1000+ items whenever you like and reduce your ecological footprint AND your effort means we can as a co operative, continue to support other non profit orgs and their events, local schools and community groups.  That’s a lotta bang for people’s volunteering buck!  
If you can’t make it along to the Open Day on Saturday feel free to get in touch via the landing page of our libraryofstuff.org.au website.  You can check out the inventory on that site and you also drop in any time we’re open for a peak and a chat.  Currently we’re open for lending and returns on Tuesday’s 8-10am and Thursday’s 3-5pm.