jabelone
I was part of another volunteer run hackerspace for nearly 5 years but decided to leave and start my own after experiencing several issues.
We’re focused on digital fabrication and may eventually expand to include a woodshop and/or metalshop. The most important things I’ve found is that you need to focus on what tools etc actually matter to people and keep them working well. Most non profit makerspaces seem to focus on acquiring as many “new toys” as possible rather than focusing on the important “core” stuff like keeping tools working well and the culture/ongoing member experience. This combined with a great on boarding and tool induction process is essential and where I feel so many spaces do poorly.
We’re not profitable yet, but on track to cover all operational costs in about 2-3 months. It was important for me to be fully independent so we don’t rely on any grant money or discounted rents etc. It’s hard work, but I feel like our current trajectory can be summarised as growing slowly but consistently. My gut feeling is our business model is sustainable and I may end up being able to quit my full time software engineering job in a couple years. So it’s not all doom and gloom everywhere. :)
P.S. I also maintain an open source membership portal with integrated billing, payments and RFID access system built by me specifically for makerspaces: https://github.com/membermatters/MemberMatters
My friends over at http://canberrauav.org.au did something similar in the UAV Outback Challenge this year. They had multiple 3G (no LTE in the area unfortunately) links plus a telemetry radio to control their quadplane. It used OpenCV and a clever algorithm to spot a stranded bush walker.