BrisLETS, or Brisbane Community Exchange, has been trading continuously for more than 30 years. Over the past three years, a few of us who joined more recently have taken up the baton and brought some new life to the group.
We are gearing up for promotional activities to boost trading and member satisfaction. We are reviewing and streamlining account maintenance in the Terms & Conditions. We want your feedback (please comment below or on the proposed T&Cs post here)! Ideas include:
-
ensuring we can contact all members efficiently
-
making certain that membership has meaning (shown by at least one account login or one trade every two years)
-
encouraging traders to get their account balance back to zero (be a Zero Hero!)
-
Supporting and budgeting for admin expenditure
We want to foster the upward trend in trader numbers and transaction.
Trading record
See our trading statistics since 2008 here. After an all-time high last year, 2019 has seen the numbers plateau and fall.
Paradoxically, we have 274 “active” traders, but in that number CES includes 142 who have neither accessed their accounts nor traded in the past two years or more.
So we really only have about 132 active members!
Thanks to Mailchimp, we know about 80 traders open our NewsLETS emails; in the past, sending out PDFs, we had no idea how many opened them.
Ways to support admin
We’re looking to other exchanges for ideas about “taxation” to support admin. We hope to see a rise in numbers and trades so that the burden can be spread more fairly. To do this, we’ll soon be focusing more thoroughly on the promotion of BrisLETS’ activities.
Unique challenges
As an incorporated association, we have challenges that other exchanges don’t, mainly around issues of trust and formal requirements, because few members want to deal with matters like this. However, new and older members are coming forth with lots of goodwill, so the horizon is sunny.
Recent and forthcoming improvements
-
a new website
-
constitutional reform
-
a stipend-payment budget and system for members who volunteer to run admin
-
a new logo and branding
We’re about to update the T&Cs again to better maintain the membership database.
More and more of us are connecting socially and forming good friendships. Slowly there are signs of local hub meets happening around the city.
Membership area
We have members who live as far afield as NSW and Hervey Bay, but most are in the Brisbane and regional council areas and Ipswich.
There is some talk of merging with nearby exchanges, such as the Condamine and the Gold Coast, to reduce the admin workload ― a bit like Tassie has. We see this as fluctuating depending on what members in various regions want and feel is best.
There are some happy-ending stories where an exchange is so small that everyone gets to know each other, enough to dispense with LETS and do things by gifting.
I intend to see some really good promotional work happening soon.
Please comment below – we want your feedback. Now! (First comment? Great! It’ll appear as soon as it’s approved. Come back soon!) To comment on the proposed new Terms & Conditions, click here.
The above is an edited version of my comment on the LETS Admin Facebook group, in response to a post from Bel Moore in FNQ CES on April 27.
―Simon Cole, President BrisLETS
Sad to hear about some groups dispensing with LETS. Opportunities where we can trade are very very precious.
I’d like to start a local hub but not sure how to do it. However, the Central BrisLETS offers core value. Don’t want it to be dissipated only into small local groups.
Central admin is a thorny one. I can easily think of organisations where an admin group often unknown and quite detached from members ‘pays’ themselves self-approved fees for doing self-approved work rarely requested by members. In some organisations this drinks up more and more of the funds, and can include junkets.There is no market feedback or control. LETS is at core totally about trading. Would we accept it if local retail businesses and services decided to ‘tax’ us just for being in their customer base? You bet we wouldn’t!!! The market will always buy the services it truly wants, and also determine their value. We need to translate this back to any admin services.
Thanks Anne for your comment.
There are 2 parts to your comment, so I will refer to them separately.
1. That’s great that you would like to start-up a local Hub, we have been wanting people to start-up local hubs for a while now as it is great to connect with people in your local area. If you want to meet, decide on a venue, date and time and let the Events team know, so we can publicize your event on the website and in the newsletter/events emails.
2a. My take on BrisLETS is that it is a ‘COLLECTIVE’ (or even a co-operative), of like minded individuals who want to connect and ‘TRADE’. Should resources not be pooled to achieve an outcome that benefit its members (Or even customers, yes we are all customers of the association)?
2b. There is a structure called a committee (and appointed sub-committees), that is elected by its members every 12 months and it is entrusted to make decisions on the spending of resources. I would suggest that people talk to them about the appropriateness of work being completed. Better still, why not put your hand up and join one to make sure that things are ‘above-board’.
2c. When you purchase services or goods from your local retailer, you pay a price for it. If you have been in business you would realise that contained in this price are ‘Costs’, like advertising, raw materials, wages etc. So effectively you are paying a ‘tax’ or ‘levy’ on your good or service.
So if you accept 2a and 2c, there are costs involved to support your ‘TRADING’, at the moment the people donating their time and talent are bearing those costs for YOUR benefit. If you were trading by yourself, you would need to pay for ‘advertising, administration, accounting, website admin, Newsletter production, postage, wages etc. etc. In business after all of your expenses are accounted for ‘profit’ levels could be as little as 10%. So what about our ‘transaction levy’, I would suggest that this is TOO LOW to cover the above costs. Now or course you could argue that we don’t need to do the above things and the costs may outweigh the benefits. However that is a call for your elected representatives and you should lobby them.
Can we do other things to grow the exchange in value and size that are low cost?
Yes, of course we can. Bring your ideas to the table.
It is my opinion, we need to foster further participation from our members, because currently the COSTS are being borne by the few for the benefit of the MANY. Those who advocate that people working for the organisation should GIFT their time and talent are a tad bit hypocritical.
Do you list your OFFERS as a GIFT? Do you offer your time for FREE?
Are we not a mutual credit exchange?
We should be practicing what we preach!
I rejoice in seeing the gifting economy expand and have no fear for LETS/CES; rather, I have ambition for it to ‘colonize’ bigger-ticket items from the dollar economy! Let’s aim a little higher, Anne! (:>)
Great to see your interest in local hub meets. There is a Local Hubs Tips document to help you do these – downloadable under the Resources menu > Downloads and scroll down to ‘Events’. I’ve found that calling around and having intimate social morning/afternoon teas is a great lubricator for getting people interested in the alternative economy; aim to do them 2 weeks after or before the Market Day. We recently had one in the north at Bianca’s in Strathpine.
I agree an anonymous admin is a danger. I’m glad we in BrisLETS aren’t like that; we’re one of the few exchanges with a list of who’s who on our committee page on this site. There’s lots of information going out from named authors in NewsLETS, Events Updates and on this site, also lots of avenues for feedback; this website, presentations at market days, Slack, email and the CES site.
Yes our primary ‘business’ is trading; a form of trading that requires a different mindset to the mainstream economy, and as such inspires us to set an example and do the education and guidance needed.
Unethical banks charge interest and fees on top of the what they get from investing customers’ deposits. Ethical banks do the same without charging as much in interest and fees (e.g. Heritage Bank). CES of course doesn’t reap any income from investing accounts in credit, so to support the members who put themselves forward to serve the organisation, our income is derived from transaction fees, annual fees, donations and joining fees alone.
I echo your comments Anne – before Sane we had much more interaction at trading/meeting days because we physically had to contact everyone to update the newsletter, membership, wants & needs etc, not to mention the QldLETS and OzLETS calls – much better exchange of information. Yes technology has made it much better to get figures, sharing knowledge etc but I am feeling much more disconnected because I am not attending committee meetings or collecting stories for the newsletter etc – we need a reason for connecting and that is why the story telling is good with Josehpine. So Yes I agree Simon – our primary reason is trading so while trading outside LETS is good, life keeps changing and a wide spread of contacts will be required at times, but it’s the personal connections that we all really need and while we come from so many backgrounds, it’s this innate need that attracts us deep down and LETS gives us that vehicle.