Funding Makerspaces Using FCC Spectrum Auction Revenue
In the past few years I have visited a number of makerspaces, from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Greenbelt, Maryland to Ithaca, New York and more. What I have seen is filled with so much promise, but also with so much financial challenge. Makerspaces are growing slowly because the public is slow to catch on to their worth.
This situation reminds me of my place of work, the Takoma Park Maryland Library, which started out as a “good idea” by a few people in a woman’s club back in the 1930’s. With modest beginnings in someone’s home, it kept growing until one day the funding of the library became absorbed in the city’s budget. It took 10 or 15 years for that to happen. However, we don’t have 10 or 15 years for makerspaces to gather momentum. A slow pace of makerspace development means our country is lagging behind even further in the very competitive economic marketplace of the modern day.
How, then, are we going to fund the growth of makerspaces? Well, here is one idea. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be auctioning off public airways in 2016. The incoming revenue will not be small — some are predicting as much as $80 billion.
Makerspaces are not greedy; we could get by with just $500 million of those dollars. This is revenue derived from the public airwaves — airwaves that we own. President Obama has already stated that the maker movement is a national priority, so it’s not a matter of asking the FCC to set aside these funds for this purpose. It’s a matter of us telling the FCC to do so.
These funds, available for one time only, need to be distributed carefully to fund those makerspaces with plans to become financially self-sustaining. Thus, if your makerspace doesn’t have an entrepreneurial angle to it, now is the time to fire that up.
Imagine, too, that one of the stipulations of receiving such funds is that the funds need to be repaid into a common pool if a makerspace develops a successful revenue stream from its creative work. Those moneys could then be loaned at a low interest rate to other makerspaces wanting to self-advance themselves — so long as they can prove a viable business plan.
Imagine the new jobs that would be created. The maker movement creates jobs.
Imagine the spillover into mental health. The maker movement, by engaging people in purposeful and social creativity, boosts mental health. (For some related thoughts, see “Does open source boost mental health?” )
Imagine the benefits to the environment with the increase in reuse, which MAKE magazine so brilliantly summarizes in this recent blog post.
Seems like a good way to proceed. What took us so long to figure this out?
