Making a plan

You’ve learned about repair cafés, checked in with your community, and decided to turn your repair café into reality. Now the work begins.

Make your project plan

At this point, you have an idea of what you want to do. It’s time to focus on how you’re going to do it.

First, make sure you set aside sufficient time. We recommend you budget 36 hours across 3 months to get your repair café set up. Once your repair café is up and running, Repair Café International recommends organisers expect to spend about 4 hours of preparation for each event.

Make a list of all the tasks you need to do. For each one, consider:

  • What has to be done before you can start it?

  • What does “done” look like?

  • What does it need—time, capacity, skills, resources?

  • What risks are involved?

  • What opportunities will it create?

You are managing the project, but don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to other members of your organising team. Don’t try to do everything yourself, and resist the temptation to micromanage if you give a task to someone else.

Find a venue

Finding a venue should be one of your first priorities. Having a stable venue for your repair café is important for its longevity and growth.

Good options include school or church halls, community centres, and dedicated events spaces. Some organisations might allow you to use a space for free, or at a discount, if their mission is aligned to your repair café’s goals.

Here are some important points to consider, based on the experience of SEE Change repair café organisers:

  • Does the venue have adequate parking? Don’t forget to consider bikes as well as cars.

  • Is it easy to reach by public transport?

  • Is it accessible to people who use wheelchairs or have other mobility challenges?

  • How much room is there for repairers? What about a waiting area? A kitchen, if you plan to supply refreshments?

  • How many power points are available and where are they? Is the electrical system well-maintained?

  • Does it have adequate lighting (natural and powered)?

  • What does it cost? If the landlord requires you to hold certain insurance, don’t forget to account for that cost as well.

  • Will it be reliably available?

Choose your schedule

Repair cafés work best when they are predictable. Venue changes, erratic schedules, and last-minute cancellations will all put people off attending.

The best schedule for your repair café will be determined by a combination of:

  • when you and your volunteers are available

  • when a venue is available

  • what else is occurring in your community at the same time

Finding a good balance of these factors will be your challenge. Make a list of several potential dates and times and consider them from these angles. If you plan to run your repair café as a regular event, don’t forget to look ahead at how future events will be impacted before you pick a date.

Set up your equipment

Your repair café will need certain equipment. Some of it should be provided by the venue, such as tables and chairs—make sure this is clearly specified in your agreement with them. But some of it will need to be purchased. This is likely to include:

  • signs, leaflets and other promotional material

  • any equipment the venue does not provide, for example extension cords or table covers

  • general repair consumables, for example glue, screws, oil or paper towels

  • if you are doing electrical repairs, a PAT (“test and tag”) kit and a volunteer who is qualified to use it

  • anything required for attendee facilities, for example tea and coffee equipment or toys for children

Traditionally, repairers use their own tools. If you intend to provide tools for them, check with a lawyer about whether this has legal implications. It is also a repair café principle that attendees are responsible for any parts that may be required, beyond basic consumables.

Software

In addition to standard digital tools that you use for email, records, social media, and so on, there are three kinds of specific platforms useful for repair cafés: booking and intake software, volunteer management software, and repair data logging software.

When you make decisions about software, keep in mind that transitioning away from software you have built your workflow around will be tedious and disruptive. Don’t commit to more than you actually need, especially if it costs money.

Handling bookings and intake

Booking and intake software can serve either or both of the following purposes:

  • allowing attendees to pre-register their items for repair before the event

  • allowing your welcome desk crew to record and manage items brought in for repair

It is entirely possible to run a repair café without either of these; you can operate on a strictly walk-in basis, and the repair intake can be managed with a paper-based system. Consider the digital comfort level of your community and your volunteers before you decide to use software for this purpose. SEE Change repair cafés do not currently take bookings or use intake software.

If you do decide to use software, your options include:

  • a simple spreadsheet with a Google or Microsoft Form interface

  • general-purpose booking software, such as Eventbrite or Humanitix

  • software specifically designed for repair cafés, such as Repair Manager or LendEngine.

Software in the latter two categories often has a cost.

Managing volunteers

There are a number of software platforms designed to help non-profit organisations manage their volunteers. Using one has a number of advantages over a more manual process:

  • volunteers can sign up online and complete any required paperwork

  • volunteer hours can be logged and tracked

  • qualifications such as Working With Vulnerable People cards can be recorded and their expiry monitored

  • volunteers can self-assign to events so you can see your staffing levels

  • all of this information is available for statistics and reporting, which may help you fulfill grant requirements or advocate for funding

These platforms generally charge a subscription fee. If you have a relationship with a parent organisation like SEE Change, they may provide a platform for you. Otherwise, Volunteering Victoria maintains a list of some volunteer management platforms.

Logging repair data

An important part of the international repair movement is collecting data about what is repaired. Keeping a record benefits both your café and the movement.

Having data on what people bring to your repair café gives you a better understanding of your community’s needs, and of what can easily be fixed versus what can’t. You can also quantify the sustainability impact of your café, in emissions avoided and money saved.

Sharing this data helps build the same picture globally, and supports advocacy for right-to-repair policy and repair-friendly products. The Open Repair Alliance, the organisation which standardises repair café data, publishes an explanation of why repair data is valuable.

If you use intake software, the data collection will probably occur there. Otherwise, someone in your crew will need to be responsible for tabulating and entering the data from your repair dockets. We recommend that this be a defined role, rather than having everyone in your crew trying to do bits of it.

There are two major platforms for tracking repair data, both of which ultimately feed their data into the Open Repair Alliance and both of which are free:

We recommend that, at least to begin with, you adopt the schema used by these platforms to determine what data you collect; they reflect extensive experience from other repair cafés. As your repair café gets going, you will begin to identify other data of interest and can adjust what you collect accordingly. Don’t forget that part of what makes data valuable is consistency over time—unstable data is often just as bad as none.