I have completed the first lot of workshops that I scheduled using the Give Freely Receive freely system of exchange.  It wasn’t fantastic, but it wasn’t a trainwreck either.  Some people paid the same as they would normally have when I charged a set price, others paid considerably less.

I think there are a number of factors why people would pay a lot less, financial need is one – in which case fair enough, that is exactly the sort of person who should pay less, but I think that reason is less common than you might think (my prices were already very reasonable).  I think a more common reason is the mindset we get used to which is behind so many of our exchanges, which is to get as much as we can while giving as little as we can.  Another is a misperception that because something is being given away potentially for ‘free’ – this makes it like a ‘charity’ and somehow cheapens and devalues it.  I think there are some major unhealthy distortions around our ideas about charity in our society.

I’ll write more about these types of thinking in future posts.

Anyway, my current evaluation of the success of my workshops… they were OK.  They were successful enough that I want to continue to run them GFRF and see how they perform in the future.  I have some hope that performance will improve.  I think there may be long term benefits as more people are exposed to the idea, begin to understand it and become comfortable with it.  I think there may also be long term benefits in terms of a long tail of goodwill which will build as I stick with the concept for longer.