Over a month in 2026, 278 Make Nashville members shared what's working and what they want next. That's 67% of our 412 monthly active members (members who visited Make in May) and 39% of our 705-member roster.
The headline scores from the 2026 survey.
N = 278 (235 complete + 43 partial). Make Nashville has 412 monthly active members (members who visited in May) and 705 members on the total roster. NPS based on 227 "would recommend" responses (% promoters minus % detractors).
A snapshot of the membership that filled out this survey.
More than half of respondents have been members for less than a year, with a long tail of veteran makers.
Median 12 hrs/mo; average 18.0. 11% (29) are power users putting in 40+ hours.
New members come in around 17 hrs/mo, dip in months 6–12, then climb steadily through year 5+.
Weekday evenings 5–9 PM are the peak (102 members at the busiest cell). Weekend afternoons are the runner-up. For elbow room: Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
Half of respondents are 25–34. The 65+ cohort is small but consistent — Make has age range, not just a young-pro-millennial crowd.
Majority-women is unusual for a makerspace; ceramics being the biggest shop is part of that story.
A handful supplement income from Make, but the overwhelming use-case is personal projects, learning, and craft.
Densely Nashville-metro. East Nashville (37206) leads by a wide margin; Sylvan Park (37209) sits clear at #2.
Commute: median 15 min, average 20.2, range 2–180 min · half of members commute between 12 and 25 min (IQR).
Bar shows 0 to 180 min; shaded band = middle 50%, tick = median.
Themes members keep returning to. Each bubble is sized by how often members raised it in open text.
Recurring threads: 24/7 access, key fobs and gated parking, shop captains and volunteer leadership, welcoming community, the kiln team and shop crews, woodshop office hours, the Grit/RFID system, and a generous price point.
Members ranked seven reasons in order of importance. Bars show the weighted ranking score (100% = picked #1 by every respondent).
Tool access leads on every metric. "Try new things," "contribute to a community," and "meet new people" cluster in the middle. Teaching is the lowest priority across the board.
Self-reported experience level: when they joined vs. now.
Ribbon thickness is proportional to the number of members making that transition. Hover any ribbon or block to see exact counts.
The most-requested changes, in priority order.
Why members don't attend classes & social events
Members named blockers for each separately. Sorted by count within each column, scaled to the same axis for fair comparison.
Schedule is the #1 blocker for both — but social events feel it harder. Discoverability ("didn't know") is materially bigger for social events than classes, and social anxiety roughly triples for social events. Cost only matters for classes; class-topic interest is a class-only problem.
Members rated six facility items on a 1–5 scale. One scores well below the others — and lines up exactly with the loudest open-text request.
Climate Control's 2.86/5 is the lowest score in the survey and matches the open-text findings on warehouse cooling. The keyfob system (4.44) is the runaway favorite. Cleanliness (3.83) and Kitchen (3.65) score mid-range.
Per-shop scores on overall feel, safety confidence after orientation, and guideline clarity. Click any column header to sort.
| Shop | % who use it (of current view) |
Overall feel 1–5 |
Safety after orientation 1–5 |
Guidelines clarity 1–5 |
Top desires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading shop data… | |||||
Ceramics is the most-used shop. Scores in the 4.0–5.0 range indicate strong satisfaction; sub-4.0 scores indicate shops getting attention. "Low n" rows have fewer than 5 respondents in the current view.
Note on the smaller shops: Photo Studio (n=2) and Darkroom (n=3) have too few responses for confident scoring — readings here are directional, not conclusive. Sewing's lower scores reflect a real pattern of studio-dynamics feedback that's being addressed through other channels.
How members use the shops
Each bar shows the proportion of personal-only / both / pro-only use within that shop. Bar width is scaled to the most-used shop in the current filter.
Hobbyist use dominates every shop. "Pro only" caps at 1 member per shop. Ceramics has the highest "Both" rate. Hover a bar segment for exact counts.
Members ranked the channels they prefer for hearing from Make. Slack wins decisively — but it isn't the whole story.
How members rank communication channels
Members ranked 8 channels by preference. Bars show the weighted ranking score (100% = picked #1 by every respondent).
Slack runs away with first place: 174 of 253 respondents rank it #1 (69%, more than 4.5× any other channel). But the weighted view shows that signs in the space and email both punch above their first-place weight: members rank them consistently high even when they're not their #1, meaning relying on Slack alone would miss real readership for both formats.
How often members actually check Slack
45% of members check Slack daily or more. The 18 who never check it are why signs in the space still matters.
Make Nashville is yours — here's how to push it forward.
Feedback from this survey is going straight into shop planning and board discussions. A few asks (orientation cadence, the CAD class, a clearer class calendar) need member energy to happen.