Summary
Organization name
10BITWORKS MAKERSPACE
other names
10BitWorks Hackerspace
Tax id (EIN)
46-1440284
Budget Size
Extra Small $0 - $99,999
Sector
Arts & Culture, Education, Entrepreneurship
Address
130 W LACHAPELLESAN ANTONIO, TX 78204
10BITWORKS MAKERSPACE
0% complete
$20,000 Goal
About
2X YOUR GIFT
[ OVERVIEW 01 ]
SAN ANTONIO'S LARGEST NONPROFIT MAKERSPACE
EVERY CITY SHOULD HAVE ONE.
SAN ANTONIO DOES.
10BitWorks turns 16 this October. For the last decade and a half, our 501(c)(3) volunteer-led community workshop has given members 24/7 access to industrial tools most people will never own.
Woodworking and CNC routers. Welding and metalworking gear. Ceramics and glass kilns. 3D printers, laser cutters, and electronics stations. We started as a hackerspace on Roosevelt Avenue in 2010 and formally evolved into a makerspace in 2014. Every year since, we've made real fabrication tools accessible to anyone in San Antonio willing to put in the effort to learn how to use them.
THE SHOP IS THE FOUNDATION. THE COMMUNITY IS THE IMPACT.
10BitWorks runs on members teaching members. Someone shows you how to run the CNC. A year later, you're the one showing the next person. That handoff happens dozens of times a week, in front of the lathe, at the welding bench, over a 3D print that didn't come out right. The equipment is just what gives people a reason to be in the room together.
Our members are retirees with finally enough time, parents homeschooling their kids, woodworkers without garage space, ceramicists priced out of studio rentals, engineers tinkering after hours, artists prototyping gallery work, small-business owners producing inventory, and curious teenagers learning to weld. They serve San Antonio and the broader South Central Texas region by serving each other.
[ PRINCIPLES 02 ]
WHAT WE BELIEVE
01
TOOLS SHOULDN'T BE LOCKED BEHIND PRIVILEGE.
We exist so that serious tools, and the knowledge to use them, aren't locked behind expensive university programs, professional credentials, the luck of knowing the right people, or having a professional garage in your backyard.
02
PEER-LED LEARNING WORKS.
A member who's been running the lathe for five years showing a first-timer how to hold a tool. That teaches things classrooms can't.
03
MAKING THINGS MATTERS.
A city this size should have a place where anyone can do it. So we built one. And we're still here.
[ IMPETUS 03 ]
THE CATALYST
OUR NEXT ERA
The lease is signed. On October 1, after fifteen years on the South Side, 10BitWorks moves into a 10,000-square-foot facility near the San Antonio International Airport.
The new shop adds roughly 4,000 square feet. That buys us safer separation between dusty and clean processes, and dedicated room for heavier industrial equipment. It also has working climate control. The current shop gets brutal in San Antonio summers, which has limited what we can safely run in the hottest months. The new facility lets us keep teaching and making year-round.
Member dues keep the lights on. Donor support is what builds capacity. Twenty thousand dollars gets us moved and gets the laser in the door. Everything past that is capacity we don't have yet. Here is where it goes:
PRIORITY 01
THE MOVE
Getting fifteen years of heavy equipment across town runs about $4,000 to $6,000. Truck and forklift rental, rigging, network and infrastructure, and building out the floor once it is all inside. None of that comes out of monthly dues.
PRIORITY 02
EQUIPMENT TO GROW INTO THE SPACE
Our machines work hard and most still earn their keep, but membership is growing and some tools have become bottlenecks. The most pressing is a high-capacity laser engraver, $8,000 to $12,000 depending on configuration. Past that, additional pottery wheels are the next thing members are waiting in line for.
PRIORITY 03
SOMEONE IN THE SHOP
For fifteen years, every repair, every orientation, every shop reset has happened on volunteer time. That model got us here. The scale we are moving into needs one part-time person keeping the shop clean and organized, and on hand to help with onboarding during visiting hours. One hundred dollars puts someone in the shop for a shift. The board and volunteers keep doing what they have always done. This just means the basics do not depend on whether someone has time after their day job.
[ IMPACT 04 ]
WHY YOUR SUPPORT MATTERS
This is only the second real fundraising push in our history. For fifteen years we ran on dues, donated equipment, and selling off the donations we could not use. Almost everything in the shop got there that way. We are asking now because the move is the first thing that scrappy sourcing cannot cover.
When you give to 10BitWorks during The Big Give, you are funding a place where a homeschool parent gives their kid hands-on engineering experience, a laid-off machinist builds a prototype for a new business, and a retired teacher finally throws the pots she has been thinking about for thirty years. As a 501(c)(3), contributions to 10BitWorks are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Help us make the move. Help us modernize our gear. Help us put one person in the shop who can give this work the attention it deserves.
FIFTEEN YEARS OF MAKING.
WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED.
Organization Data
SAN ANTONIO, TX 78204