After we started we were asked a lot of questions on how to go about starting a shed and how we run it- we have written a number of documents giving our real life experience of how it is done.
Six years down the road from opening other sites have written about how to form a Men’s Shed from getting a committee together to start up funding and looking for funds. The main ones in the UK are the Scottish Men’s Shed Association and the UK Men’s Shed Association. So we would refer you to them.
What we can provide is the next steps- the practical running of a Men’s Shed. While we have only run one shed the feedback is that it is very useful, saving a lot of time.
Each shed is unique which follows from the number of differing reasons, skills and needs of the men involved and the setting of the shed in the community. So we don’t hold our way as the only or right way. You should be wary of straight copying because your documents need to be your own and you have to stand by them if need be.
All we ask is that acknowledgement of Westhill Men’s Shed is made (it can be discrete) if you use our work and ideally a link from your website to ours to help others find us.
We are happy to answer questions (contact by email is usually most efficient to start with) and if you are near enough or passing we always welcome visitors and can go into less formal questions and answers.
cool runnings at the Westhill mens shed shows how we run the shed.
Our major health and safety document for running the shed is Westhill Men’s Shed WORKSHOP OPERATIONS MANUAL.
There are other documents such as the Supervisors manual that can be made available to other sheds.
We also have a set of policies.
These cover everything from recording the reasons why there is “No TV in the social area” through “Alcohol and Drugs” and “Guidelines for Carers” and many other aspects. Having this reduces the reinventing of the wheel every time a topic comes up – equally they can change if needed. We regard these as confidential but if you are running a shed we can share a more with you.