How to setup a BDSM club/dungeon?

[m wisdom]

I would like to hear from people that have setup/run a BDSM club/dungeon.
Not so much about what toys to have but what practical things there are to consider, like noise, cleaning equipment, and so on.

I might be involved with setting up a dungeon over here and looking for all tips and tricks that can be useful. It won't be a nightclub but more like a place with toys where people can meet, play and have workshops in. It will also be possible for people to rent it for private parties.

 

[chris9]

No practical experience or anything, but studying the law. I'd check if you need a permission for this kind of thing. I believe here you would need one, not sure if they would actually give you one, probably it would depend on the location. Anyways, before spending any money on rent/equipment/advertisement I'd check with a lawyer (maybe you know one that's kinky) about the legal aspects. Here doing whatever you need permission for without one would lead to the closing of whatever, and that means lots of money wasted.

 

[ShyGuy68]

Ohh that sounds like a cool idea. If I were closer by I would definately want to come and visit!

 

[m wisdom]

No practical experience or anything, but studying the law. I'd check if you need a permission for this kind of thing. I believe here you would need one, not sure if they would actually give you one, probably it would depend on the location. Anyways, before spending any money on rent/equipment/advertisement I'd check with a lawyer (maybe you know one that's kinky) about the legal aspects. Here doing whatever you need permission for without one would lead to the closing of whatever, and that means lots of money wasted.

Good suggestion. I know that we won't get a permit to sell alcohol but that's no problem since this will be a non-profit thing. People will have to bring their own.
But other then that I will have to check, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be any legal problems tho.

 

[m wisdom]

Ohh that sounds like a cool idea. If I were closer by I would definately want to come and visit!

If we get this thing up and running I'll send you an invention

 

[M's girl]

As long as it's a private 'thing' (and location) it's different from when you, say, rent a space and start a business. Think liabilty in case things go wrong, and I'm not even thinking BDSM-things going wrong here.

 

[Sheaf_Beast]

I might be involved with setting up a dungeon over here QUOTE]


Where is here?

 

[ShyGuy68]

If we get this thing up and running I'll send you an invention

Invention??

Be sure to invite Andante and Shyslave as well. Maybe we can all make it.

If it gets up and running, maybe we can have the BDSM forum gathering there

 

[m wisdom]

Where is here?

In Malmö, Sweden.

 

[m wisdom]

Invention??

Be sure to invite Andante and Shyslave as well. Maybe we can all make it.

If it gets up and running, maybe we can have the BDSM forum gathering there

That will teach me to blindly trust the spellchecker

They will of course get an invitation as well as well as everyone else that wants to come.
I do hope we will get this place up and running but it's still very much in the planning stage so might take a while, and we do need to find a place to rent before anything else happens.

 

[Sheaf_Beast]

your dungeon

well I dont know the business laws there.

seems like the first thing to happen would be a DBA (doing business as) business name.tax number?

then location, building that can accomadate what you want to achieve.( thake into account the zoning laws that would allow such)
then the owner, single ownership or LLC as well as maybe a board of people to handle diffrent aspects of this business.

then, items to fill up space, then membership or just walk in customers?

like I said I dont know your business laws there. but this is where I would start.

 

[D's mariposa]

Hi MWisdom.

This is going to take ALOT of work, but it can be done. Most of my info comes second hand from my Master who was in on the reorganization of the previous group. The previous group was run by a couple and had parties in the garden shed at their house. They used predatory methods to "recruit", which tended to keep the number of single females subs high and single everyone elses low. They did make a nod towards pan-fetish, but it didn't work out that way. Eventually, the was a palace mutiny, where the members had a reorganizations meeting at a neutral location and the club was sort of reborn. Our group is 7 or 8 years old now, I think. (The Domly One isn't around to ask yet, and the club predates me.)

First off, know what you're looking for. Are you looking for a club that celebrates one style of BDSM, or one sexuality? Our area is small enough that if you tried to start just a Femdom/malesub group, there's not enough of us and it won't fly. They've tried to start a single lesbian bdsm club, which had enough numbers, but again, was short in the leadership area. (This is not a snide comment about lesbians, this is a comment about the peeps who were in charge. If we had a Netzach or an Etoile down here, they'd probably be thriving.) Our group decided on "pan-fetish/pan kink". Meaning anyone is welcome. A few activities are not allowed during parties, but this is due to sanitary restrictions at the space. I'll go into those later.

Second, decide how you want to organize and what you can legally do. We organized as a club, and got a business bank account. We had an attorney and a tax accountant advising us (from within in the membership. Before you hire outside advisors, see who in your club has talents you can use and time to use them. This saves money and keeps the flow of info to a minimum. Sadly, we're still at a point where we need to be cautious about what we do.)

You also need to investigate your local laws to find out what's legal. For example, in our state, it's illegal to flog someone under a fee agreement. This is considered prostitution. We do not allow prodom/mes to shop for customers at our functions. We make it clear that money will not change hands between individual members. You cannot be signed up as a new member at a party, just because that could be deliberately misunderstood. Also, if you are going to host play parties, you need to get insurance of some sort. Even though we sign a waiver that says we know this is a play at your own risk sport, it's still something you should do. This is going to be one of the hardest things to get, because this is a high risk group. It's probably going to be pricey too.

Decide what the purpose of your group is. Are you a bdsm swing club? Are you solely a munch group? Do you want to throw great parties? Are you into outreach? Do you want to have seminars and such? Our group decided we wanted to be an informational resource as well as party group. So we have seminars, and guest speakers (Molly Devon has been here, so has Guy Baldwin). We also work with an AIDS education group and host tables at some of the GLBT functions in our area. We've also worked with our local police department on defining consensual kink rather than domestic abuse. Sometimes it looks a lot alike, and as bad it would be for some of us to go to jail for wiiwd, it would be just as bad (or more so, in some cases) if an abuser managed to convince them it was all bdsm. Oh, and we also throw great parties. After we got established (which took about five years) we began holding a fetish ball in the spring.

Now that you know who you are and what you're doing, figure out your finances! We charge $30 USD for a yearly membership, and $10 for a quarterly membership. We also charge for the seminars and guest speaker nights. Munches take place at local restaurants and those are free. We invite potential members there to meet some of the membership. We don't charge for board meetings, support groups, stuff like that. The party fee is $10 unless you volunteer to run a door shift or a dungeon shift. You get a discount then. Two non-consecutive shifts and you get in free. There are a few specialized memberships, but I missed the meeting where that was discussed, so I don't know what the changes are right now.

You need to decide where and how to meet. It works best if you meet in a neutral space, like a restaurant or something for plain old meetings. You can meet in someone's home, but we've gotten better results the other way. Before we had our own building, we had board meetings at a member's home. The problem with this was that she wasn't comfortable having an open meeting where any club member could wander around her house. For parties, some groups with a space of their own rent hotel ballrooms or such. On one hand, it limits what you can do with your partner. On the other hand, they usually give room discounts to group members who come in for the occasion and makes it easier for them to stay. Some hotels don't like perves either and they won't let us in to play. Our town is so provincial that most hotels won't have anything to do with us. Or you can look around for another space. For a while, there was an avant garde artist who had a big gallery who made money by renting space to parties. He'd let you do just about anything for $400 and a limited liability waiver.

Eventually, we had enough fundage to do two things. First we reorganized as a non-charitable, non-profit organization. Next we began looking around for a place to rent on a permanent basis. Parties were an all day affair for some of us before we got our own place. Seriously, a crew would get there around noon, unload the equipment. The party would be from about 6pm to 1am, and then we'd have to break it down and reload everything.

We started looking around for a space. We wanted something fairly big, in an area without a lot of neighbors to disturb, where we could redecorate. We found a warehouse that had previously been a welding shop, auto-body repairshop, paint shop and a whole host of other stuff. They'd had problems with tenants lasting more than 6-9 months, but we've been there for over 4 years now. The original owner didn't really know what we did, he just knew it was a club. When it was sold, he came in with the new owner to do a walk-through and got an eyefull! So neither one of them have asked anything, but it's fairly obvious there's something kinky going on. There's talk of buying a building someday (we almost bid on this one when it came up for sale, but the board decided not to.) but it's not a priority.

Other than that, just decide what your rules are. We don't allow non prescription drugs or alcohol at our parties and if you appear to be intoxicated at the door, you won't be let in. We did sell beer at that last fetish ball, and it worked out mostly well. The vendor at the place handled it for us. (For the fetish ball, we needed more room. Then we lost the rental at the last minute and had a bear of a time getting a new one.) We don't allow scat, watersports, bloodplay or permanent body modification because we don't have any way to contain the mess or maintain a sterile environment. Accidents happen, especially when you do allow needleplay, knifeplay, and such like that, but we've managed not to do anything serious to anybody.

When it comes to recruitment, if a new member contacts us, we set up a meeting. We have a new member orientation bi-weekly, as well as monthly munches. We do not send a member of the opposite sex to a meeting, and we do not meet in private places. This is overkill, in some areas, but we had a problem with this in the previous club. Very simply, it was common for the club chair to meet with new people alone, especially female subs and then hit on them. It left a bad enough taste in many mouths that we tend to be very cautious. So if it's to be a one on one meeting with a new member, we send a same sex board member to handle it.

Most of your labor is going to be done by club volunteers, and you're going to find that the 20/80 rule applies. Twenty percent of your membership is going to do eighty percent of the work. Reward your volunteers somehow. One club gives everyone who volunteers for a job a ticket in a drawing at the end of the year. Ours gives discounts to members for the parties and the fetish ball, if you volunteer at that function. We also have a volunteer party that is open ONLY to volunteers and their dates and it is free. Burnout is common. I love my club and I go to a lot of stuff, but I'll tell you honestly, I haven't volunteered for anything in over a year. Neither has my Master. In the first 4 years after re-orginisation he was on the board all 4 years, and the maintenance crew, and the DM committee. He worked EVERY party, and had responsibilities in between. In my first two years at the club, I also worked every party on the door or as a DM or both, and was also there to help open the building for the special events in between, and I helped on the maintenance committee and the redecoration committee. (Eventually, those two groups were merged.) After volunteer fatigue set in an a lot of us just couldn't do it anymore, then they started offering incentives! But still, we have enough people now that I'll do it in a pinch if Master doesn't have plans for us, but to be honest, we play so hard that neither one of us is a good choice for DMing after a scene.

So there's a brief overview of how it was done down here. Other communities will have different experiences. Any errors, mistakes, omissions above are unintentional but I typed most of this pre coffee.

 

[m wisdom]

Hi MWisdom.
...

Thank you for taking the time to write that, it was just was I was looking for.
I'll show it to the other people involved in this project.

We do have some other clubs in the area but not really a place where you can play. Except if you are gay since we do have a gay only S/M club.
Most clubs around here are fetish clubs where you go to be seen or kinky swinger clubs where you go for the sex. And we do have one local BDSM munch club that meet a few times each year but they don't have a place to play and don't seem to be willing to put much work into getting one either.

Hopefully this will be a place for playing and for holding seminars and workshops. At the moment we are looking around to see how many that would be willing to put some time and effort into getting it done and we are also looking around for a suitable place. There are lots of other things that we haven't decided on yet but unless we can find 5-10people that can put some effort into this we might decide to not even start, or just do it in a smaller scale. Most people we talk to would love to go to this place but few wants to help us making it happen

 

[D's mariposa]

You're very welcome.

. There are lots of other things that we haven't decided on yet but unless we can find 5-10people that can put some effort into this we might decide to not even start, or just do it in a smaller scale. Most people we talk to would love to go to this place but few wants to help us making it happen

That old 20/80 rule bites booty, doesn't it? It'll get done. The good news is, eventually you will bring in a new crowd to help take over some of this stuff. For the first few years, our board elections were more like, the same 5 or 6 people swapping positions. Now some of the newer members are taking initiative. Aside from still being occasionally short on DMs and door persons at the parties, everything does get done eventually.

 

[m wisdom]

You're very welcome.

That old 20/80 rule bites booty, doesn't it? It'll get done. The good news is, eventually you will bring in a new crowd to help take over some of this stuff. For the first few years, our board elections were more like, the same 5 or 6 people swapping positions. Now some of the newer members are taking initiative. Aside from still being occasionally short on DMs and door persons at the parties, everything does get done eventually.

Yes, that 20/80 rule I know all to well.
If we can find 5-6 people that are actually willing to be on our board I'm sure we will get it done, at the moment it's all "What a good idea, call me again when you open"

 

[m wisdom]

Dubble post

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

Superb idea and I wish you every success.

Afraid my previous management skills in Clubs are too mainstream and geographically irrelevant to be of any assistance .

D's mariposa had a wealth of information in her post a most interesting read. (thanks)

 

[Evil_Geoff]

I'm not going to reprint the article here, but the NCSF has a great article about protecting BDSM events here:

http://www.ncsfreedom.org/library/protect.htm

While the article is geared for a "weekend run" type event, much of the advice will apply to a permanent location as well. You may also want to get in touch with members of your city council. Good advice can be found at:

http://www.ncsfreedom.org/library/electedmeetingtips.htm

NCSF only deals with issues in the US, unfortunately. But they have educational presentations for groups on the following topics, the issues they raise are things you may want to take into consideration:

SM Groups & Law Enforcement: Group Issues
It is important that SM-Leather-Fetish groups understand the relationship between the SM community and law enforcement authorities, as well as the numerous legalities that can affect group functions. Once this is accomplished, groups can dispel myths, educate members, and constructively interact with law enforcement as the need arises. This presentation will focus on three aspects: (1) interacting with local law enforcement, (2) avoiding legal trouble, and (3) group considerations.

Zoning for SM & Swing Groups and Businesses
Zoning and permit issues are commonly used by local governments to attack the businesses or parties of SM and swing groups. It is much more difficult for police, prosecutors and courts to prosecute crimes" such as indecent exposure, lewd conduct, etc. Therefore zoning and permit violations are used to either move or shut down SM or swing activities because these administrative issues appear to be unambiguous and non-discriminatory. It is important for our communities to have an understanding of these administrative issues in order to safely organize and maintain SM, fetish, and swing events. Zoning and permits vary greatly depending on jurisdiction, so this discussion identifies and addresses the common issues in an overview fashion and suggests how to address the particulars.

Approaching Your Local Authorities
The purpose of this presentation is to help groups educate law enforcement, prosecutors, and other authorities about SM-Leather-Fetish or swing practices. NCSF's goal in presenting this material is to encourage local groups to develop a positive relationship with their local authorities. The content and delivery method of the outreach presentation are designed on a case-by-case basis. We suggest that local groups work together when presenting this information to officials.

You might want to contact the NCSF and see if they have written material for these presentations that you could have sent to you. Again, specific issues will vary between the US and Sweden, but you may find a lot of useful ideas and get some direction on how to proceed.

http://www.ncsfreedom.org