I am continually inspired by the work of shared spaces across North America. The best way to share the message is to see it. Every time I travel, I seek out amazing spaces that support social change. But sometimes, travel isn’t in the cards. Here are three spaces you can visit virtually from our desktop through these videos:
Our mission is to host, inspire, and catalyze social change in the Spokane region. We create and maintain a beautiful collection of brick and mortar environments that enhance connectivity and human dignity. We have a campus of six buildings, starting with the Community Building our pioneer restoration project on Main Avenue. It provides beautiful, affordable office and gathering spaces to local nonprofits and serves as hub for community action. The old Saranac Hotel provides more affordable office and gathering spaces for nonprofit and businesses alike and operates on some of the cleanest and greenest technologies in the Inland Northwest. The member-owned Main Market Co-op benefits Spokane's people, environment, and robust local food system and the Saranac Commons is an open-concept food and retail accelerator with informal meeting, gathering, and study spaces for public use. In all of our spaces we hope to serve the whole person. That means having access to good healthy food, art, welcoming spaces to work, and generally building an inclusive community that knows each other and cares for one another. To that end, we host meals, happy hours, professional development series, and parties regularly to help support the relationships here and to build new ones.
We are excited that today’s blog author will be featured as one of 8 presentations at this year’s Sharing Innovation 2019. Like what you read? Register today at www.nonprofitcenters.org/sharing
Stop, collaborate and listen – more than just the lyrics to a popular song from the ‘90s, the Clearinghouse of Jefferson County Indiana has taken these words to heart. Since its inception in 2007, the Clearinghouse team has been through a series of peaks and valleys, always focused on the end goal of creating a larger network of social change. Created as a multi-tenant facility where workforce development entities and community agencies live and work under one roof, the Clearinghouse was the brainchild of River Valley Resources (RVR). Originally founded to provide workforce development services, RVR’s mission has grown to include a variety of services to help individuals become self-sustaining. The organization currently provides education and training services in 17 Indiana counties and employs more than 80 people.
These three words – stop, collaborate, and listen – have been an integral part of RVR’s process to create and sustain a vision of building a network of community partners all working together to help individuals become self-reliant.
It seems counter-intuitive that the process starts with the word stop. But over the years, we have learned that it is by stopping to assess what’s around us and responding accordingly that true magic begins. Sometimes, in such a large organization with multiple services, we can get so caught up in what we are doing as individuals that we don’t stop to recognize where others can add value. It is by practicing the pause that organizations discover there is more than enough if we all sit at the same table.
Stopping also shifts focus from a singular mission to one that is expansive and eliminates the duplication of efforts. Because we have practiced the art of stopping to collaborate and listen, our relationships are non-competitive, holistic, and client centric. We have a deep knowledge and understanding of what each member of our team provides, allowing us to link clients to the services that best meet their needs. We put this in practice by holding a monthly Clearinghouse meeting where each team is represented and has a voice. We use this time to talk about upcoming programs, events, and new partnerships that are mutually beneficial to the mission of assisting clients in becoming self-dependent.
As important as it is to stop, it would be pointless without a genuine focus on collaboration. It is one thing to share space with other organizations involved in similar work. However, it is another thing entirely to set the ego aside and approach each conversation from a place of needing to understand the perspective of the other party. When we can free ourselves from our ego, it opens up a whole new channel to see a clearer picture of the work we are all part of. This clear picture allows us to see how all of the pieces fit and how we are all connected as agents of change.
A perfect example of this is something we call the Madison Model. In Madison, we have a female correctional facility that focuses on re-entry. We sat down with their administrators and the local community college to find a way to integrate these women into our community during their pre-release. Through listening to their needs, we developed a transitions model that helps them learn job readiness skills and earn a certification in high wage, high demand occupations. This prison partnership extends to helping feed hungry kids through the Summer Meals program, and is the only one in the nation that has a partnership with a correctional facility. The women volunteers love giving back to the community and one said, “I love volunteering because I know my kids receive free summer meals back home.”
This collaborative effort would not have been possible without the patience of listening. These out-of-the-box ideas can only come to fruition when we are not dismissive of things that have never been done before. As we teach our students in the transitions class, effective communication utilizes three strategies to positively address issues and nurture a relationship of equals – communicate purposefully, communicate honestly, and communicate responsibly[1]. We have found that listening, when paired with this style of communication, leads to our most successful projects.
It’s easy to say all this, but practicing it is another story. This is especially true in rural communities where resource scarcity is a reality. But as we continue to grow our network, we realize that we don’t have to do this work alone. It is a beautiful thing that we can focus on our piece and trust that our partners will continue to do their part well too. There is a quote by Brene Brown that says, “Opposite of scarcity is not abundance, it’s simply enough.” When we stop, collaborate, and listen we don’t have to solve the problems of the whole world at once. We do what we can with what we have and it is simply enough.
[1] “Employing Interdependence.” On Course: Study Skills Plus, by Skip Downing, Wadsworth, 2016, pp. 135-162.
We are excited that today’s blog author will be featured as one of 8 presentations at this year’s Sharing Innovation 2019. Like what you read? Register today at www.nonprofitcenters.org/sharing
Colossal failures and some initial successes caused us to stumble into social innovation in a shared space. We didn’t see the journey taking this route, we just needed more space. While we work in a large rural setting, there are very few appropriate rentals to fit our needs.
In October, we will explore how we applied the Panarchy Theory to our journey to success.
Exploration – We started looking for a space just our size but what we found was one three times what we needed. Using our silo lens, we began looking for tenants to help pay the rent and it wasn’t until our largest prospective tenant, with deep pockets, backed out at the last minute. We essentially hit a road block that forced us to completely shift our thinking. Our detour took us into social innovation and changemaking.
Development – We thought that we had planned the perfect journey booking all our rooms in advance when really, we needed to do more research on the route and what we would find at each location. Shifting our perspective meant that we needed to learn. We attended conferences including the 2015 Building Opportunities Conference in Vancouver (complete with boot camp), the Tamarack Institute’s conferences on Vibrant Communities and we enrolled staff in trainings and courses such as MacEwan University’s Social Innovation Certificate program. It was at this junction in the road that we learned that failure can actually be a tool for success.
Growth – We applied our learnings and after early successes with initiatives such as multilevel leases, flexible space, purposeful artwork and signage to celebrate inclusion and daily networking opportunities we began to see where we fit within our own centre and where the centre fit in the larger community. We doubled down on compromise rather than emphasizing policy and procedure to create social cohesion.
Maturity – We were able to celebrate our successes and leverage small partnerships into larger scale innovations, most recently receiving a McConnell Foundation grant, along with other partners in the community, for the creation of a social lab to create systems change in education. Maturity is about not getting stuck in one location, rather looking at what needs to scale up or scale out and recognizing when it’s time to let go and continue the journey.
Release – Moving on, whether by choice or through the choice of others can be emotional and discouraging, like a flat tire or engine trouble. We can choose to sit on the side of the road and have a good cry, then we need to embrace the failure as a tool that puts the air back in our tires. Letting go opens doors to new opportunities, we need to slow down so we can see them.
Organizations moved into our centre because it was economical but they stayed because they have a shared belief in the importance of our centre in the community and they see their ideas in action.
We learned to intentionally create opportunities for input and collaboration, we learned to recognize emergent themes, and we learned (the hard way) to let go and move forward collectively. These learnings all form the foundation of our centre’s success.
NCN’s Steering Committee Member Saul Ettlin, a real estate consultant for Community Vision in San Francisco, CA, was recently featured in Shelterforce Magazine’s Spring 2019 issue. His article “Buying Power: Why Nonprofits Should Own Their Own Space” highlights four important reasons that locally-based organizations should own a building where they work. Saul writes: Nonprofits, and the wide range of human, social, cultural, and artistic services they provide, can be critical to anchoring communities and stabilizing neighborhoods. When they’re invested in the place in which they’re located, nonprofits become important hubs that create opportunities for those they serve; they lift up voices, and build placed-based power. For these groups to be successful in meeting their missions, they must be resilient themselves.
The Community Partners Center seeks to provide a professional office space environment where its tenants and guests are encouraged to collaborate, explore and develop synergies among themselves and other community businesses and organizations that support their success in providing the highest caliber of programs and services in the most cost-effective manner possible. Based in a suburb of Philadelphia, the Community Partners Center currently houses six nonprofit tenants.
Recently I was very fortunate to tag along with a delegation of incredible community and student leaders from the Boston area who participate in the Solidarity Economy Initiative and Center for Economic Democracy and Tufts New Economy. Together we visited Montreal to learn from practitioners about local efforts to build the social or solidarity economy. Speaking with local practitioners, we learned about an available apartment designated specifically “for someone who will never earn income again;” a seasonal, manufactured, beach front - designed on land used to store snow in winter – that boosts social engagement and enjoyment of the coast; and a flourishing farmer’s marketplace that offers community lunch and movie nights. Our visit included time spent with:
It’s been a long winter in Denver…and yes, I know it’s June! But within my son’s last 2 weeks of school, it snowed at least 3 inches, and we received an epic middle of the night hail storm. My plants were already struggling to grow even before they were pummeled. But finally, the sun is peaking out, and it’s beginning to warm up. New growth is around the corner, and I can taste sandal weather. It seems nonprofits and local leaders are coming out of hibernation as well lately. NCN has seen quite the uptick of people inquiring about our services, joining our network, considering building spaces or wanting to learn more about shared services. What gives? Here is some of what we’ve been hearing lately:
NCN works with clients in a variety of ways, including though coaching. Recently, I worked with a group who was developing a full cost budget for their space for the first time. When you’re doing this kind of work, you need a few concepts in your back pocket. What’s a full cost budget? That’s a budget that looks at the entire picture of an organization, not just a portion of it. It includes all of the unsexy overhead costs that we need to be effective, like liability insurance, cleaning, grounds maintenance, and more. All too often in the nonprofit sector, we only look at what it costs to run a particular program, and we ignore all the other costs that aren’t up front. One concept you need is the idea of direct costs vs. indirect costs. Direct costs are those expenses that you need to spend for a specific purpose. If you’re making a meal, the tomatoes, pasta, meat, and spices are your direct costs. However, your meal won’t be very flavorful if you dump them into a pot uncooked. You need a stove in a kitchen with running water. Not to mention plates and forks! All these other things should be accounted for as “indirect costs” because you need them for making all your meals, not just your delicious pasta.
Centrally located within Sutton, a growing community within Georgina, the Town of Georgina purchased the decommissioned Sutton Public School in 2011. Since then, the Town's multi-million dollar investment towards the renovation of Phase 1 of The Link finished in July 2015. 15,000 sq.ft. now houses a multi-sector service centre that addresses various community challenges, provides a unique collaboration platform and, because of Georgina's geographic size, has reduced the difficulty of accessing programs and services now all in one location. The Link has multiple tenant organizations operating full-time, short-term rental & programming spaces such as a large Event Hall, state of the art Commercial Teaching Kitchen, two meeting rooms and a beautiful 6 acre backyard located centrally in the town.
1536 Wynkoop Street, Suite 103
Denver, CO 80202
info@nonprofitcenters.org
720.836.1189
October 17, 2019
October 1, 2019
