NCN’s Energize: High Impact Shared Spaces training brings a much needed hands-on learning to help you assess your shared space, maximize revenue while minimizing expenses and sparking collaboration. This training is filled with opportunities to apply what you learned through case studies and peer-to-peer workshopping. Gain insight and new ideas from other shared space managers, while brainstorming how you can apply the strategies shared during the training. At the close of this training, walk away ready to Energize your shared space.
James Irvine Foundation Conference Center
353 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612
Introductions and Self-Assessment
Energize is designed as a peer-learning experience. Our first activities will help you get to know your fellow participants while completing a self-assessment that will help you understand how your center is performing compared to others in the field.
Business Model Optimization
Established shared spaces are continually challenged to revisit their business models to ensure strong financial health. Informed by the 2015 State of the Shared Space Sector, Energize will focus on a range of ways centers have successfully maximized their revenue streams. We will also incorporate lessons from the private sector around profitability. Additionally, we will look at ways to control the expenses in your space, in order to align both sides of the budget. Participants will then put on their consultant’s hat and analyze the business model of a struggling center, making recommendations for long term financial sustainability.
Creating Positive Cultures
A healthy building culture paves the way for collaboration in the future by fostering connections and trust among partners. Energize will focus on strategies for authentic tenant engagement, ranging from structural governance agreements and community covenants to more organic community building tools.
CASE STUDY: Apply what you learned in this case exercise. You and your peer of attendees will evaluate how to make changes to a Shared Space. Collaboratively come up with a strategy, how to address concerns, etc. You’ll feel better equipped to apply this approach to your own space when you get back to the office.
Lunch
Sparking Collaboration
Informed by a spectrum model of collaboration, you will be able to assess your community’s readiness for working together after this session. We will share successful practices from the Network so you can better understand ways to help your tenant partners connect the dots between each other’s missions for meaningful collaborations.
Evaluating Impact
One of the biggest questions for practitioners in shared space is “does what we do make a difference?” This section of Energize will help you develop your center’s theory of change, a critical component to any evaluation. We will also explore several tools others have used for evaluating their spaces.
Workshop Session
At the end of the day, we will take some time as a group to workshop some of your biggest challenges. You and your fellow participants will choose 3-4 of each other’s most pressing issues to solve, drawing on your expertise as well as that of the NCN team.