“Open for you, and you and you…” is the tagline for one of our Canadian members, Community Door in Brampton, Ontario.
It is a fitting message for so many of our centers (and centres!) across North America. A place where you can find healing for what ails you. A place that takes you in as you are and diligently works to keep you as safe as possible.
This last statement was the theme that emerged from our first Live Ask-NCN Zoom call for members that was focused on Risk Management. I actually expected the conversation to steer more towards the somewhat dull, but necessary details of what it takes to manage a space, filling vacancies, collecting timely rent and more.
Instead, improving safety was the top concern for most spaces. People wanted to know how best to communicate imminent dangers, how to report incidents, and how to keep communication lines open with tenants and community. One member is witnessing the opioid epidemic first hand in their very welcoming and open community space. While their bathrooms provide an opportunity for someone off the street to clean up, other times it is a collection site for needles from their illicit substance usage.
All participants stressed the need, and struggle, for their space to be both open and safe. Here are the suggestions that emerged:
The Rose Andom Center opened the summer of 2016, as the first Family Justice Center in the Rocky Mountain region, with a mission to improve the lives of domestic violence victims by facilitating better access to the services and staff of community organizations and government agencies in a single, safe location. The Rose Andom Center is named in honor of successful Denver entrepreneur and former McDonald’s franchise owner, Rose Andom.
The innovative model of the Rose Andom Center brings together 7 city and 13 community-based organizations in one building, representing the forward-thinking, collaborative approach to provide ‘best practice’ services to some of our most vulnerable citizens. The staff of partner organizations provide a wide array of services, including domestic violence advocacy and counseling, crisis intervention, civil legal support, services for children, law enforcement services, information regarding the criminal justice system, assistance with public benefits, housing resources, and referrals for job readiness and job search assistance.
What is one interesting fact about your space?
In 2017, the Rose Andom Center was honored to receive a Downtown Denver Partnership Award, given to businesses that have made significant contributions toward creating a unique, vibrant, and diverse Downtown environment, and have left a lasting, positive impact on Downtown Denver. Since opening, we have had over 3,300 victims and 900 children come into the Rose Andom Center to access multiple services from our partner agencies. The building underwent a comprehensive renovation to provide a warm, welcoming, safe environment for the clients and to promote collaborative work among the partners. A centralized “nest” area provides comfortable interview rooms for private conversations with clients, as well as an open great room and kitchen for their use, and a playroom for the children to enjoy while their parent meets with service providers. The playroom includes a custom wall-sized Light Bright Wall, enjoyed by all who visit the Rose Andom Center!
What are your favorite resources that you would recommend to others?
Working with the Nonprofit Centers Network, Denver Shared Spaces and Oz Architects helped ensure we could think through our goals in developing the best shared space possible, that would meet our mission and be of benefit to our clients!
As we worked to create a regional framework for Social Purpose Real Estate and non-profit colocation in St Louis we looked to the considerable experience of the 400+ non-profit centers in the U.S. and Canada that have preceded us. Our review of this experience suggests that we could gain six specific benefits (Table 1) from creating non-profit centers.
1. Co-locating non-profits can enhance access to services by integrating services and putting them together in one shared location. The measurable outcomes might be increased use of services, easier access for constituents, and the establishment of a continuum of care.
2. Co-locating non-profits can lower costs by sharing “back of house” supports such as accounting, human resources, and risk management. Further, reduced turnover and the benefit from being near other organizational directors and program administrators could contribute to the bottom line. The measurable outcomes could be increased operational strength and efficiency, lower costs, and better managed organizations. These benefits may be particularly valued by smaller non-profit organizations or by newer ones seeking to establish effective systems.
For most nonprofits, office space is the second largest expense, after personnel costs. Most of the time we make do with what we can get our hands on – working out of our living rooms or a donated church basement. Too often, we let our office space work against us instead of for us!
You may be fighting your office instead of fighting for your cause if in the past year, you have
Had to reschedule a meeting with a community member to deal with a flood in your program space
Wrapped up in blankets to stay warm since your furnace couldn’t keep up while typing up your latest appeal letter.
Spent time shoveling the walk instead of filing grant reports
Lost connection to the internet and your cloud-based file storage because of old wiring
I challenge you to keep track of how much time you spend fighting with your office the next week. I think you’ll be surprised. You can also take it a step further and multiply that by your hourly salary to figure out how much your space costs your organization each week. If time is money, your board may be interested to see how much your “free” or “cheap” office space really costs.
What should you be paying for office space anyway? (Here’s a clue: the answer isn’t $0.) For a quick estimate, do this math: multiply 250 sq. ft. per person times the per square foot lease rate for Class B office space. You can find the average per square foot by searching for real estate market reports in your region (typically made public by major real estate firms like CBRE or Cushman Wakefield). For example, since NCN has two staff in Denver, we should be paying $11,595 per year. (Depending on the local custom, you might be given the square footage cost by the month, so pay attention and adjust accordingly.) You’ll still need to budget for utilities, internet, cleaning, security, etc., and more.
Sharing space allows us to achieve several thousand dollars in cost savings every year – not to mention the time of managing the internet, cleaning the office, keeping the printer up and running, and more! Think you might be up for running a shared space? Check out Virtual Nonprofit Centers Boot Camp today!
The Hive is a coworking and events center where we build a stronger, more connected community. Inspired by Jewish wisdom and our natural and farmy surroundings, we provide a thriving environment for social entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and local community organizations to work, meet, and grow in a unique environment. Our goal is to become a model for community collaboration and to promote creative Jewish expression, both at home in Encinitas, San Diego, California, and around the world.
The Hive offers robust monthly professional development programs to service our local nonprofit community from a range of topics including: board management, public speaking, emotional intelligence, strengths based leadership, fundraising, and grant writing to name a few!
In addition, The Hive offers arts and cultural programming for creative Jewish expression and exploration. These programs include: theatre performances, meditation workshop, art galleries, and holiday celebrations.
Collaboration, connection, and learning all with an ocean view!
It’s a new year! Time to get into shape!
No, I’m not here to harass you on how well your New Year’s resolution towards good health is going, or if you’ve already given up on it. (You can do it!) I’m here to help your nonprofit get its plan about sharing space into shape, so you can present your best self to your community.
This year, we're bringing you a different kind of Boot Camp, that's making it super easy and cost effective to learn about nonprofit shared space with Virtual Nonprofit Centers Boot Camp. You can get in shape on your own (in your pjs) over 2 months or with your colleagues (maybe not in your pjs) over 6 months, starting whenever you register.
Make this year the year you dive into the idea that you, your board, or community has been thinking about: getting serious about shared space. Here are just a few ways Virtual Nonprofit Centers Boot Camp will get you and your team there:
I’ve had several conversations with new NCN members just starting the process to see if a nonprofit center is the right thing for their community. People talking this project for the first time are some of my favorites to work with – the energy, the inspiration, the passion. Inevitably, at some point excitement transitions to overwhelmed, as leaders struggle to balance their vision with the growing workload. That’s where we come in!
Because how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! We’ve helped so many people break down their shared space project into manageable chunks, making their dream a reality. Here are my top tips for managing this process:
Write down your why: Whether it’s an official statement of purpose or just the top three reasons you want to see a shared space in your community, this is your guiding principle as you go through this project. Form follows function throughout this process.
An Evaluation!
Those two little words strike fear into leaders’ hearts. I hear “It’s too expensive!” or “We don’t have time!” or “No one ever fills out surveys anyway!” Earlier this year, we set out to help shared space managers tackle this question with the support of Laura Sundstrom and Elena Harmon of Vantage Evaluation. Through a combination of structured learning webinars, peer learning and hands on homework, we worked with approximately ten different shared spaces to see what methods we could test. While we are still crunching the quantitative and qualitative data, here are my preliminary take aways.
Have a clear goal for your collaborative work. What are you trying to accomplish through shared space? Break it down as simply as possible and unpack common jargon-filled phrases. Trying to show the impact of collaboration? Make sure you know what that looks like in your community?
The Discovery Center & Pier are a shared campus to five water-based nonprofit organizations in northwest Michigan:
• Great Lakes Children’s Museum
• Maritime Heritage Alliance
• Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay
• Inland Seas Education Association
• Traverse Area Community Sailing
The Traverse Tall Ship Company operates from the campus as an affiliate business partner.
The organizations, while co-located on the 15-acre campus, largely operate from their own buildings. Obviously, having access to a deepwater port and more than 11,000 feet of Lake Michigan shoreline make this facility different and uniquely suited for organizations with boats and/or a connection to water. (Only Great Lakes Children’s Museum does not operate a boat.)
The owner is a division of the local Rotary Club. It is mainly managed by the member organizations through a separate nonprofit. A plan is being developed for a new nonprofit center that would house most of the partners’ operations under one roof.
What do a café Manager, Member and Program Coordinator, nonprofit Executive Director and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst all have in common?
Well, last week the café Manager, John, and I organized an open mic during our building’s monthly tenant Happy Hour. Our responses were slim, but two brave, busy souls, Craig (the CAIA) and Michael (the ED) reached out to share that they played bass and guitar, respectively. John, a New Orleans native, plays guitar and sings and I play violin (trained) and sing (not trained). We forged ahead with no time to rehearse, but just some scattered emails throwing out ideas for tunes, who could sing or play what, and a few charts in case any of us miraculously had time to practice on our own.
Michael had just got back from traveling but thanks to an unclaimed guitar left it in a Car2Go vehicle, whose office is in our building, he had something to play. It took some time to get a working bass amp for Craig, but we started to hit a groove and kept at it for an hour and half. Two others jumped in and we crossed a generation of artists, from Patty Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison to Bo Diddley. People showed up, and they even cheered! I’m not saying we’re the new hottest band this side of the Mississippi, but we had fun and sounded good!
Outside of us all knowing John, because well, he makes coffee (‘nuff said), we now all have a reason to say, “how you doin’?” to each other in the building. We found common ground between folks I otherwise may not have met. Is this going to lead life changing, mission-oriented collaboration? Doubtful. But together we contributed to a culture of creativity and fellowship in the space, through a medium completely unconnected to our building’s theme of sustainability.
A leader in our community recently challenged a group of us to get out and talk to people who don’t look like you, who may fall into a different “category” of life, because we are getting trapped in our own bubbles. We are missing out on the diversity of life, which stifles our own experience in this world. I’ve always felt music is one path towards connecting people, and this was just another instance that reaffirmed that for me.
People have been asking when the next jam is and we’re planning for October. We plan on opening it up outside the building walls and even asking the guy who regularly plays jazz flute on the street corner outside our building. One of John’s friends who is without a home plans to join us when he gets his guitar fixed.
It might not be music for you. But what opportunities do you have to find common ground that may or may not fall outside your line of work? It doesn’t always have to be epic. In the world these days, sometimes we just need space to feel good, together. I’m grateful shared space cultivates these opportunities, and it’s just another reason I like going to work each day. And that can carry us a long way to our respective missions.
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