Hi! Want to help me develop a fundraising campaign?

(In case you missed it, I took a new position helping lead Open Coworking, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the coworking movement worldwide. Details: https://goo.gl/9iaXmv)

Background: I’m looking for the best possible way to rally support for Open Coworking, so it can become an organization that would be able to hire people to do work on behalf of the movement. Coworking brings tremendous positive impact to the people who find it, and it’s grown a lot, but there’s so much more to be done.

The biggest challenge I see right now is that the parameters around the project are really vague. When I was building New Work City, there was a very clear need: we had to raise a specific amount of money by a specific time to be able to lease and build out a space.

In the case of Open Coworking, it’s much more open-ended. The movement is here; in many ways it’s doing great on its own. Surely many things could be better, but why should someone pony up to support an effort to make it better now?

Perhaps we can address this by creating a goal ourselves that has specific parameters, needs, and deadlines of its own. If we roll those functional-but-not-so-sexy things into something more ambitious or at least more interesting, we could get somewhere.

Like:

• “Get 1,000 new coworking communities added to a map by January 1, 2016.”
• “Get 500 new spaces on the Coworking Visa by March 1, 2016.”
• “Help 1,000 people who are just getting started working for themselves find the help they need in a local coworking community by June 1, 2016.” (We’d have to flesh this one out, but I really like where this is heading.)
• “Get 10,000 members of coworking spaces to participate in a survey that will offer unique and invaluable insight into the new workforce by the end of 2016.”
• “Get coworking to be publicly recognized by the White House as a movement that supports local businesses, job creation, and general economic development by the end of 2016.”

Something along those lines? Generally, we have some potential outcomes we want to work with:

• More people coworking
• More coworking communities
• BETTER coworking communities
• Better connections between coworking communities, their members, and local institutions and governments.

Which ideas do you like most? Least? Have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

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Reposted from Facebook; check that thread here!

This week, I formally joined the team that runs Open Coworking.

Open Coworking is a nonprofit that has so far largely been focused on maintaining the global coworking movement’s public resources, like the Coworking Wiki Project, the Coworking Google Group, the Coworking Blog, the Coworking Visa, and others. These resources have been enormously impactful in helping people around the world discover and learn how to get involved in the world of coworking.

The maintenance of these resources is no small task, but it’s of paramount importance. And it has so far operated entirely through the generously donated time and energy of devoted volunteers.

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The epic battle is underway. It’s not being fought with weapons by soldiers; it’s not even being fought by people who are really fighting with each other at all.

It’s the battle between the people who run spaces and the unconscious forces that pull them into a workspace rental malaise. In an earlier post on this site, a reader commented:

Thank you for writing this! I think a lot of us in the coworking world feel that our spaces are useful for something more than just coffee and wifi, and this blog post really puts into words. Definitely agree that “A local community of like-minded people” is a powerful resource for anyone. #coworking

Coming from the early days of the movement, it’s absurd to me that anyone would think of coworking as just coffee and wifi. But that’s the state of affairs today.

Let’s be clear: there are no villains here. At least not human villains. The villain here is simply a lack of leadership, a lack of purposefulness, and a lack of direction.

Anyone running a workspace must contend with the temptation to coast.

It’s just far too easy to slide into a mode of maintaining a tidy workspace where people come and go and nothing much happens. Building something otherwise requires the kind of constant attention a gardener would put into their crop to ensure it yields fruits and not just weeds.

And gardening isn’t easy. But the fruits in the case of coworking aren’t just nutritious foods; they’re the flourishing of a population of people who would otherwise struggle to find their way.

The stakes here are high. As more and more of our neighbors join the ranks of the independents, by will or by layoff, the need for community support continues to rise.

But most people aren’t going to simply walk into a coworking space, rent a desk, and instantly know everything they need to know to start working for themselves. If coworking spaces commit to providing not just workspace, but the ability to find the resources, education, and people to help them succeed, then the true potential of this movement will start to be realized.

Shifting the narrative

This is already underway in many spaces all over the world, but that hasn’t been the storyline of coworking. Media in recent years has focused on the mass-market consumptive coworking model led by WeWork’s meteoric rise. It’s been a lot of about real estate and dollars and not so much about impact and civic activity.

To that end, I am looking to develop efforts that highlight those who are doing more than just running a workspace. I want to challenge operators everywhere to pledge to do more to support their neighbors and to strive to truly become centers for the new workforce in their respective municipalities.

What can be done

I envision two starting activities:

Conduct interviews with people doing awesome things. There are so many people working on so many great, inspiring projects relating to gathering the new workforce. The more we can share and learn from each other’s stories, the better.

Develop a pledge that challenges organizers to do more than just operate workspace. People who sign the pledge will commit to a series of basic conditions. In exchange, they’ll be provided support and their efforts will be highlighted.

I could go much further, but I want to start somewhere small and actionable.

What do you think?

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3. Local communities act as a beacon.

When you’re on your own, especially when you’re just getting started… and extra especially if you didn’t even choose to be on your own, you can easily feel like you have to figure out everything for yourself.

When you’re getting started, there are so many basics to cover: to incorporate, or not? How to do that? How to do taxes? How to get health care? How to get customers? How to develop products and services? Add to that a healthy dollop of need for training in basic computer and internet skills. It’s a lot, and not everyone is going to be so cut out for figuring all of it out themselves. In Thompson’s estimation:

In the near term, local governments might do well to create more and more-ambitious community centers or other public spaces where residents can meet, learn skills, bond around sports or crafts, and socialize. Two of the most common side effects of unemployment are loneliness, on the individual level, and the hollowing-out of community pride. A national policy that directed money toward centers in distressed areas might remedy the maladies of idleness, and form the beginnings of a long-term experiment on how to reengage people in their neighborhoods in the absence of full employment.

The reality, of course, is that these community centers are already well under development. Coworking spaces are the de facto local community centers, and considering they weren’t designed to play that role, they do a pretty good job.

That being said, managers of coworking spaces would do well to consider how they could take their spaces and go further to make them “more-ambitious community centers”

Government support, if not in the form of money then at least in the form of vigorous cheerleading, could help connect existing spaces to people who need to know that these places exist.

It’s this sort of thing I want more of us to be talking about.

Work is changing in some serious ways. What we do, right now, will affect the extent to which this shift is a healthy and positive one for the countless millions it will affect.

We can’t know for sure a lot about how it will go, but I do know this: people self-organizing on the local level will help, a lot.

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I wanted everyone who joined my community to always stay there forever. I also wanted everyone to be friends with everyone else. I wanted everyone to participate in every event. I wanted everyone who visited to sign up, and I never wanted anyone to leave.

So, in other words, I set myself up for a lot of disappointment. The reality is that, in any community, people come and go. Some might make lots of friends, some might not make any at all. Some might participate in lots of events, or even help plan new things, while others might not show up to anything no matter what you do.

The first thing you have to accept is that you’re not in control of this. You can do a lot of things to influence the process, but it’s ultimately up to each person to decide what relationship they want to have with your community. And while some people may stay for many years, no one stays forever. (No one lives forever! Not even your community! Though you might want your community to outlive you, which is something you can plan for… but that’s a whole other bag of chips.)

Your community is a living and breathing meta-organism. It grows and shrinks. People come and go. To be an effective community organizer, you must detach from what might naturally feel like a very personal thing, and accept that things change over time.

Once I learned to accept and design for the inherently generational phenomenon of communities, things started getting a lot better. I let go of trying to hold onto people who were ready to move on, and I embraced supporting the development of new generations of people as they came in.

I started looking for ways to jumpstart the process, by focusing my energy on specific inflection points, like seasonal shifts when I knew lots of people would be changing jobs and locations and looking for new communities to join.

What resulted was a healthier cross-section of sub-cultures within our community, as people who met others who joined around the same time as them formed stronger bonds while also still cross-pollinating with the rest of the community.

Tips on supporting your community’s generational development:

1. Acknowledge the value of long-time and founding members.

In my community, we called them “OG” members. While we didn’t award any formal status to OG members, we often found ways to increase their role in the community over time. While there were certainly some members who were around for years without participating much or elevating their status in any way (which I’ve come to accept is okay), many of the long-timers found ways to integrate our community more deeply into their lives (and vice versa).

Sometimes it was by running programs in the space, sometimes it was by volunteering to help pick up a couple of shifts at the front desk, sometimes it was showing up for our monthly Welcome Aboard Member Meetings, sometimes it was simply being someone that we told newcomers they should introduce themselves to.

We could also turn to them for advice on big decisions, and when we needed help raising money for a big move, they were there for us in a huge way.

Solicit their feedback. Listen when they have something to say. You don’t need to do the bidding of any one person in your space, but you can certainly keep your ear to the ground.

Are you losing someone who has been a steadfast supporter of yours for years? Listen for that. It might be a clue that you’re not on the right track and you need to make an adjustment pronto.

2. Craft special occasions to give people specific opportunities to join.

In my experience, there were natural recruiting opportunities after Labor Day and New Year’s Day. These are times when people are moving, when they’re changing jobs, or when their kids are going back to school. They’re times of transition, and thus times when people are looking for new communities to join.

Give them a reason to join your community, or at least to get to know your community, and to do so by a specific day! You can tailor the programming to specifically cater to these people, like a Meetup event for people who just moved to town, or a “back to school” goal-setting event for workers who are returning to a kids-aren’t-home work style again. You can also craft programming that just happens to line up with these times, like a membership recruiting drive or a special open house event.

You also don’t have to wait until Labor Day or New Year’s; you can craft generational shifts through other efforts, like local festivals or a special program you develop to attract a certain kind of person.

Whatever it is, it should give a person a sense that, while they may join your community anytime, this particular time is a really good one to join, so if they’re on the fence, they should get off the fence and get involved before they miss out on a good opportunity.

In my case, I had great success with this when recruiting new members to join my Cotivation group (a weekly goal-setting and shared accountability group we ran in my space for a few years). This group had a hard start date and a seasonal nature to it (I marketed it as a New Year’s resolution-keeping program), so it gave people an excuse to join my community and give it a try.

3. Celebrate successful “graduations” from your community.

When it’s time for someone to move on, don’t take it personally. Embrace it for what it is. If someone experienced great success as a result of being in your community, or even if they just had a really great time and are now making a big personal transition, celebrate it! There’s no reason why you can’t trumpet this as a successfully completed member experience that others can be inspired by.

Invite outgoing members to give you feedback, to write you reviews on Yelp and Google, and to join an alumni group (if you have one). Keep them on your invite list for special occasions and, if it feels right, invite them to become formal or informal advisors you can turn to for future decisions and fundraising efforts.

Done right, the departure of your member can more than make up for the loss of their revenue and positive influence on your community by attracting others who aspire to have a similar experience in your community.

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These are just a few of the ways to design for the generational nature of your community; simply being aware of its existence and nature goes a long way on its own.

If you’d like to join for a conversation on this and similar topics, my collaborator Susan and I are hosting a discussion on revitalizing the culture in your coworking community on Tuesday, August 5. RSVP here!

We’re also recruiting a few more folks to become Cotivation organizers, timed to align with a post-Labor Day launch. So if you want more members in your space, and you want your space to have a better culture, consider joining us! Learn more about our Cotivation program here.

I also just released an eBook jam-packed with tips like this. Check it here.

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The sad reality is that there are lots of people who just don’t value space. The only way you can get people to value YOUR space is by setting some clear boundaries and sticking to them.

When you’re just getting started and hungry for exposure, it makes sense to host lots of free events. But it doesn’t last. The space costs money, wear and tear costs money, and the time and energy that has to be put into coordinating, setting up, and cleaning up (ugh, garbage juice) must be valued or it something is going to go wrong eventually (that is, someone ‘s going to quit, or you’re going to burn out).

You WANT your space to be teeming with events all the time, but it has to be done in a way that feeds back to you.

At New Work City, we worked out several arrangements. YMMV based on the nature of your facility, but here’s a rough outline of some of the things we did:

Non-member rental

We would rent out use of our event space to people whose events are complimentary to our members for around $100/hour, plus additional fees for things like catering or use of our fancy projector. One of our team would staff the event to ensure it all goes well.

Member rental

A member could rent the space at a discount, provided they’ve been trained in how to set up, break down, and lock up. If they fail to turn the place back into a pristine coworking space by daybreak, they don’t get to do an event again. (You can be nice but firm about this; any rational person will understand.)

The hardest part about this for us was that our event space was never that easy to delegate. The AV setup was complicated and our supplies were stashed in nooks and crannies, so only we knew where to find a lot of things.

If you plan your event space to be very easy to train someone else to run, you’ll cut down drastically on your own labor and cost.

Sponsored space

We ran a program for a while where we hosted a selected group of Meetup groups for free, underwritten by sponsors. The sponsors got visibility to the members of all of the Meetup groups, which was compelling to them because they didn’t have to work deals with each group.

It worked pretty well for a good run. We didn’t keep it up because finding and maintaining sponsor relationships wasn’t our strong point and coordinating the Meetups was pretty labor intensive and not worth what we were pulling in.

That said, I think it’s a model that works if you’re willing to commit to it and can execute it better than we did.

Revenue share

This is maybe the easiest thing to get everyone to say yes to. If it’s a typically free event, ask that they charge each attendee $10 to attend, and you’ll pocket all of that. In this case, there’s no money out of the pocket of the organizer, so they have no risk, but you still get to gain something by hosting, and you have an incentive to help them promote and make the event a success.

All this being said, in the 6+ years we hosted events at New Work City I can’t say we ever found a model that felt totally right for me. I think we came close a few times, and ultimately am glad we did run events in the space as it was a helpful additional revenue stream, did increase our exposure, and most importantly accounted for a significant portion of the impact we had.

Want to dive deeper into how to handle events in your space? Hit me up through my Help-A-Thon!

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Anyone who’s ever run a coworking space knows that while it’s wonderfully fulfilling work, it’s also not without its un-glamorous and downright gross parts. Running a workspace every day is no easy undertaking; entropy creeps in at every opportunity. Things get messy. Culture shifts in unpredictable ways. Without careful management and smart tricks, the job can easily drive one to burnout.

Since I first got started organizing coworking communities in 2007, I’ve learned the hard way that so much of what it takes to maintain sanity comes down to doing a lot of big and little things to make the community something that not just you, but everyone, can feel ownership over and permission to help make better.

I realized that I could help people avoid a lot of the pain of learning how to handle things the hard way by writing down some of my favorite simple tricks and making them available in the form of a handy little eBook.

And voila, here it is! I’ve been wanting to publish something for a long time now, so getting this out the door has been huge for me. It’s focused completely on practical solutions, with very little in the way of theory and fluff.

It focuses on how to deal with some common issues:

• how to keep the kitchen sink from constantly filling with mugs and dishes
• how to keep up with the never-ending demand for coffee
• how to give people a wide variety of opportunities to connect with each other without being overly pushy
• how to accommodate never-ending changes to membership statuses with no delay and minimal labor
• how we set up our memberships so we never have to chase down non-paying members
• how we strike a balance between maintaining consistent business hours and accommodating the needs of members who need to start work early and stay working late
• how to handle members who we fear may not be a good fit
• how we handle the sharing of limited resources like printing, coffee, and conference rooms
• how we handle conference room bookings to minimize labor, potential conflicts, abuse, and maximize availability for everyone
• how to give people who belong in the space but can’t afford it a way to be members
• how to set up a membership exchange volunteer program

In addition to all of this, I share eight key rules of thumb that can be applied to any of a number of situations. These basic philosophical approaches have been a core part of what’s allowed us to run an extremely efficient operation with a continuously strong culture for over seven years.

It also comes with some handy templates and resources so you can implement the concepts in the book with minimal additional effort.

It’s available for order now for $19.99. Jump on it!

Buy now

You won’t regret it! 

You’ll actually be quite happy!

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There’s a particularly awful kind of feeling to have when you’re a coworking space owner. It’s the one you feel when you’re looking around your space, seeing some seats sitting empty while others are filled by people on their headphones staring at their screens. People come in, they go to their desk, they work, they leave. There’s maybe some chitchat.

You planned some ice-breaker events and had decent attendance, but for the most part people just don’t respond.

When you got started, it was better. There was excitement and energy. People wanted to help. Now, it seems like people just want to be customers. They just want to be served.

What happened? Wasn’t this supposed to be a community? Where did it go?

If you resonate with this, then you and your community may be in a cultural trough. It’s not unusual; every community experiences a natural ebb and flow as people come and go and time marches on. People who were excitedly helping you get started move on, or become complacent.

You come up against the hard reality that you can’t force people to want to participate in a community.

So now what do you do?

This is where our conversation begins. While it may seem impossible to dig a stagnant community culture out of its trough, it’s not—we’ve been there before.

The trick to revitalizing a community’s culture is to think of it as if you’re starting a new community from within. You start with a basic question: what are the unfulfilled wants and needs of present and future community members?

Then: how can you take these needs and create opportunities for people to see how they can fulfill those needs through your community?

With the right kind of focus and effort, you can have a vibrant culture bursting forth once again in relatively short order.

Let’s talk about how. Over the past several years, we (Susan and Tony, hi!) have been running programs in our spaces that have consistently revitalized our communities. Join us Thursday, August 5 at 2:00 ET (see your time zone here) for a special informational session where we’ll dive into what it takes to revitalize your community in the best possible way.

Space is limited, because that’s how video chats work. RSVP for the Hangout, register for email updates, or tune in below!

You can also learn more on our Cotivation site or apply now for our next training session, which runs August to October!

Cheers,
Tony + Susan

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If you’re interested in becoming a Cotivation organizer, learn more here, register for updates, or apply now!

We’re midway through our first-ever training of new Cotivation organizers, and I’m already excited to get more people on board! Susan and I have been meeting weekly with three new organizers who are each developing their own communities, and so far it’s been a tremendously valuable experience for everyone involved.

To that end, Susan and I are kicking off the next round of training the week of June 27. Apply now if you’d like to be a part of our next class of organizers!

Prepare for the post-Labor Day rush.

Summer is a great time to plan and prepare for the fall, when many people look for a new coworking community to join. Kicking off a Cotivation group right at the peak of a seasonal shift will help you onboard newcomers with intention and give people who are on the fence an excuse to pick a day to join.

If you run a coworking community, you might be aware of the natural generational shifts that happen as members of your community join and leave over time. With each incoming generation, you have a chance to shape the future of your community’s culture and the attitudes of the people who join in subsequent generations.

Cotivation was designed to give you a powerful cultural refresh by building a new core of highly bonded people from within. We did this to great success at New Work City, and others have done so in their spaces over the past few years as well.

The training program: 10 weeks of awesome.

Our first training program has at once been instantly very valuable to everyone involved while also being a great opportunity for us to learn how to help people become more effective facilitators.

Meeting primarily over a Skype video session every Wednesday, we create an implicit sense of routine and accountability that mirrors the benefits a Cotivation group provides members—each week we check in with each other, see how everyone is doing and brainstorm solutions for challenges anyone is facing.

Throughout the week, we continue the discussion in our online discussion group, where all organizers are invited to contribute their experiences and ideas.

If you want to cultivate a better culture in your space, and get more members to not just join but stick around, Cotivation is a great program to make that happen—and September’s a great time to launch it!

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If you’re interested in joining us for our August training session, contact me or apply now!

We’ll also be doing a free Cultural Revitalization session on Monday, August 3 at 1:00pm ET. Register for updates to learn more about how to join!

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The more coworking community organizers I speak to, the more I get the powerful feeling that, while new communities are starting daily and many are doing well on paper as workspaces, the culture and participation in these spaces are sorely lacking.

To that end, I’m kicking off a new effort that will give organizers a way to revitalize their community through a fairly simple but powerful program. See below to learn more!

TONY’S COWORKING COMMUNITY
PROBLEM SOLVING PROGRAM

Register by July 31 to participate!

Process
The process follows three basic phases: Evaluate, Identify, and Implement. Each exercise will be valuable unto itself, with the following phase building on the previous.

	1. EVALUATE – Fill out a questionnaire. We begin by looking at how things currently work. What’s working well? What needs attention? What hasn’t been addressed at all? Let’s get a really good sense of how community works in your space right now, so we can make informed decisions as to how to proceed from here.How it works: You’ll fill out an evaluation form with questions ranging from simple to in-depth. Responses will be used to guide the rest of the process.Timing: Evaluation phase begins promptly after an engagement commences and ends after all of the necessary information has been gathered.
	2. IDENTIFY – Meet for a 90 minute video call. With all the necessary information in hand, we’ll now identify the best opportunities to make improvements to culture and operations. We’ll look at simple tactical shifts that will be highly impactful yet easy to implement, while also charting out longer-term goals to work towards over time.How it works: We’ll meet over the phone or in person to discuss analysis of your evaluation and to determine actionable next steps. Timing: We’ll coordinate a time to meet after you fill out the initial Evaluation.
	3. IMPLEMENT – We’ll send you recommendations for next steps.. We’ll work with you to develop a plan for implementing these changes in your space over the coming weeks and months. As you go through the process of implementation, we’ll check in regularly to assess progress and make necessary adjustments.How it works: After our discussion, we’ll develop an Implementation Plan based on what we learned from our previous conversation. Timing: The Implementation Plan will be delivered within one week of the completion of the Identify phase.

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I’m offering this as an experimental pilot program for $250 for the first 5 registrants, then $450 for subsequent registrants. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at tony [at] nwc.co.

Ready to begin? Register now!

After the initial consultation, more in-depth work is available, from ongoing training to full-blown in-person transformational on-site takeovers, where my partner and I will invade your space and help run it for a short period of time.

Also, if you’re interested in boosting the culture in your coworking community, you can also check out the Cotivation licensing and training program I’m offering with my friend Susan.

Cheers!
Tony

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