{"id":233,"date":"2016-02-18T20:40:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T20:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/?p=233"},"modified":"2016-02-18T20:40:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T20:40:33","slug":"a-coworking-co-op-it-can-be-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/a-coworking-co-op-it-can-be-done\/","title":{"rendered":"A Coworking Co-Op: It can be done!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, in the Coworking Google Group<\/a> (you’re on that, right?), Trevor Twining from Cowork Niagra<\/a> started a conversation about the difficulty (or\u00a0relative lack thereof) in\u00a0establishing a coworking space as a co-op.<\/p>\n

Many other founders, including me, looked at the possibility of doing this, but judged it too complicated\/scary\/confusing to dive into. Trevor, thankfully, not just powered through such resistance, he succeeded in flying colors AND shared his story with the world.<\/p>\n

His outline of how\u00a0they did it, excerpted from this thread<\/a> (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. We were already meeting as a jelly group for 18 months before we started with our space,<\/strong> so we had a core community from which to build.<\/li>\n
  2. As we were talking about the mutually-invested community we wanted to build,<\/strong> someone who was already working on a food co-op in our city asked if we had considered the model.<\/li>\n
  3. We looked at the resources<\/strong> at the link above (here<\/a>) and enough connected that we decided this was the model for us.<\/li>\n
  4. We filled out the incorporation forms ourselves.<\/strong> It took a couple of hours. (I can walk you through if you get to this stage)<\/li>\n
  5. The membership fees from the founding members gave us the capital we needed<\/strong> to create the corporation and get the initial paperwork filed.<\/li>\n
  6. Members pre-paid<\/strong> first, last and as many months as they could up-front so that we could build a nest egg. Some members provided member loans.<\/li>\n
  7. Our membership model also encourages participation<\/strong> that doesn\u2019t directly involve the space, so we have a larger group of members than space users. (our current membership is 70, but less than 30 use the space 1d\/week or more)<\/li>\n
  8. With that money in the bank, we were able to sign our lease,<\/strong> get our utilities set up, and hang our sign on the door.<\/li>\n
  9. We have a board of 8 directors,<\/strong> and they help guide the long term direction of the group. I\u2019m still chief resident volunteer cat-herder\/tummler, and we\u2019re working on expanding our service offering so we can pay someone to be in this role.<\/li>\n
  10. Annually we have a meeting<\/strong> to review finances, vote on key changes in direction, and when we get to the point where we\u2019re managing a surplus, the group will decide how that\u2019s allocated.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    It doesn’t stop there… first of all, what was that? Their model encourages participation (awesome)… that doesn’t directly involve the space?! Gush!<\/p>\n

    I’m eager to learn more about their model and what kinds of participatory activities the members engage in.<\/p>\n

    And check out their simple, intentional events programming<\/a>. Useful to the members, opens up opportunities for forging stronger bonds, and easy as heck to manage.<\/p>\n

    There’s Consumer\u00a0Community, then there’s Authentic, Participatory Community. These guys are rocking the latter.<\/p>\n

    \"This<\/a>
    This is what a coworking community looks like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Recently, in the Coworking Google Group (you’re on that, right?), Trevor Twining from Cowork Niagra started a conversation about the difficulty (or\u00a0relative lack thereof) in\u00a0establishing a coworking space as a co-op. Many other founders, including me, looked at the possibility of doing this, but judged it too complicated\/scary\/confusing to dive into. Trevor, thankfully, not just powered through such resistance, he … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwc.co\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}