Shared Space and the New Nonprofit Workplace
China Brotsky, Sarah M. Eisinger & Diane Vinokur-Kaplan
472 pages, Oxford University Press, 2019
Adequate office and program space are serious problems for today’s nonprofits. Rising real estate costs in major cities across the United States and Canada are creating an affordability crisis and displacement for many important community-serving nonprofits. New US tax laws have created serious disincentives for individual and corporate charitable giving. And across North America, many nonprofits operate in inefficient, rundown space not equipped to meet the technology and collaboration-oriented needs of today’s programs.
One answer is shared resources, especially shared space, and shared back office services, with the powerful benefits that stem from it. For individual organizations, shared space has been shown to create improved efficiency, effectiveness, and opportunities for collaboration along with operating cost savings and stability. Communities benefit from improved direct services, cultural spaces, hubs for civic engagement, and contributions to community-centered development. But real estate is rarely a core competency for nonprofits.
Shared Space and the New Nonprofit Workplace creates a roadmap to help charitable organizations realize their vision. Going well beyond an overview, it also provides a detailed outline of the process of creation, from site selection to design considerations, from building collaboration and shared services to the research documenting benefits and impacts.
The book also includes 13 case studies by practitioners contributing fresh lessons to this growing field (750 projects and growing across North America), including how social innovation and social enterprise can thrive in nonprofit and multi-sector centers.
As shown in the excerpt below, the book specifically addresses the role of government, philanthropy, community development, social enterprise and the commercial real estate sector in understanding the model and supporting its growth in their communities. — China Brotsky, Sarah M. Eisinger & Diane Vinokur-Kaplan
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A New Model for Nonprofits
Imagine a young mother who works at a low-wage job. With her earnings she still needs nonprofit services to support her children—a fifth-grade daughter who is having academic trouble at school and a preschool son with serious medical issues. Accessing these vital services, however, requires her to cobble together programs from various providers across the county in which she lives. So every month she must travel many miles: weekly trips with her daughter to a nonprofit tutoring program and frequent visits with her son to a nonprofit medical clinic. She also tries to attend a weekly nonprofit job skills program so she can get a better job. These trips are in addition to her commute to her full-time job across town and visits to a food bank.
What if we erased that barrier? Instead of this mother driving or taking the bus to multiple places, often missing appointments or being late to work, we bundle many of the services she needs in one place – a Direct Service Center. What if medical, social, and educational professionals could collaborate as a unit to help this family? …
These Direct Service Centers are just one of four organizational types of the nonprofit center, or shared space, model (for the purposes of this book, we use these terms interchangeably). This model also includes three other types … Theme Centers, where all residents are related to a particular focus, such as the environment, health, or the arts; Generalist Centers, where nonprofits working on a variety of issues co-locate for the shared space benefits; and Flexible Space Centers, such as coworking and incubator sites.
The shared space model is versatile, applicable to many nonprofit organizations with different missions and concerns and in varying locations and demographics. … In Louisville, KY, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky operates (c)space, a membership-based coworking space for nonprofits and socially minded businesses. Even the smallest start-ups gain an address, a community and new networks to advance their mission.
In Ottawa, Canada, a courthouse was repurposed to become Arts Court, now housing more than twenty arts organizations. Galleries, dance and theater companies, administrative offices of festivals, and the Ottawa Arts Council all share space, bringing new visibility and audiences to these organizations. …
[These projects] … are all examples of the nonprofit center, an important infrastructure model in the nonprofit sector that has grown in prominence over the last twenty years and is built on the pioneering work of nonprofit organizations during the early 20th century. In its simplest form, nonprofit centers are buildings that provide quality, affordable space and shared services to multiple nonprofits while providing opportunities for collaboration and program enhancement. These centers sometimes house government and commercial tenants as well, promoting cross-sector collaboration. More recently, the nonprofit center model has also incorporated coworking spaces to help individuals, social entrepreneurs, and small organizations who may need more flexible, affordable space. At their best, organizations in nonprofit centers work together in support of a common mission, tackling complex issues in a variety of ways: through joint marketing campaigns, program delivery, legislative agendas, or sharing staff. …
Innovation Opportunities
The nonprofit center is an excellent incubator for innovation, bringing diverse people and organizations together in flexible space for new kinds of discourse and collaborations. It provides creative solutions to major issues facing the US and Canadian charitable sectors. According to a recent essay from the National Council of Nonprofits, nonprofit managers face a shifting environment, one of fewer government grants and declining donor loyalty and corporate support. Therefore, they must increase their organizations’ efficiencies and implement effectiveness to its maximum. Shared space and resources offer innovative ways of managing activities toward those goals. … Among the most exciting aspects of shared space is the opportunity for collaboration among organizations. Collaboration comes in many forms and nonprofit centers are fertile places for collaboration to be nurtured and cultivated. …
Buildings for People
While organizational efficiency and effectiveness are meaningful outcomes, the inspiration for the model remains the people who are served: the young mother seeking services and finding a welcoming place in a nonprofit center, or the dance company that can find an affordable studio to create new work, or the community activists who now have a place to meet and organize. The people and their organizations are the heart of nonprofit centers.
Partnering With Allies
Any collaboration needs partners, and the growth of the nonprofit centers field has been fueled in many places by the support and funding of the government and philanthropic sectors. When embarking on the creation of a center, a careful review of the potential roles of local or national partners in these fields is crucial. These roles often extend beyond funding and financing.
In addition, there are other areas in the nonprofit and for profit sectors that have great potential as allies and supporters. … As we describe, many nonprofit centers are archetypal social enterprises, and their inclusion in this growing movement can strengthen both parties. [Similarly] … the community development field is another area for intersection with the nonprofit center field. The inclusion of the nonprofit center model in planning strategies for communities has been underutilized and could strengthen that work in many locations.
Role of Foundations in Creating Shared Space
Foundations, especially in the United States (and, to a lesser extent, in Canada) have played an important role in creating nonprofit centers and building the field. At the time of the 2011 Nonprofit Centers Network (NCN) survey, foundations had created approximately 20% of self-identified nonprofit centers. They’ve done so in a variety of creative ways, using many of the methods in the philanthropic toolkit. The authors’ hope here is to provide interested foundations with an overview of the contributions by foundations to the nonprofit center field.
Why this interest in bricks and mortar real estate as the new century tips us further into the digital age? Primarily because real estate projects can lead to increased fulfillment and enhancement of a foundation’s charitable mission. Real estate projects create a concrete difference in communities, all flowing from the face-to- face collaboration and improved direct services these centers engender.
The authors have already discussed the destructive impact on the nonprofit sector of rising rents and gentrification. Well-spent resources on creating nonprofit centers can replace multiple scattershot requests for capital and rent funding. They can help ease nonprofit displacement while enhancing the programs and long-term stability of participating nonprofits. (See Chapter 27: Rent Support in a Volatile Market.) This more efficient use of foundation resources can also leverage additional charitable and private sector resources to bring sorely needed capital to the nonprofit sector. … As foundations expand their grantee support to include convenings, hosting, and technical assistance, foundation-run nonprofit and conference centers have proven to be great locations for this work. …
Foundations have used a variety of ownership structures, financing options, and community involvement strategies in developing centers. Their strategies are shaped by the impact they want, the partners involved, and their own mission and vision. ...
Social Enterprise and Nonprofit Centers
Over the last twenty years, social enterprise has been a growing trend in the non-profit, philanthropic, and for-profit sectors. By social enterprise, we refer to both (i) earned income generating activities of nonprofits and (ii) triple bottom line for-profit enterprises combining profit, social, and environmental good, at times in hybrid structures like B Corporations. While nonprofit centers see themselves as naturally aligned with social enterprise, many social enterprise investors and practitioners have not seen nonprofit real estate and shared space as a relevant category of social enterprise.
In many ways, the nonprofit center is the classic social enterprise. Its goal is social—to provide quality and affordable workspace to nonprofits and social entrepreneurs doing essential work in communities. It provides an ongoing revenue stream (rents) that can support operations and debt. At the same time, it can only succeed as an enterprise if operated on strong business and real estate principles, with attention paid to capitalization, budgets, operations, and other management challenges. The most successful nonprofit centers have achieved financial self-sufficiency; they do not rely on ongoing philanthropic subsidies, except at times for capital renovations.
If social enterprise funders and investors can begin to make this connection, they could truly leverage the potential of this new infrastructure strategy and bring new resources to the nonprofit centers field. Direct service hubs that provide one-stop social services, arts centers, and shared advocacy buildings could join investment portfolios with nonprofit-run bakeries, urban farms, thrift stores, and catering companies that hire populations with barriers to employment. Blended coworking social enterprises like the Impact Hubs and the HiVE in Vancouver are modeling this by including workhorse nonprofits providing critical services in neighborhoods as a core constituency.
As the social enterprise sector begins to give more focus to low-income communities in North America, solutions to individual community members’ needs for education, employment, and housing would be strengthened by parallel attention to the nonprofits struggling with operational and infrastructure needs—including real estate needs. It is vitally important both nationally and internationally and merits the attention of investors, donors, and business school graduates alike.
Final Lessons
Creating a nonprofit center is a complicated process. Projects don’t always succeed or they succeed initially and then may face … obstacles. The road to success is often long and circuitous, but tenacious leaders have proven over and over that the model is achievable. Our goal is that the lessons we have laid out in this book can lead to many more successes—financially sustainable projects that create positive, long-lasting impact in their communities and in the world. The following can help insure project success.
- Be flexible. There is not one rigid template for nonprofit centers. They can be adapted with great flexibility for local conditions once the basic model and process for development are understood.
- Find a champion. Champions are needed to create nonprofit center projects. ... Most successful projects have had champions who hold the vision and organize the project for the long term.
- Gain allies. [It] is essential to gather allies and reach out to the community. Going it alone can result in burnout and the loss of momentum as difficulties arise. ...
- Understand the numbers. Real estate is a business, even if done for social purposes. The necessity for starting with a good business plan, sound financial projections, and a sustained focus on the budget and cash flow is crucial.
- Pick wisely. Don’t fall in love with a building; fall in love with your project’s purpose! Make sure that the real estate you pick is affordable to build or renovate and then operate. ...
- Be patient. Projects take longer than you ever imagined, and partnerships are wonderful but time-consuming—be prepared. ... Start small and build community and supporters as you go. Can you collaborate before you co-locate, lease before you buy, or start in interim space to prove the model to local stakeholders?
- Don’t reinvent the wheel. Learn from those who have gone before. The Nonprofit Centers Network (NCN) is a good place to do that. ...
- Get on the same page. Every successful project has had organizational alignment. Boards, staff, management, and key donors must support the project as a logical strategic move for the partner organizations.
- Make enough time. Staff the project correctly; make sure whoever is in charge really has the needed time and focus. Developing or managing a nonprofit center is not the kind of project that can be done intermittently and on a part-time basis.
- Developing a nonprofit center is not a DIY project. … Use professional help, starting with a good developer or project manager, an attorney, and sometimes a real estate broker. Be sure they understand and support what you’re trying to do.
- Purpose comes first. Finally, always remember the purpose of the center…and who the center will ultimately serve: the staff, partners or clients, stakeholders, and constituents. The space should reflect their needs, meet their challenges, and make their lives better.
Our Vision
Our vision is that every nonprofit has space that dignifies their work; that they’ve been able to leave the church basements behind, and every city has quality shared space to house and highlight the work of nonprofits; that nonprofits sit at the table in every neighborhood participatory planning process along with the people they serve and that they’re involved in decisions that concern their communities; and that co-location, shared services, and collaboration magnify the impact of every issue-focused organization. ...