Hi all. I love this group. So much information. I don't actually have a coworking space yet but I have begun the process of reaching out to my community to find potential members and bootstrap the entire process. I've been thinking a lot lately about what I *MIGHT *do if my space ever gets off the ground.
One thought I had was around using kiva.org for building a sense of community in your space. If you are not familiar, Kiva is a non-profit that allows people to provide small loans to others in impoverished countries looking for small business loans. Once the borrower repays the loan it goes back into your Kiva account and you get to make another loan. Wouldn't it be great if you created an account on Kiva for your community. Members could contribute however much they would like to the Kiva account, with you as the space owner perhaps matching their donations and, as a community, you come together to decide which borrowers to loan your funds to. This wouldn't be a one time event either. As loans get repaid, money is once again available to be loaned out and your community would come together again and again to find new borrowers. Kiva provides regular updates on the progress the borrower is making so you could have a bulletin board or some other way to keep the community updated on how they are helping. Seems like this would be a win for everyone involved. For relatively little money you are helping to change people's lives; your members will feel good about contributing to the causes; your community will be stronger as your members come together to make decisions collectively; and a stronger community will lead to more members joining and using your space. Jason http://brainyspace.co/working -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
