Coworking: more generosity, more ripples

We’ve had another great response to the call for shared stories about good will and getting started. Recently we posted some tales from Alex Hillman about how Indy Hall got a good running start with community help and some toys from Belkin. Now Susan Evans of Office Nomads is here to check in with a report all the good things — tangible and otherwise — that came to ON while they were getting off the ground. And she explains how she and her partner Jacob Sayles strive to give back to the community.

Here’s Susan on the topic of sharing:

We’ve gotten a ton of donations and they’ve all been super helpful in creating the foundation of what we have going at Office Nomads. Since we’ve started, people have bestowed upon us:

• Furniture (tables & chairs from a local business who was changing out their furniture)
• Coffee (a local business had a ton leftover after an event, and it has kept our caffeine buzz afloat for the first 6 months, and we still have more!)
• Donuts (oh how we love our local vegan donut shop — Mighty O)
• Chalkboards (from a local language school that was switching out to whiteboards)
• Plants (from a few friends who had some for us to adopt)
• Beer! (we love Sierra Nevada!)
• Catering services (also for our 6-month open house)

When we moved into our space, there were a few leftover desks in here from the last tenant. In the end all of this free furniture was unusable for us (it was all way too big and bulky for our space) so we were trying to figure out what to do with it. Insert Craigslist into the picture. Within a day, a lovely couple from a town nearby came to pick up some free desks from US to use in their tattoo shop. They could not have been more excited. We got to watch someone have the same reaction we did when we got the free furniture — so excited to have things that could work in our space and so thankful that someone was willing and ready to let us just take it all. A few days later we got a whole bunch of postcards and a thank you note from our new tattoo-designing friends who reported being thrilled with their things. The whole process made us all warm & fuzzy.

We’ve had some insanely fun and productive work parties here at ON, whether it be building conference tables, front desks, or painting walls in our space. The space reflects all of that hard work and fun for sure and it is palpable when people come in to check us out — the vibe is fun, casual, and (well, I’m a bit biased…) beautiful. We’ve had about 3-4 major work parties in the space to get everything looking settled and nice, and it is amazing to have the space finally in a place where there aren’t a half-dozen half-finished projects laying around. We feel all grown up now, and it’s thanks to all of the great work of our talented friends and colleagues!

There has also been a ton of bartering for us to do since we started up the space, including lots of wonderful resources for us. We barter with people who have been able to provide us office management help, blogging and marketing assistance, web design, postcard flyers, advertising on a local business networking site, networking assistance, interior design help and more. It’s been pretty amazing to watch people come in, love the space, and see what they can offer us in exchange that is not money. We feel lucky every day to continue to foster the growth of our business this way.

In addition, Jacob and I do a lot of reaching out to local organizations to bring them in here in exchange for growing our network. We both volunteer heavily with a few organizations, including Sustainable Capitol Hill, BarCamp Seattle, and a few other groups who use our space regularly (Passages Northwest is one of them — a local experiential education nonprofit for girls I volunteered with for years). I feel very much that we are able to give as much as we receive in our space, which is wonderful. In growing our community we have made some truly excellent connections that make our business network stronger and makes us feel like a strong part of our neighborhood.