What do coworking space expect from an advocacy association?
This year's Coworking Trends Survey was conducted in Germany on behalf of the German Coworking Federation (GCF). As such, participants were also asked about their general expectations of a coworking association.
In short, coworking space companies or organizations look for two things from an advocacy group. First, they expect effective public relations. For example, an association should explain the concept of coworking to a broad audience, position coworking spaces as an alternative to the home office, and represent the interests of coworking companies in the political arena. They would also welcome support in the acquisition of members, e.g. through broker deals.
On the other hand, they would like to receive advice in all areas related to their own business. Since this was likely to be a broad range, we also asked which topics were of particular interest.
In open-ended responses, most coworking spaces were looking for advice on attracting members. Information on how to build a community, increase profitability or manage the space more efficiently was also requested more frequently.
We then presented ten responses that had not previously been selected for potential popularity. Of the coworking space companies that responded, more than one in two expressed interest in grants. Many also wanted to know more about "neighborhood networking," "climate neutrality," and "workplace regulations. And one in three respondents was interested in 'expansion'.
You can download all of the above results as graphs here (in German). Additional data was analyzed and interpreted by the GCF team. The results will be available here soon (in German).
:::
The article photo shows the KreativWerk R6 in Hennigsdorf (Brandenburg). The coworking space opened last year. The photographer is Andreas Friese.
