Michaela Ivanova
Content Marketing Manager at OfficeRnD
5 mins read
Published: Sep 27, 2018 Last updated: Feb 27, 2023
Table of Contents:
Successful coworking communities have always been a noticeable trait that attracts people to shared spaces. The opportunity to be part of something bigger. Of something truly amazing. A reason to put on pants.
Research published by Harvard Bussiness Review states that the number one reason people move from a traditional office environment to shared spaces is to have access to a community that helps them grow and create connections.
In addition, The Global Entrepreneurship Report for 2017/2018 shows that it’s easier for entrepreneurs to grow their business when they are part of an environment with people that have similar values and interests. A place where networking and collaboration opportunities are countless.
So, if the community can be positioned as one of the top differentiators for coworking spaces, and you’re looking to scale, how do you go about doing it? After working with hundreds of coworking spaces around the world, we’ve noticed some interesting commonalities in the approach to successfully scaling a community.
Here’s what we’ve observed so far.
Know your mission. Define your audience.
Good communities are a well-balanced mixture of shared mindset (vision, values, interests, etc) and diverse skills. When a group of people has a similar focus coupled with diverse expertise, they can complement each other by sharing good practices and exchanging know-how in a way that’s applicable.
For example, one of our clients, Alley, focus on growing the connectivity points between individuals and entrepreneurs and enhance the value they bring to the community. They position themselves as a “connected platform for entrepreneurs”, which directly speaks to what type of members they’ll welcome in the space. The result? When you walk into any of their spaces the entrepreneurial spirit is evident!
Alright, so where do you start? Be clear on what your vision/mission is and make sure to communicate it properly. Define your target audience and make sure you understand what they care about and what you bring to the table. And if this sounds a bit too broad to you, start by asking yourself questions like:
”What type of companies/individuals do I want to attract?”
“Why should they care about me and being part of this community?” (If your answer is because of the good location, interior design, price, etc, and doesn’t explain how you’ll help them succeed, then something is missing.)
“What values should they share that will increase the chance of success of each member in the space?”
Think about your member journey
Consider your member journey from start to finish; from coming for a tour to becoming a member. What can you do in each stage to ensure that when the time comes, you’ll be able to point them in the right direction (or better yet – introduce them to the right person)?
The breakdown of the member journey will be different for each coworking space, but here’s an example that illustrates our point:
Pre-sales stage
You can start simply by asking potential members questions like “Why do you want to join our community?”. Alternatively, if there is a high demand for your space and you have the luxury to “source” the right candidates, you can go as detailed as sending qualification questionnaires or doing “entry interviews” with potential members. Ask them about their goals, interests, motivations to join your space or anything else that will help you come up with ideas on how to help them down the line.
Onboarding stage
Usually, onboarding checklists come into play here. But it also might make sense to set aside some time with them to discuss all the info you gathered during the sales process. Just a casual conversation that helps you dig a bit deeper into the info they provided, so you can come up with ideas about people or events they might be interested in.
Active member stage
It’s a good practice to set up follow up tasks and check on how your recommendations/introductions turned out, but you’ll probably need to do more than that to keep your members engaged.
It’s hard to recommend a specific set (or type) of activities that are the formula to success, as each community is unique. What we’ve noticed is that each coworking space that developed a vibrant and engaged community says that events are key.
Invest consistent effort in engaging people. In coworking, the real magic happens offline, but make sure you take advantage of online tools to engage your community as they encourage interactions and help to keep your members informed.
Eventually, if you’ve made sure your community consists of members with similar interests and you’ve done your best to keep them engaged, things should start developing on their own. Just give the initial push and then make sure to provide a good environment for things to happen!
The final bit that comes into play – someone left your coworking space, but does this mean that your community is 1 person (or team) short?
Best case scenario – it shouldn’t. So we want to give special emphasis on the final stage of the member’s journey:
Extend your community to people outside of your space
A community is not defined by time and space limitations, but by the value and the meaning of the interactions between people. Retaining former members in your community, or establishing connections with members’ friends that share similar values and interests can be useful as they might have the expertise to help your current members (and vise versa).
Think about the people you met at college or university – although you’re not going to classes anymore, you probably still keep in touch with the ones you’ve had meaningful interactions with by that time. It’s not a coincidence that the best universities like Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge have top-notch alumni associations, which are the communities that gave birth to numerous of the most successful companies (take Instagram for an example, whose co-founders met through the Stanford alumni network).
However, once your community grows above a certain point, it will be impossible to rely only on your memory to make such meaningful introductions. So how do you keep up?
Maintain some kind of database
Regardless if you’re using a coworking CRM, a spreadsheet or some kind of dedicated tool for the purpose, you’ll need a way to keep track of all essential information and make it easily accessible. You can also come up with some sort of tagging mechanism to easily source the information you need.
Set up an online community
Think about how you can use technology to increase member visibility and allow people to connect with each other directly. Basically, an online community that can grow on its own and can be nurtured with less effort. We’ll cover this specific topic in a later post in more detail, so stay tuned.
Here’s a simple example: If a member comes to you with an idea of an event that might be interesting to other people in the space, you might want to let them actively participate in the organization process.
Conclusion
Whether it allows companies to meet their new big client without even leaving the office or helps young startups grow, or simply gives an opportunity for knowledge sharing, a vibrant community is something that adds both human and business value.
A community is the core, the foundation, the inner spirit of a coworking space. It’s what attracts people. It’s an enigma that’s often difficult to explain, but yet, it’s why we’re all in love with coworking, after all.
P.S. Did you enjoy reading through this post? ✅ 👉Don’t miss to sign up for our newsletter (subscribe button at the bottom of this page), so you can stay up to date with such coworking tips and insights!
Michaela got involved in the flexible workspace industry in 2015 when she joined a boutique coworking space as a Community & Marketing Manager. Later on, she moved to the technology industry but she continued working from shared spaces. Her passion for coworking and her experience in the technology sector eventually led her to join OfficeRnD, the world's leading coworking management software, where she's dedicated to creating content that empowers workspace operators to scale their business.
Set up the system on your own, following our detailed video guide. We will send you a step-by-step daily email with video tutorials on how to configure OfficeRnD. Once you аre ready, we will put you in contact with an onboarding specialist for up to 2 hours of Q&A sessions, where you can ask questions and verify your setup.
Key Details
PriceFREE
SettingRemote
Duration2h
Overview
Take advantage of this 6-hour dedicated onboarding process during which our team helps you set OfficeRnD up following best practices. We will start with a short kick-off session to discuss your current processes, timelines, integrations and outline a step-by-step plan to ensure the smooth adoption of the system on your end. Our Onboarding Specialists will make the most effective use of your time together working to empower you to take full advantage of the system capabilities on your own.
What’s Included:
Together we will outline an onboarding plan with action items and milestones.
We will regularly review the progress of the setup and guide you to the next steps.
Together we will create strategies for addressing complex use cases.
We will guide you over email and screen-sharing calls.
We will extensively review the final setup of the system and be available to immediately jump on a call on the go-live date.
We will help you set up and run your first bill run. We will also help you automate all the others.
2 training modules.
Key Details
Price$299
SettingRemote
Duration6h
Overview
This onboarding package is best for multi-location teams with complicated workflows. We will start with a short kick-off session to discuss your current processes, timelines, integrations and outline a step-by-step plan to ensure the smooth adoption of the system on your end. Our Onboarding Specialists will make the most effective use of your time together working to empower you to take full advantage of the system capabilities and reporting tools on your own.
What’s Included:
Together we will outline an onboarding plan with action items and milestones.
We will regularly review the progress of the setup and guide you to the next steps.
Together we will create strategies for addressing complex use cases.
We will guide you over email and screen-sharing calls.
We will extensively review the final setup of the system and be available to immediately jump on a call on the go-live date.
We will help you set up and run your first bill run. We will also help you automate all the others.
4 training modules
Key Details
Price$599
SettingRemote
Duration12h
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Basic Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Onboarding – Basic onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (24h) and Critical (4h)
Key Details
PriceFREE
Setting Remote
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Standard Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Dedicated Q&A Support Sessions (1 hour / month) – Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month.
Onboarding – Basic Onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (16h) and Critical (4h)
Key details
Price$149
SettingRemote
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Premium Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Dedicated Q&A Support Sessions (4 hours / month) – Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month.
Onboarding – Basic Onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (8h) and Critical (1h)
Key details
Price$299
SettingRemote
Overview
Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month with them.
What’s Included:
You get direct access to a lead support specialist.
We will prioritize your support requests.
Together we will discuss strategies for addressing custom use cases.
Together we will discuss your feature requests.
Together we will troubleshoot any issues.
We will show you the latest new features in the system.
Key Details
Price$150/month
SettingRemote
Duration4h/month
Overview
We will cover the basic CRM functionalities OfficeRnD supports. We will show you how to create, update and delete companies, members and opportunities. We will show you how to create custom properties to better describe them. We’ll demonstrate how to create memberships for members, change their status and invite them on the members portal.
Learn How To:
Add a company.
Add a company member.
Add an individual member.
Assign a membership to a member.
Invoice memberships in 3,6 or 12-month periods.
Add a one-off fee to a member’s profile.
Invite a member to the members portal.
Invite multiple members to the members portal.
Change the email of a member.
Pause a membership.
Mark companies and members as former and what that means for their access to the portal.
Manually add day passes.
Add custom properties to a company/member.
Extend the information captured for opportunities.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will cover all billing options available in OfficeRnD. We will show you how to create tax rates and revenue accounts, how will they be applied on invoices and what discounting options the system provides. We will demonstrate how to create invoices and manually run the bill run. We will also together review the billing settings in the system and automate the billing operations.
Learn How To:
Configure your tax rates and revenue accounts.
Add discounts and apply those to memberships.
Review the billing settings and automate billing operations.
Raise an invoice
Raise multiple invoices with a manual BillRun.
Understand invoice statuses.
Edit an invoice.
Charge invoices.
Record a refund on invoices.
Create an invoice for a period of longer than 1 month.
Review outstanding not-invoiced fees and memberships.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will show you how to create meeting rooms and configure their pricing options, booking and cancellation policies. We will cover how to create booking credits – hourly and value-based. We will demonstrate how to make a booking and how to review its corresponding fee.
Learn How To:
Understand resource rates and how to add one.
Add a meeting room and set its privacy.
Configure booking and cancellation policies.
Add a booking.
Update and cancel a booking.
Add extras as purchasable options available with a meeting room booking.
Manually add booking credits to members.
Invoice bookings.
Review bookings and take advantage of the Bookings Report.
Change the business hours of the space.
Change the visibility of the bookings on the members portal.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will go over what a contract is, what are its building blocks, and what types of contracts OfficeRnD provides. We will show you how to create contracts, how to sign and how-to terminate them. We will also discuss the lifecycle of each contract.
Learn How To:
Use contracts and what they are for.
Create a Membership Agreement, a License Agreement or a Lease Agreement.
Add a contract.
Generate a contract PDF document.
Sign a contract.
Differentiate memberships attached to a contract.
Different stages of a contract and how to terminate it.
Configure and implement a contract approval process.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will show you the default resource types available in OfficeRnD. We will cover how they can be edited and when should you create custom resource types. We will demonstrate how to assign memberships on the floorplan and how to accommodate floorplan changes.
Learn How To:
Understand the default resource types and how to track their occupancy and utilization.
Create private offices and desks.
Assign resources to members.
Assign memberships on the floorplan.
Relocate a membership.
Upgrade or downgrade a membership on the floorplan.
Change a meeting room to an office and vice versa.
Replace a dedicated desk with a hotdesk and vice versa.
Create custom resource types.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover how to collaborate with members via the members portal and the mobile app. We will show you how to create posts and events. We will demonstrate how to upload information about benefits and different how-to guides on the members portal. We will also go through integrations that power up collaboration with members.
Learn How To:
Take a short overview of the members portal and the different type of users and their permissions.
Add posts.
Add events.
Add benefits.
Add How-To Guides.
Find where members can add issues and where you can review them.
Set up integration with Slack and its benefits.
Connect OfficeRnD with Eventbrite using Zapier.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover the billing reports available in the system. We will show you how to use each one and dive deeper into the data it exposes.
Learn How To:
Find the billing charts available on the OfficeRnD Dashboard
Use the Revenue Dashboard
Use the Memberships Dashboard
Use the Projected Revenue Report
Use the Invoiced Revenue Report
Export invoices.
Customize the invoices export.
Use the Memberships Report.
Use the Members Report.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover the occupancy and utilization reports available in the system. We will show you how to use each one and dive deeper into the data it exposes.
Learn How To:
Use the Occupancy Dashboards.
Use the Occupancy Report for private offices and dedicated desks.
Use the Occupancy Interval report.
Use the Resource Utilization report.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
Set up the system on your own, following our detailed video guide. We will send you a step-by-step daily email with video tutorials on how to configure OfficeRnD. Once you аre ready, we will put you in contact with an onboarding specialist for up to 2 hours of Q&A sessions, where you can ask questions and verify your setup.
Key Details
PriceFREE
SettingRemote
Duration2h
Overview
Take advantage of this 6-hour dedicated onboarding process during which our team helps you set OfficeRnD up following best practices. We will start with a short kick-off session to discuss your current processes, timelines, integrations and outline a step-by-step plan to ensure the smooth adoption of the system on your end. Our Onboarding Specialists will make the most effective use of your time together working to empower you to take full advantage of the system capabilities on your own.
What’s Included:
Together we will outline an onboarding plan with action items and milestones.
We will regularly review the progress of the setup and guide you to the next steps.
Together we will create strategies for addressing complex use cases.
We will guide you over email and screen-sharing calls.
We will extensively review the final setup of the system and be available to immediately jump on a call on the go-live date.
We will help you set up and run your first bill run. We will also help you automate all the others.
2 training modules.
Key Details
Price$299
SettingRemote
Duration6h
Overview
This onboarding package is best for multi-location teams with complicated workflows. We will start with a short kick-off session to discuss your current processes, timelines, integrations and outline a step-by-step plan to ensure the smooth adoption of the system on your end. Our Onboarding Specialists will make the most effective use of your time together working to empower you to take full advantage of the system capabilities and reporting tools on your own.
What’s Included:
Together we will outline an onboarding plan with action items and milestones.
We will regularly review the progress of the setup and guide you to the next steps.
Together we will create strategies for addressing complex use cases.
We will guide you over email and screen-sharing calls.
We will extensively review the final setup of the system and be available to immediately jump on a call on the go-live date.
We will help you set up and run your first bill run. We will also help you automate all the others.
4 training modules
Key Details
Price$599
SettingRemote
Duration12h
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Basic Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Onboarding – Basic onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (24h) and Critical (4h)
Key Details
PriceFREE
Setting Remote
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Standard Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Dedicated Q&A Support Sessions (1 hour / month) – Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month.
Onboarding – Basic Onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (16h) and Critical (4h)
Key details
Price$149
SettingRemote
Overview
Get familiar with the essentials in the Premium Support Package.
What’s Included:
Email & Chat Support – Our support team is available to customers via chat and email at [email protected] Monday-Friday from 7:00AM to 5:00PM UTC.
Monthly Training Webinars – Joins us monthly for a short and focused webinar on the features of OfficeRnD where our team discusses how to best take advantage of different parts of the system and addresses commonly asked questions.
Dedicated Q&A Support Sessions (4 hours / month) – Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month.
Onboarding – Basic Onboarding
Initial Response Time – Normal severity (24h), Restricted Operation (8h) and Critical (1h)
Key details
Price$299
SettingRemote
Overview
Get direct access to one of our lead support specialists and book up to 4 hours of screen-sharing calls per month with them.
What’s Included:
You get direct access to a lead support specialist.
We will prioritize your support requests.
Together we will discuss strategies for addressing custom use cases.
Together we will discuss your feature requests.
Together we will troubleshoot any issues.
We will show you the latest new features in the system.
Key Details
Price$150/month
SettingRemote
Duration4h/month
Overview
We will cover the basic CRM functionalities OfficeRnD supports. We will show you how to create, update and delete companies, members and opportunities. We will show you how to create custom properties to better describe them. We’ll demonstrate how to create memberships for members, change their status and invite them on the members portal.
Learn How To:
Add a company.
Add a company member.
Add an individual member.
Assign a membership to a member.
Invoice memberships in 3,6 or 12-month periods.
Add a one-off fee to a member’s profile.
Invite a member to the members portal.
Invite multiple members to the members portal.
Change the email of a member.
Pause a membership.
Mark companies and members as former and what that means for their access to the portal.
Manually add day passes.
Add custom properties to a company/member.
Extend the information captured for opportunities.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will cover all billing options available in OfficeRnD. We will show you how to create tax rates and revenue accounts, how will they be applied on invoices and what discounting options the system provides. We will demonstrate how to create invoices and manually run the bill run. We will also together review the billing settings in the system and automate the billing operations.
Learn How To:
Configure your tax rates and revenue accounts.
Add discounts and apply those to memberships.
Review the billing settings and automate billing operations.
Raise an invoice
Raise multiple invoices with a manual BillRun.
Understand invoice statuses.
Edit an invoice.
Charge invoices.
Record a refund on invoices.
Create an invoice for a period of longer than 1 month.
Review outstanding not-invoiced fees and memberships.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will show you how to create meeting rooms and configure their pricing options, booking and cancellation policies. We will cover how to create booking credits – hourly and value-based. We will demonstrate how to make a booking and how to review its corresponding fee.
Learn How To:
Understand resource rates and how to add one.
Add a meeting room and set its privacy.
Configure booking and cancellation policies.
Add a booking.
Update and cancel a booking.
Add extras as purchasable options available with a meeting room booking.
Manually add booking credits to members.
Invoice bookings.
Review bookings and take advantage of the Bookings Report.
Change the business hours of the space.
Change the visibility of the bookings on the members portal.
Key Details
Price$150
SettingRemote
Duration60min
Overview
We will go over what a contract is, what are its building blocks, and what types of contracts OfficeRnD provides. We will show you how to create contracts, how to sign and how-to terminate them. We will also discuss the lifecycle of each contract.
Learn How To:
Use contracts and what they are for.
Create a Membership Agreement, a License Agreement or a Lease Agreement.
Add a contract.
Generate a contract PDF document.
Sign a contract.
Differentiate memberships attached to a contract.
Different stages of a contract and how to terminate it.
Configure and implement a contract approval process.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will show you the default resource types available in OfficeRnD. We will cover how they can be edited and when should you create custom resource types. We will demonstrate how to assign memberships on the floorplan and how to accommodate floorplan changes.
Learn How To:
Understand the default resource types and how to track their occupancy and utilization.
Create private offices and desks.
Assign resources to members.
Assign memberships on the floorplan.
Relocate a membership.
Upgrade or downgrade a membership on the floorplan.
Change a meeting room to an office and vice versa.
Replace a dedicated desk with a hotdesk and vice versa.
Create custom resource types.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover how to collaborate with members via the members portal and the mobile app. We will show you how to create posts and events. We will demonstrate how to upload information about benefits and different how-to guides on the members portal. We will also go through integrations that power up collaboration with members.
Learn How To:
Take a short overview of the members portal and the different type of users and their permissions.
Add posts.
Add events.
Add benefits.
Add How-To Guides.
Find where members can add issues and where you can review them.
Set up integration with Slack and its benefits.
Connect OfficeRnD with Eventbrite using Zapier.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover the billing reports available in the system. We will show you how to use each one and dive deeper into the data it exposes.
Learn How To:
Find the billing charts available on the OfficeRnD Dashboard
Use the Revenue Dashboard
Use the Memberships Dashboard
Use the Projected Revenue Report
Use the Invoiced Revenue Report
Export invoices.
Customize the invoices export.
Use the Memberships Report.
Use the Members Report.
Key Details
Price$100
SettingRemote
Duration30min
Overview
We will cover the occupancy and utilization reports available in the system. We will show you how to use each one and dive deeper into the data it exposes.
Learn How To:
Use the Occupancy Dashboards.
Use the Occupancy Report for private offices and dedicated desks.