SOME GREAT IDEAS ABOUT COST SHARING AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR NONPROFITS

This article by Bob Goldfarb on Jewish Philanthropy.com has some great ideas about sharing operating costs, and links to some successful operating nonprofits shared spaces and services.

A key finding of the recent Jumpstart study of Jewish startups is that “startups say they would benefit most from mechanisms that lower administrative and operational costs.” One successful model for sharing costs is Bikkurim: An Incubator for New Jewish Ideas. Bikkurim gives its resident organizations office space and professional support, and they form a community of innovators. In some ways it resembles Jumpstart’s own JSpace concept, which it describes as “the hub for Jewish innovation in LA. The idea,” Jumpstart says, “is not just to realize economy of scale in a 21st century office environment, but to create a hip, dynamic and cooperative nexus for the current wave of Jewish innovation.

This concept has certainly taken root outside the United States in the non-Jewish world. An association of working communities called The Hub numbers twelve locations from Tel Aviv to London to Bombay, Johannesburg, and São Paolo. They include two North American sites, in Toronto and Halifax.

In the United States, Tides Shared Spaces, a program of the Tides Foundation in San Francisco, operates a Thoreau Center housing up to 15 nonprofits in lower Manhattan, and another Thoreau Center in San Francisco’s Presidio. It is looking into a similar venture in Washington, DC. Perhaps the largest such undertaking is the NonProfit Center near Boston’s South Station, which some two dozen nonprofits call home.Read More.