Coworking continues to grow globally with over 1 million coworkers. New spaces are emerging focused on specific groups like female entrepreneurs and veterans. Open Coworking aims to support this growth while ensuring the movement develops positively. Goals for 2017-18 include connecting regional coworking groups, improving welcome materials for new members, and recruiting new leadership. Open Coworking relies on supporter funding to achieve these goals.

1. Impact Report 2017

2. Dear Open Coworking supporter,
As the coworking movement continues to grow, so too does its impact on
the world.
This year, we crossed over one million coworkers worldwide, and there’s
no sign of slowing down. Coworking is showing up in many forms—in
giant workspace rental buildings, in churches, in restaurants—with more
communities now being formed to focus on the needs of specific
audiences.
Spaces with a focus on female entrepreneurs are exploding. Veteran-
oriented spaces as well.
It seems that, wherever there’s a group of people who are due for boost
of empowerment, coworking is there to facilitate.
As we look ahead, we must consider how new generations of people will
continue to be introduced to this movement, and the role we can play in
helping tell the story of how we got here.
Coworking is going to continue to change industries and touch the lives
of millions.
We’re here to do our part to ensure it does so in the best way possible.
Keep being awesome!
Tony Bacigalupo
Director, Open Coworking
9/15/17

3. The mission
Support and advocate for the
healthy growth of the global
coworking movement
Coworking has become so much bigger and more diverse
than any one group can manage, but there is still a need
for the story to be told.
As the stewards of coworking.org and the free,
decentralized resources that made the movement the
household name it is today, Open Coworking plays a
critical role in the story of coworking going forward.
Do we achieve enough simply by keeping the lights on, or
is there more to do to actively shape the direction of the
movement going forward?
CAMP - Courtesy of Deskmag

4. The organization
Founded in 2012 by Jacob Sayles of Office
Nomads in Seattle, Open Coworking was
established at a time when coworking was
starting to mature from a nascent movement
to an increasingly established industry.
Since then, Jeannine van der Linden, Tony
Bacigalupo, and others have stepped up to
continue to maintain and grow the
organization.
Punspace - Courtesy of Deskmag

5. Status of the resources
The movement is powered by
decentralized web sites, managed
by volunteers.
Here’s the skinny on how they’ve
been doing.

6. The wiki still gets a lot of traffic.
Over 800,000 people visited the
wiki in the past 365 days;
largely via organic search.

7. The Google Group continues to grow.
With 7,140 members now, it’s by far
the largest single group of people
involved in coworking anywhere.

8. The Slack group is growing fast!
Our newest and most hip communications
channel seems to be striking a chord, now
with over 1,000 members.

9. What we did
We gave several of our platforms a
much-needed refresh, learned where
our biggest challenges lie, and identified
where the biggest opportunities for
impact await.

10. We made coworking.org
available in more languages.
Recognizing that many of the people who will be
discovering coworking for the first time will be people
who don’t speak English, we set out to provide at least a
basic starting point.
The site is currently live in Spanish, with German and
Italian launching soon.

11. We cleaned up the
Coworking Visa.
We undertook a massive effort to contact everyone
currently listed in the Coworking Visa, updating and
removing lots of outdated listings.
As one of the movement’s most prominent features,
getting the Visa up to date was a high priority.

12. We saved up some money.
We kept expenses to a minimum and built up some cash
in the bank, with more coming as annual supporter
pledges arrive this fall.
All amounts in USD.
Paypal balance: $1,774.84
Bank balance: $1,954.06
Total balance: $3,728.90
Annual supporter income via Paypal: $2,100
Monthly supporter income via Paypal: $83.33
Monthly income via Patreon: $50
Total annual income: $3,700

13. Goals for 2017-18
We aim to set realistic goals going forward that will
achieve the greatest impact with the least effort.
As we go, we intend to build our capacity to do
more, so we can be in a better position to tackle
more ambitious projects down the line.

14. Connect the leaders of
regional alliances.
Regional and interest-specific groups are forming at an
increasing rate—simply tracking and connecting all of
these people will help everyone involved feel more
included in the global movement and provide
opportunities for collaboration.

15. Develop new
welcome materials.
800,000 people visited the Coworking Wiki last year. This is
hugely important!
While the wiki pages themselves are a conversation all their
own, we should be able to better capture and direct people
who are being introduced to coworking for the first time
through these pages.
This group will conspire to create new content that welcomes
people who are new to the movement and gives them the best
way of getting started. This could be a revision of the existing
home page at coworking.org, or something else.
We’ll then post a banner at the top of the highest-traffic wiki
pages directing people to this updated page.

16. Create a pledge.
Perhaps going hand-in-hand with the above projects, we
discussed creating a way for people who want to identify
not just with coworking (the word) but with Coworking
(the movement) a better way of doing so.
Achieving this would start with developing the language
for a pledge, and a badge people could put on their web
sites.

17. Produce visible materials.
Jeannine made an excellent point—people will be more
likely to volunteer and participate if we have some sweet
swag to offer up.
Whoever heads this up would be in charge of:
Hiring someone to design some materials
Putting that design on some thing we can buy online
Working with me & Jeannine to buy those things

18. Recruit new leadership.
The organization needs some fresh blood. Who wants to
be part of an ongoing advisory committee, and
potentially a board member?
Remember: This group manages coworking.org, which is
seen by 800,000 people every year—many of whom are
seeing coworking for the first time. It’s really important.

19. Continue to expand into
more languages.
We’ll make another push to solicit translations of core
coworking-related pages in more languages, and look at
fresh approaches to providing coworking-related
materials in languages other than English.

20. All of this will be possible
thanks to your support.
We’ll keep you posted as we go.
If you’re interested in stepping up to help with one of our
initiatives, please contact us—we’d love to have you.
Let’s keep doing good work together!

21. Thanks to you, our supporters.
Institutional Supporters
Alex Hillman, Indy Hall • Jonathan Markwell, The Skiff
Supporters
Ali Usman • Angel Kwiatkowski • Anne Zannos • Argentina Flores • Ashley Proctor • Carly Nix • David Brühlmeier •
Elaine McPherson of E=MC
2
• Etincelle Coworking • Jacob Sayles • Jonathan Wegener • Kali Mincy • Kaylyn Gelata •
Matthias Weimann • Melissa Saubers • Melissa Geissinger • Michael Stingl • Miguel Wong • Mike LaRosa • My Office &
more • Paige Calvert • Paul Gould • Perttu Salovaara • Oren Salomon • Ramon Suarez • Scott Tillitt • Susan Dorsch • Ten
Thousand Things
Founding Supporters – 2012 to 2016
All Systems Grow! Corp. • Andrew Cole • Andrew Jones • Ariel Tiger • Aurelio Balestra • Brilliant Fantastic • Bull City
Coworking • The Centre for Social Innovation • Daria Siegel • Doug Marinaro • Envato Pty Ltd • Geoff Mamlet • Green
Spaces, LLC • Hub Seattle LLC • Jennifer Mincar • Jennifer Moon • Jennifer Vincent • Joel Bennett • Kaan Aksay • Kido
Technologies Pte Ltd • Laura Koehn • Loren Tripp • Matthias Wiemann • Neal Gorenflo • NextSpace • Not Bad Design
LLC • Patricio Victorica • Seats2Meet • Stephen Franks • Steven King • Susan Evans • The Roosevelt Center for Working
Parents • Thilo Utke • Union Square Main Streets • UnitCase LLC • William Jacobson

22. Not a supporter yet? Help us out!
http://patreon.com/coworking
Or contact
info@opencoworking.org