Nonprofits in Richmond now have a space of their own: The Collaboratory of Virginia.
Adrienne Wright, now CEO of U-Turn Inc., and her team were trying to figure out what to do with all of the unused space in the U-Turn building. What is now a nonprofit athletic facility began to lease out office space from their second floor to nonprofits in the area, boasting the added benefit of being able to charge under-market rent thanks to the company owning the building outright.
The up-and-coming Westwood development, which Wright called “Scott’s Addition 2.0,” is seen by the team as the next big thing in Richmond office development. As they started getting more clients interested in leasing space thanks to word of mouth, the U-Turn team realized they had unintentionally been building a coworking space for nonprofits.
"We then asked 'what would happen if we were more intentional about it and actually started a coworking space for nonprofits?'" said Wright, who has an 18-year history in the Richmond finance scene.
The development of such a facility was inspired by the 1717 Innovation Center and the work of Startup Virginia. In December, The Collaboratory of Virginia was officially launched when 1717 held their Grow@1717 nonprofit accelerator closing event in their facility.
The Collaboratory is meant to be a space for nonprofits legally registered as 501(c)(3)s to collaborate and benefit from shared resources and professional programming. Wright said the eventual goal is more of an “incubator” atmosphere, but for now members can benefit from their rentable office and shared working spaces.
As the facility expands into a full-blown member-based coworking space that Richmond nonprofits are eligible to apply for, the 11 companies that were originally renting space from the beginning will receive automatic membership when the full project is up and running. The five nonprofits that participated in the 1717 Grow Program also received automatic virtual memberships to the Collaboratory.
At the moment, the new space is undergoing renovation and build out, which the team is in the middle of a capital campaign for. The target date for completion of the construction project is this fall, but Wright expects that date to fall more likely in spring 2021.
“The office space is probably classified as Class F at the moment,” Wright said. “Our goal is to get it to Class A space for our members.”
Members of the Collaboratory, a word play on “collaboration” and “laboratory”, will receive similar benefits to what you would expect from other major coworking spaces in town: free-flowing coffee, use of conference and board rooms, phone and podcast booths and happy hours to build community. An additional benefit comes from the location of the Collaboratory in the U-Turn space - members also get discounted access to all the basketball courts, turf fields, volleyball courts, multipurpose courts and full gyms at the facility.
Currently, 170 nonprofits have expressed interest in membership. Wright said they are still in the process of determining the best application process for accepting nonprofits into the space.
“We are really focused on determining what the companies’ needs are and what they would get out of working in a collaborative space side by side with other nonprofit leaders,” Wright said.
The Collaboratory of Virginia expects to have the space accommodate 40 to 60 resident nonprofits, who would have actual in-house office space, and approximately 150 virtual members, who would have access to the open work space.
The current team consists of four volunteer staff and a reception staff built into the U-Turn facility. As the Collaboratory expands, they hope to bring on consultants that can act as in-house human resources, accounting, development or administrative experts or mentors that members will be able to take advantage of in order to free up their time from working on back-end logistics.
“We want to stay agile to be able to move and shape what we do to really benefit the community,” Wright said. “We want to create an environment that can pivot and be flexible.”
“Right now, we have a diverse mix of sectors represented in our members, such as healthcare, education, poverty, transportation and community health issues,” she added. “We would love for it to stay diverse and go across different industries, but if we find that there is a benefit for [companies within a certain industry] working together and going through our programming together, and we start to see some things really move in Richmond because of that collaboration, we would be all for it.”
