Hey everyone,
Our community, Gravitate Coworking, has now been adjusting to this new normal for two weeks and I’m pretty excited by how I’ve seen our members and our team adapt in these unprecedented times to embrace change.
I’ve always described Gravitate as a “coworking community” rather than a “coworking space” because bringing people together has been the thing that made this whole venture worthwhile ever since we started. Prior to launching Gravitate, I had a remote job for about four years and then worked for myself for two. I saw the need for community first hand. I noticed how much more productive I was when I was connected with my peers and how they could help me hold myself accountable in my work. Those connections also helped to cure the loneliness and uncertainty that came from working on my own company. Having other people around to talk about the events of the day, to share stories with, to ask questions of, and to talk things through was really helpful. That is why I jumped at the chance to start this community in 2014 when the need and opportunity presented itself. It’s now been nearly six years since we founded Gravitate and I am continually in awe of the unwavering support of our members.
Communities pull together in times of crisis and I’m proud of how you all have done just that.
The small business behind the community.
It takes people and resources to facilitate this community, provide and improve both the Downtown and Valley Junction workspaces, as well as to prepare and deliver on the programming that brings people together.
Those people and resources come from the Iowa-based small business behind our community, Welch Avenue, LLC. This small business employs the team (Abby, Kyle, Jake and myself along with four part-time as-needed staff), holds the lease on our locations, buys the coffee and mugs, pays for the broadband service, secure shredding, keyless 24-hour remote access, the power bill, and many other operational expenses that most people don’t need to think about.
As a small business, we’re feeling the effects of this crisis like every other small business across the state and country. Our company’s income mostly comes in one of three categories: monthly memberships, daily drop-ins, and hourly conference room and event rentals.
Our monthly revenue—which comes from floating desks, dedicated desks, and offices—is strong. We rely on this revenue for Gravitate to cover our payroll and expenses. We appreciate all of you continuing with us! Your faith and commitment to us is something that helps me sleep (somewhat) soundly at night in this weird world.
Our daily drop-in coworking and hourly rentals stalled completely after March 13. All of this type of revenue that had already been booked was (justifiably) canceled and we’re not able to book anything new because we’re doing our part to help with public health This loss of expected revenue is a hit to our business, for sure.
What we are doing.
Our workspaces will remain open to our active monthly floating, dedicated desk, and office members (locked to the public, no staff on-site) unless we’re directed to close them.
Mail service continues without interruption at both locations to the same folks, along with any mailbox-specific members. We’re evaluating a few different options to make our mail service better—some ideas include: sending photos of envelopes received to our members so you can see what mail you have waiting for you, the potential to open, scan and email the document (only at your direction, of course), notification of anything that looks like it might be a check, etc. We’re also looking into options for phone answering services. If any of these things sound good to you—or even if they don’t—let us know.
Slack is still the go-to way to stay connected to your community in the moment. If you haven’t been on our Slack before or registered initially but never became a regular user, now is a great time to start now. Chat on Slack is separated into topical channels so you can check in on what you want and ignore the things you don’t. Our team has started a “Guide to Gravitate’s Slack Community” and you can check that out here.
Speaking of Slack, we’re doing a lunch break at noon each day where we watch one episode of “The Office” and chat about it as a community. Grab your food, log in to Slack, and wait for the countdown which usually happens around 12:05pm in our #wfh-office-rewatch channel. Our next episode will be “The Fire” (Season 2, Episode 4) on Monday.
We’re doing #Gravirtual Happy Hours at 4 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’ve had three of these so far and they’ve been pretty fun and a welcome chance to stay connected to your community. I’ve attended all three and it's been fun to see the diversity of members who show up each time (as well as the regulars who have shown up each time).
We’re currently working on bringing some of our in-person programming to the virtual space, as well. The Full Time Founders Meetup, the community book club as well as Founder Fireside and Expert Advice (the latter two are events we run on behalf of the West Des Moines Business Incubator) are all things we think can be virtual, so look for more updates on those soon.
On the financial side, we are pursuing disaster grant funding from the State of Iowa now to help with the impact of the lost daily and hourly revenue streams. We’ll seek out the SBA/federal funding options as back up capital in case this crisis goes on longer than we expect.
The Gravitate team is committed to doing everything possible to keep our community together now and secure the future of this community as these uncertain times continue.
What you can do.
First and foremost, you’re already helping by being an active member of our community—thank you!
If you’re not already participating in the virtual events I just wrote about, pick one and give it a try. You can find times and links for them all on the Gravitate Calendar or in Slack.
We know not everything is for every person but we’re trying lots of ideas to help reach everyone in our community.
Do you have an idea for something else we should try that you would value? Awesome, chances are other community members would value it, too. Hit us up however you’d like and we’ll talk it through and figure out how to give it a try.
Des Moines is a very supportive community and it is awesome to see so many people taking the #DSMLocalChallenge (getting takeout from restaurants, buying gift cards, etc. and sharing it online). It may not be as readily apparent on how you can similarly support the Gravitate community but we have some ideas:
One easy idea is to pre-pay now for drop-in punch cards to be used later. These never expire and can be used at any point after the crisis. Do you have friends or family that work independently in the local area? These could be great gifts for them.
We can also pre-sell blocks of meeting room hours to be used in the future.
Finally, if you’re financially able or otherwise fortunate to be less affected by the crisis than some others, we’re open to offering discounts to floating and dedicated desk members who are willing to pre-pay their membership fees for a few months. If you’re interested in that, let us know.
It’s a weird time but we’re optimistic about the future of our community and our small business, thanks to all of you!
- Geoff Wood (and Abby, Kyle, Jake and the rest of the Gravitate team)