12 ways to generate income for your community space

New ideas to create cash and revenue streams to fund your mission and purpose

 

 
We're all about helping spaces increase their bookings revenue, but there are lots of other ways to make money as a community space. Most spaces we work with are trusts or charitable venues, so this isn't about profit, it's about creating more funds for community projects. Making money should not be a dirty word for community or not for profit organisations. raising money brings you the resources you need to support more people and have a bigger impact with your mission and purpose. We work with 100's of different community spaces, so we've pulled together all of that shared knowledge around creating cash into this mega resource of ideas and inspiration for creating new revenue streams from your space.
 

How to use this guide

We've created a revenue jigsaw puzzle with 12 different categories of how spaces can create income. Each category has a description, pros & cons and ideas and links for how it could work for your space. We recommend any space should have a few different ways that they create income - as it's always good to spread your bets - especially in these COVID times. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, it's not one size fits all. So pick pieces that resonate with you and your mission.

Community Space Revenue Streams 

 
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Fundraising

 

Although the term fundraising can apply across all these categories, we're using it here to describe specific projects, events or campaigns you run from your space to fundraise. Your supporters are also a huge asset to your space! They can help you fundraise by both organising events and donating to your cause. There are literally limitless ways to fundraise - from quiz nights to fun runs. The main thing is to find something your community will engage in and a team of enthusiastic people to make it happen.

Ideas and Inspiration

There are pages of ideas online with fundraising ideas. Here's a few goodies...
  • Eventbrite have 101 fundraising ideas that actually work here
  • 200+ amazing fundraising ideas from Wild Apricot here
  • 150+ fundraising ideas for charities and non-for-profits from causevox here 


Think about how you can make it really easy for people who are in your space to donate to your cause e.g.

  • Donation boxes where people congregate
  • QR code posters to a fundraising page - the back of the toilet door get's some good visibility :)
  • Round up your payment to donate options

 

Pros

Fundraising starts with Fun for a reason! Great for community engagement.

Cons

Hard yakka and can be subject to weather/covid

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Sharing Economies

 

As a community space, you will have assets that you can share in return for income. Sharing economies help you do this by giving you access to a marketplace full of buyers and also helping you automate the processes around booking and payment. It's a much more efficient way of sharing than trying to build your own customer base or systems.

Ideas and Inspiration

  • Do you have private car parking spaces that have availability during the day? You can rent these out for extra income on Parkable. You determine when they can be booked, leaving room for your own users. Learn more here

  • Do you have sports equipment or kit that is only used some of the time? Mutu is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace that allows organisations to rent, lend, hire & share assets & equipment with people in their community.  Learn more here

  • Spacetoco is a community space sharing marketplace. You can get started by listing for free and making it easy for local communities to book and use your space. Check out how we help community spaces here

  • Do you want to earn a share in your supporters spending? CommUnity generates money for community organisations by uniting merchants, community groups and everyday shoppers (like yourself) to support and strengthen one another.

    Every time a CommUnity Member shops at a participating CommUnity Merchant, a small percentage of each transaction is passed onto the CommUnity Groups or charities of that Member’s choosing. Learn more here

Pros

  • Easy to set up
  • Secure
  • Access to a market of customers.
  • No upfront investment.

Cons

  • Most platforms have a 'clip the ticket' fee system - but this should balance out with extra revenue earned
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Grants

 

With a little effort and perseverance, grants can be a great way to get cash injections to fund projects, new resources or even salaries. Grants are given by government, private and charitable trusts and often involve a competitive application process and require you to demonstrate how you used the funds. Knowing your numbers and demonstrating your impact is the key for grants.

Ideas and Inspiration

  • We have listed over 25 grants that community spaces could be eligible here.

  • Top tips for grant applications here

Pros

Can be $10,000K +

Cons

Not guarenteed, subject to availability and applications can be time consuming.
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Crowdfunding

 

Crowdfunding has really taken off in the last 10 years, especially with big platforms like gofundme and kickstarter making this accessible to everyone. Crowdfunding is where you ask many people to contribute a set amount towards a project. Often you offer something in return for the contribution. This could be a token like a sticker or t-shirt or it could be related to the project - like their name on a brick in the new build.

Ideas and Inspiration

  • PledgeMe is the most popular homegrown crowd funding website. They have a comprehensive guide to how it all works here.
  • Alex Moore Clubrooms in Welly raised over $62,000 for their clubrooms - watch the video here
  • Devonport community raised $1800 to tell local stories - watch the video here

Pros

Access to millions of potential funders

Cons

This requires campaigning and marketing to be successful. Some platforms work 'all or nothing' e.g. if you don't raise the target, you get nothing.
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Corporate Partnerships

 

Do you have strong relationships with a local business? Businesses are very motivated to demonstrate corporate social responsibility and often have budgets and teams allocated to this. For larger businesses, they may have payroll giving where employees donate a % of their salary automatically. Smaller retail or food businesses have POS terminals for quick giving at the till. Some larger retailers will be open to monthly sausage sizzles.

Ideas and Inspiration

  • Givealittle supports payroll giving - find out more here
  • DonationPointTap enables cashless donations from local business to charitable organisations. See how it works here
  • Each PakNSave store has local organisations it supports. Contact your nearest store to talk about opportunities to be a recipient.

 

Pros

Reach new people by partnering up. Can be lucrative.

Cons

Requires ongoing relationship management and possibly paperwork

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Membership

 

For sports clubs, this is probably already a good source of income, but other types of community spaces can consider this too. If you're an art space, community theatre or hall and you have people who love what you do, you could offer them a monthly membership. Even just $5 a month in exchange for discounts, free workspace or hot desking or maybe a newsletter. This can be a great source of regular income and is an easy way for people to support you.

Ideas and Inspiration

Patreon is a platform that enables community organisation to automate membership payments and communications. It's targeted for creative communities. Here's a few examples of how venues use Patreon

Ideas for membership benefits for community spaces:

  • exclusive member events
  • bar/cafe discounts
  • private community newsletter
  • monthly unique piece of art/poetry/design
  • free hot desking area

 

Pros

Regular income

Cons

Make sure you're continually providing a value exchange for this membership

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You can get a free PDF download of this guide with all 12 revenue streams and a bonus section on how to use it at your next committee meeting to take action! Enter your email below and click 'Download the guide.' It will download instantly  
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Contracts

As a community space, you can be contracted to deliver important services on behalf of council. This could be delivering after school programmes, sports classes or adult education. Contracts for providing early childhood care also come up occasionally. These are obviously big undertakings that require specific accreditation and skills but could be a good long term option. Speak to your local board or strategic broker from council to talk about opportunities.

Ideas and Inspiration

Get accredited to deliver out of school care programs by MSD

GETs is a subscription service for understanding what contracts are up for tender across central and local government

 

Pros

Long term revenue and service to community

Cons

Big strategic decision and investment may be required.

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Events & Programming

 

This could be a subcategory of fundraising, but we've kept it separate as for community spaces, this has so many benefits - as it's getting people in your space. Rather than just renting out your space, consider what events you can put on. This could be one off things like gigs or concerts or you could work with someone that can deliver a program of classes like quilting or creative writing. You can split revenue from ticket sales in exchange for the space usage or just charge for the space.

Ideas and Inspiration

Life drawing, workshops, quiz nights, pot luck dinners, community BBQs, sports days....

Use Humanitix for ticketing. Their platform is easy to use and profits go to support local NZ charities. 

 

Pros

Gets people using your space

Cons

Can be time consuming to promote and organise.

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Sponsorship

 

The great thing about community spaces is that you are very visible in local neighbourhoods and you have 100's, maybe thousands of people who are part of your organisation. This means it's a great opportunity for local businesses to promote their brand to your people in return for sponsorship cash or goods. There are so many ways sponsorship can work - here's just a few ideas below.

Ideas and Inspiration

  • Need new signage for your community space? Local businesses may sponsor this if you can add their logo to your signs and banners. 
  • Conferences offer different tiers of sponsorship e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver etc. Think about how you could create tiered sponsorship offerings to approach sponsors with. e.g. Platinum is their brand on all your external and internal signage, a banner at all your events etc. Bronze could be a digital only option, with their brand added to your website and your email comms. This website has an example for a football club.
  • Sport NZ has a very comprehensive overview of how to get sponsorship and sample letters here
  • Sponsorship doesn't have to be about cash - you could also get local businesses to sponsor you with products e.g. food or gifts for goodie bags or for raffles.

 

Pros

Ongoing revenue and not too admin heavy to maintain

Cons

Requires negotiation to get started. Make sure sponsors brand match your values and that you're clear on what they get in return e.g. how many members would their brand be seen by?

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Merchandise

 

This is another idea with almost limitless ways to generate some cash. Merchandise is anything you sell that is associated with your brand or organisation. It can be traditional like T-shirts or tote bags or you can think outside the box. How about selling a set of recipes or paintings? You could grow seedlings or have some cool stickers printed.  Sell directly from your space or use other channels like Etsy or Trademe.

Ideas and Inspiration

What will be most useful for your community? We certainly don't advocate ordering 1000's of plastic pens that will be binned or forgotten about immediately. However, there are plenty of options to create something practical, attractive and sustainable that your supporters may want to buy. At SpacetoCo, we do tea towels - because everybody needs more tea towels! 

Can your supporters participate in creating the merch so it's really personal e.g. contributing a recipe or a sketch to a book that you sell.

Creating branded personalised products can be surprisingly easy and affordable. More inspiration from PhotoBox  and Simply Totes

 

Pros

Get your brand and organisation out there by selling stuff

Cons

Time consuming to create what you sell. Make sure you account correctly for sales and costs etc.

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Sub leasing

 

If you have rooms or areas in your community space that are almost never used, consider who else could benefit from leasing this from you. Your old storage room could be a dark room or studio or counselling space for people looking for affordable space to get started with a practice, business or creative endeavour.

Ideas and Inspiration

Do you have studio space for an artist in residence?

Lease an office space to a budding entrepreneur

Can a basement room be used by a gym or physio?

Film crews may need a short term lease to base crews from 

 

Pros

Ongoing income and long term relationships

Cons

You will need to be a good landlord e.g. sort things out when they break.

Check that your lease/insurance allows for sub leasing.

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Pot Luck

We love a good 'miscellaneous' category! These ideas are taken from ingenious ways we've seen spaces use our site to generate extra revenue - or just solve a problem. If you can hire it by the hour, you can probably do it on SpacetoCo!

 

 

Ideas and Inspiration

Community trailer hire - Serpentine -Jarradale uses SpacetoCo to manage the booking process for community trailers. Do you have any assets that could be rented in addition to space?

Zero waste event kits - Owairaka hub has free zero wast events kits. What other useful community kits could you offer for hire?

Market stall spaces - Toodyay rent out stalls at a community market

Ideas are just ideas until you make them happen. Here's our top tips for how your committee can work together to increase revenue

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Wow you read all the way to the end!

You can get a free PDF download of this guide with all 12 revenue streams and a bonus section on how to use it at your next committee meeting to take action! Enter your email below and click 'Download the guide.' It will download instantly