When the voluntary sector meets business: the Stuttgart Market Place

The Stuttgart Market Place is quite different from e-Bay: it does not take place in virtual space and its purpose is not to make a profit. Quite the opposite: the direct exchange of money is taboo. The objective of the meeting between representatives of the voluntary and business sectors is the exchange of resources, skills and know-how and the agreement of volunteering activities. More importantly, the implementation of the agreements concluded during a Market Place provides the individuals and groups involved with new insights into ‘new worlds’ and new social networks.

The objectives for the second Stuttgart Market Place organised in 2010 were ambitious:

• To double the number of participants from the 20 companies and 20 nonprofit organisations which participated in 2007
• To ensure that each organisation makes about two agreements (as in 2007)
• To achieve a more balanced representation of the voluntary sector (20 NGOs from the social sector, 10 from culture and 10 from environment)
• To ensure follow-up to and evaluation of the project.

The idea for the Stuttgart Market Place came from the Netherlands but in Germany it has been disseminated by the Bertelsmann Foundation. This is how Reinhold Halder, Head of community engagement in Stuttgart City Council, first heard of the approach. He thought it could be a good way to get local business involved in the local community, so he decided to run a social Market Place in Stuttgart in 2007. As he and his team of staff quickly realised, the successful implementation of this interactive exchange model requires careful planning in advance. In particular, a number of preparatory meetings were held of the organising partnership - Stuttgart City Council, GENO-Verband (the sponsor) and the nonprofit consultancy mehrwert (in English “Added Value”). Moreover, it took time and effort to attract a sufficient number of voluntary organisations and companies. Clearly, this was even harder in 2010 because of the economic crisis. Before the actual Stuttgart Market Place took place, two separate preparatory workshops were organised for the participants from the voluntary and business sector.

Given that the actual event only last two hours, every minute has to count, so the whole event has to be carefully designed. Obviously, time management and the effective support of organisers and brokers are key to the negotiations which take place in the Market Place. Typically, a social Market Place should be opened by a high-ranking local person who can give it status within the community and business sectors.  In the case of Stuttgart, both events were opened by the (directly elected) Mayor, Dr. Wolfgang Schuster. After Dr. Wolfgang Schuster sounded the opening ‘gong’, participants were invited to present their offers in so-called ‘trading corners’. The trading corners in the first Market Place were labelled: 1. Festivals and Parties 2. Hardware and Craft Working 3. Advice and Coaching 4. Professional Training. In 2010 we simplified the themes to 1. Manpower 2. Know-How and 3. Hardware.

Clearly, bidders have to know how to attract interest –some did this did this through dressing up and other gimmicks. For example, one participant turned up with a rose in a gun, a cabinet maker brought a coloured wooden saw and one participant from a voluntary group which looks after prisoners came in a prison outfit.

If the negotiations between business and voluntary sector representatives are successful, their agreement gets a certificate from a team of external experts, who seal it with a stamp (this may be a very German touch!). But most importantly: all business parties involved in an agreement are invited to toast the agreement publicly with a glass of champagne.! At the end of the event, the organisers report back to the participants on which agreements have been concluded. Both the 2007 and 2010 Stuttgart Market Places then ended with a buffet, to allow for further discussions in a pleasant atmosphere.

The first Stuttgart Market Place in 2007 was very successful and saw about 40 agreements between business and voluntary organisations. Two agreements were particularly striking – the cabinet maker Türenmann produced a cloakroom wardrobe for the premises of an association for the blind, while the members of the association for the blind gave a course for the trainees of the cabinet maker to show them how to appreciate how blind people manage to get their bearings and stay mobile - and also trained them in the use of specialised ICT. Another agreement between a Women’s Refuge and an oven maker resulted in the design and production of an imaginative and artistic collection box in the shape of an oven, which was so successful at attracting people to give donations that it is now being borrowed for use by many other charities.

At the second Stuttgart Market Place, out of the 80 agreements concluded in April 2010, 70 were already under way or completed by the end of the year. Almost all participating organisations indicated they were satisfied (or very satisfied) with the results of the event.

Here are some examples to give a taster of what the agreements are about:

• the Stuttgart Co-operative Bank (Stuttgarter Volksbank) pledged that all its trainees would engage for one week with the Römerschule, which is a public school in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in the city. The nine young trainees, who are about 16 years old, worked with school teachers in the classroom during the morning and led cultural and sports activities with the children (aged between 7-11 years) in the afternoon. Aurelia Schmiga, responsible for the trainee programme in the bank, thought that this gave them a quite different experience –and challenges - from sitting the whole day at a PC. As one of their coaches at the Bank people suggested:"These young people have really engaged and got lots of new contacts. They were fascinated by the great interest and open-mindedness of the childen".
• 16 immigrant women from a nonprofit 'House for Many Generations' in Stuttgart took part in basic PC training provided by a staff member of the consultancy KPMG. In return, the House of Generations offered KPMG use of their facilities, for example, for a company party.

In spite of the much more difficult economic climate, the 2010 Stuttgart Market Place achieved all the objectives and targets set at the beginning of the project. Not only was the count of participants doubled but the voluntary organisations also represented a wider range of interests, going well beyond NGOs with social objectives.

An evaluation commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation of 55 Social Market Place events organised between 2006 and 2009 in Germany provides further performance information: The number of agreements concluded during a Social Market Place varies between 30 and 160. On average, about 70 % of the agreements concluded at a Social Market Place are implemented. Typically, small- and medium-sized companies are over-represented. In some cases, there was evidence that the Social Market Place led to long-term partnerships and sustainable projects. More than 80% of the agreements between business and voluntary organisations focussed on the exchange of services, 63% were about the exchange of skills and know-how, 47% about logistics and 38% about volunteering.

Clearly, the organisation of a Social Market Place requires financial and staff resources. While the first Stuttgart Market Place benefitted from support by GENO-Verband, the second event was a partnership between Stuttgart City Council, KPMG, the nonprofit organisation mehrwert and the Deutsche Bank. The direct costs of the second Market Place were about €8000 in total. 

While the project did not have the objective to bring about any savings in the public sector it produced a lot of added value. It is estimated that the almost 80 agreements will be translated into 1600 hours of volunteering time.

The Social Market Place has proved to be an effective approach to making the private sector part of ‘Big Society’ and to breaking down barriers between the voluntary and private sectors. The event - and even its planning phase - led to improved partnership working between NGOs, as they found out about the expertise and resources available from other NGOs. Most importantly, it reduced the fear of NGOs about approaching business leaders and about engaging in private-nonprofit partnerships.

Of course, the organisation of a Social Market Place involves higher transaction costs than e-Bay but the social capital created in the personal exchange can be invaluable. As Reinhold Halder, Head of Citizen Engagement of Stuttgart Council concludes from the first two Market Places: "After two successful events, we want to continue this initiative because Stuttgart has the potential for setting up many more fruitful exchanges between the organisations in the city".

On the Social Market Place concept (in German): www.gute-geschaefte.org