Nearly 60 per cent desk capacity is already booked at the Kollective following the initial membership application drive for the TECT and SocialLink Tauranga Moana social service hub in 17th Avenue.

Applications have been received from 30 organisations, says The Kollective manager Gordy Lockhart.

'We are delighted,” says Gordy.

'TK offers those in the frontline of community service the opportunity to work alongside other devoted co-workers, whenever, wherever they choose and to be at the heart of an environment where complimentary organisations can explore and thrive.”

When complete in mid-2018, TK will be the largest co-work space in New Zealand specifically designed to offer an administrative base for between 40 and 60 charitable, social enterprise and not for profit organisations.

Co-work spaces, environments where people from many organisations can work together and benefit from each other's expertise, have been growing for the last few years.

In 2010 there were fewer than 750 worldwide. In 2017 that number has grown to more than 12,000.

The success of the co-work space in the commercial world has been in the ability to collaborate with other people, with those who provide services that present mutually beneficial opportunity.

TECT and SociaLink launched the membership drive on November 1, which lasted until the end of the month.

'We wanted The Kollective to be a community facility. Terms like tenant, or tenancies just didn't convey the right feeling. We want our ‘members' to feel more valued, more part of the furniture than perhaps the word ‘tenant' implies,” says TECT general manager Wayne Werder.

The community service organisations like the approach and are quickly taking up the membership opportunities available says Liz Davies, general manager of SociaLink Tauranga Moana, the organisation whose role is to provide support to the social service sector and who will manage operations at The Kollective.

'We're just stoked that the concepts in The Kollective seem to be really hitting the mark with social and community service agencies.”