Episode Summary

“There is a real disconnect between community coworking spaces and the people who will fund these kinds of needs.”

There’s a gap. On one side, people are arriving in Europe with skills, education, and drive. On the other side, coworking spaces are built on community, collaboration, and openness. In the middle, a wall of bureaucracy, funding applications, and municipal departments that nobody knows how to navigate.

Jeannine van der Linden has run a coworking space in Oosterhout, Netherlands, since 2010. She knows exactly what it feels like to walk into her local municipality with a good idea and watch officials stare blankly because nobody knows what to do with her.

That disconnect — between community coworking spaces and the institutions holding funds for community projects — is costing everyone. Migrants can’t access spaces. Spaces can’t access funding. Economic potential sits idle whilst paperwork piles up.

Enter RES-MOVE: 11 partners across 10 countries, funded by the European Commission’s AMIF (asylum, migrants, and integration fund), with one mission — turn coworking spaces into real integration hubs. Not charity. Not handouts. What Jeannine calls “a strategic economic necessity.”

This conversation strips away the polish. Jeannine talks openly about writing grant proposals that bombed because coworking operators think like entrepreneurs (will this turn a profit?) whilst municipalities think like impact assessors (what will this do for our community?).

She explains why the Ukrainian diaspora became the initial focus, and how it evolved as the reality of long-term migration set in. She reveals that NGO partners already possess the municipal contacts that coworking spaces have been seeking for years.

The friction is real. The timeline is slow (EU projects move from first contact to active work over several years). But the pathway is clear: coworking spaces need to stop reinventing the funding wheel and start partnering with organisations that already know how to open those doors.

If you’ve ever felt stuck between having the capacity to serve your community and no clue how to fund it adequately, this episode hands you the map. Jeannine’s not selling inspiration. She’s offering infrastructure.

This is for: Independent coworking operators who know their space could serve their community better, but don’t know how to access funding. Community builders are frustrated by dead-end grant applications. Anyone who’s ever been told “somebody will send you an email” by their local council, only to receive nothing.

You’ll leave with: Practical knowledge about EU funding structures, why NGO partnerships matter, how to reframe your pitch from profit to impact, and exactly where the RES-MOVE project needs help right now.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04 ] “There’s a gap” — Bernie frames the core problem: skilled migrants, community-ready coworking spaces, and a bureaucratic wall nobody knows how to climb

[01:55 ] Jeannine calls in from Oosterhout, Netherlands — halfway between Amsterdam and Brussels, running a coworking space since 2010

[02:17 ] RES-MOVE explained: Resources On the Move — migrants as economic resources to Europe, funded by AMIF

[03:24 ] “Coworking spaces can act as integration hubs” — the central thesis driving 11 partners across 10 countries

[04:31 ] The EU timeline reality check — from first contact to funding approval to actually starting work takes years

[06:41 ] The corporate/community divide exposed — some spaces don’t even call themselves coworking spaces or know they’re part of the movement

[08:37 ] What a coworking space actually gets from RES-MOVE — events, projects, connections to develop their capacity, not just cash handouts

[09:53 ] “Strategic economic necessity, not a handout” — Jeannine reframes the entire conversation about migrant support

[12:17 ] The funding disconnect revealed — coworking spaces can’t even find the right person at the municipality; NGO partners already have those contacts

[13:46 ] The presentation that failed — when coworking spaces pitch profit whilst municipalities only care about community impact

[20:43 ] “Sometimes this happens in the middle of a project” — ideas evolve, maps get redesigned, new funding opportunities emerge

[25:01 ] The Call for Ideas is still open — if you’ve got a project that increases inclusion for migrants in your coworking space, fill out the form

[27:24 ] Marko Orel’s November seminar announced — focusing on Ukrainian diaspora, long-term integration, and what actually works

[31:07 ] Marko introduced properly — Head of Centre for Workplace Research at the University of Prague, Department of Entrepreneurship, Academic Director of the extended realities research lab

[32:22 ] Helga Moreno — works at SpaceBring coworking software, Ukrainian Coworking Association leader, “a big cheese”

The Bureaucratic Wall Between Good Ideas and Funding

Here’s what actually happens when you walk into your local council with a coworking project that could genuinely help your community: absolutely nothing.

Jeannine describes the experience with the specificity that only comes from living it.

* You prepare a presentation.

* You explain your project.

* You centre it around what entrepreneurs care about — costs, profit, sustainability.

* The officials nod politely. Someone says, “somebody will send you an email.”

* Nobody ever does. You’re unsure who to follow up with. The project dies.

The problem isn’t your idea. The problem is you’re speaking a different language. As Jeannine puts it, municipalities “literally never had that thought” about whether something would cover its costs and turn a profit.

What they want to know is: what’s the impact on our community? How does this affect the municipality?

This gap has kept coworking spaces away from significant funding for years. Not because the money doesn’t exist — there are substantial funds at the municipal, regional, and EU levels specifically for community projects.

But because nobody taught coworking operators how to frame their work in impact terms, and nobody taught municipal funding officers what coworking spaces actually are.

The Netherlands has made progress — all grants are now consolidated on a single website.

But as Jeannine points out, even when it’s well organised, you as a solo coworking operator probably don’t have time to read that website, decode the requirements, and craft a proposal that speaks their language. That’s not a personal failing. That’s a structural gap that needs bridging.

Why NGOs Already Have the Access You’ve Been Hunting For

One of the quietly revolutionary aspects of RES-MOVE is who’s actually in the room. Out of 11 partner organisations, there are two academic partners, the European Coworking Assembly, and eight NGOs that work with migrants on a regular basis.

They’re not coworking people. They’re migration specialists. And they already know exactly who to call at the municipality.

Jeannine describes walking into the first meeting in Athens and saying, “I have a coworking space, but I don’t, to my knowledge, have any migrants.”

That’s when it became clear: there’s a serious disconnect between community coworking spaces and the people who will fund these kinds of needs.

Then comes the surprise. There are two partners in the Netherlands on this project: Jeannine’s space and an NGO called NetworkPro that works primarily with women.

NetworkPro already knew people in Oosterhout. Jeannine’s town. Officials she’d been trying to reach. They just... knew them.

This is the unlock. NGOs have spent time building relationships with the exact funding bodies that coworking spaces need to access.

They understand the application processes, impact measurement frameworks, and the specific language required for proposal approval. They’ve already navigated the maze.

The RES-MOVE model isn’t asking coworking spaces to become funding experts overnight. It’s creating partnerships where NGOs bring municipal access and migration expertise, whilst coworking spaces bring physical infrastructure and community integration capacity. Each partner contributes what they actually know how to do.

For independent coworking operators reading this: you don’t need to learn everything about EU funding structures tomorrow.

You need to find the local NGO that’s already doing community work and start a conversation about collaboration. They’re looking for physical spaces and community networks. You have both.

Migrants as Economic Resources, Not Problems to Solve

The entire framing of RES-MOVE hinges on a single, crucial reposition. As Jeannine explains: “The inflexion point of this project is that the migrants entering Europe are resources to Europe that are not, for various reasons, getting brought to their full development when they get to Europe.”

This isn’t soft language or charitable thinking. This is an economic reality. Jeannine emphasises that, particularly with Ukrainians, “they are, in general, highly educated pe