Date: 1992-2016
Keywords: Funding, business model, Understand:
This CTP follows directly on the previous two, and would likely never have happened without them. At this point in time, the initiative increased to be around 6 people. The date range is specified until the time of the interview, as the business idea created at this CTP is still their main operating income.
From the informal aid Science Shop Bonn offered to their students during their job training projects, a business idea formed:
We had to prove that our students found a job through our trainings and our systems. That is why I checked all the newspapers for job offers in the environmental fields. It was a service in the classroom. Every Monday they got the print out of job offers from all the big German newspapers from all over the country. Not all of them, but at least 10-15 newspapers that we had. Just to show and to demonstrate there are jobs in the environmental sector, “have a look at this and don’t be too narrow in your view. Look beyond the edge of your table, your plate, and there might be something that suits you in your field, in your education”. These job offers in the classroom were the starting point for our next activity [the focus of this CTP].
It’s all connected. Because now we do not have anymore funding, funding for the fourth adult education training. All our students said was “but we want to have this information on job offers”. So, I wrote the press release, and why not try to send it to a broader audience instead of just sending it to our students. So, I wrote a press release and within 4-6 weeks we had 750 subscribers for that. And over the years we had a second sector for social sciences, this one was for environmental sciences and natural sciences. And we made a second one for social sciences we even tried a third one for ICT-jobs but we cancelled that after a short period. But with the two magazines on social sciences and natural sciences we had up to 11000 subscribers weekly. And they paid for it. And this turned out to be the financial neck bone for all activities that were financial.
This activity with collecting job offers from a broad range of sources, mostly newspaper, and publishing them in magazines that sprang randomly out of their initial projects, turned into their main source of funding.
Jens: And it is still a financial backbone?
Interviewee: It is still the financial backbone. It makes let me say… it makes up to 60-65% of our income and 50-55% of our expenses. Of course, we have to pay a lot of staff doing this kind of work. This is why for example at this moment fifteen people sits in front of the computer checking the internet, checking emails and typing job offers. We have an editorial team working for these magazines, we have a lot of administration behind that we have… It is still a printed offer so we have printing houses doing this kind of work. When the compilation of job offers is finished this afternoon, it gets to the printing house and they are printing all night and sending us brand new magazines tomorrow, and we will ship it from here. So, every week between 9-11.000 magazines are sent from our offices to subscribers all over Germany and a couple of them live also in foreign countries.
So, it is the financial backbone, and although it only makes up 65% of their income, it is a continued and permanent source of income, where the various projects they are involved in are temporary. It of course also takes a lot of work and staff to produce the magazines, and the activity is different from what most understand as science shop activities:
Of course, most of the subscribers are in Germany, but of course, if you are on a two years leave, for example, and you want to come back you can start by looking for job offers in our magazines. Some anecdotes around that as well because we have a Minister of science here in North Rhine-Westphalia. She in earlier years was a subscriber to our magazine. That’s probably one of our problems because most people in Germany know us for our job offers and our magazines but not for the idea of a science shop.
Therefore, their source of income at some level may be detrimental to their work as a science shop. They are known for their magazine, and their work for publishing job offers and educational courses, but not for their science shop projects.
Partners
Although the life of Science Shop Bonn started from a partnership with the local unemployment office, this partnership seem to have runs its course:
Jens: Are you still partners with the unemployment office?
Interviewee: I am not really sure. Sometimes they hire us to give a presentation on a certain situation in one of the specifics. For example in geographers, like: how is the employment situation for geographers, what are your possible fields of activities if you finish your study of geography? However, this is also done by the universities, and by the career centres of the universities, they hire us as well. Some of the local unemployment offices from different cities, they subscribe to our magazines because they know if they have to advice jobseekers they can show specific jobs. Therefore, they get the overview on the employment market as well. Nevertheless, there are no bigger projects at this moment, this is not at a specific field of activities.
So the partnership is at the very least very different. They are no longer running projects together or even engaged in that area in their project work. The affiliation only relates to their magazine and activities in collecting and organising job offers in different areas of expertise.
Other partners, or actors of relevance, are the various sources of job offers Science Shop Bonn collect and organize to publication in their magazine. This is not partnerships though, as they have no official relation with the various newspapers or online portals where they find the job offers.
Synergy effects
One positive effect coming from this activity of looking at jobs, is that they have a feeling for what is going on in society:
We made an exhibition of the field of renewable energies. We developed a serious game for girls to check their capabilities to enter into one of the sectors of renewable energies. So this is all based on the job offers we collect. We still collect and we analyse them. Moreover, we have a couple of projects developed around this collection of job offers. So it is not just the financial neck bone, it is also the neck bone for creating ideas and identifying new fields of activities. Because we can see where the demand is and we try to develop support to answer this demand and the support are in project.
This then lead them to creating projects they believe is relevant for society.
Other CTPs
The three previous CTPs are tightly related events to this CTP, and their description will only be shortly summarized here.
The first project Science Shop Boon had was on training courses for academics fuelled by a lack of competent workers for the environmental sector. This was a very successful project, and led them to apply for funding from the European social fund for a similar project, where they designed their own training courses for unemployed academics in collaboration with the local unemployment office. As part of the second project, they collected job offers they thought relevant for the students as a service, and to improve their chances of getting a job from the course. The business model described in this CTP was born from that project.
All later CTPs, and other events relating to projects, are indirectly related to this CTP, as it became the financial backbone, and it is unknown if Science Shop Bonn would have survived, and in which way, without this business model.
Other events
It also turned out to be significant that they engaged themselves in the environmental sectors very early in the life of the area, especially in renewable energy:
We did payed analysis of needed skills in certain sectors. We were, not the first, but very early promoting the climate field and field of renewable energy. And building on that we said: OK there is a huge demand in the field of renewable energies. That is why we organized the job fairs.
They have had 8 of these job fairs, and they are quite big with around 2000 visitors. Their early engagement in the environmental sector, as well as their work with job offers, also led to other events:
We also made an analysis for the federal ministry on certain skills in certain sectors of the renewable energies. We are developing strategies for young people to get in to these new sectors and in to professions of the renewables. So for example, we are arranging buffets, working with schools, and getting the school kids into certain companies to learn about certain professions. We made an exhibition of the field of renewable energies. We developed a serious game for girls to check their capabilities to enter into one of the sectors of renewable energies. So this is all based on the job offers we collect.
All activities in both education and relating to job offers, can be seen as related events, and they are numerous over the last 20+ years.
There is, in the interview at least, no direct contestation of this activity. However, Science Shop Bonn are very aware if issues may arise, and have taken great pains not to trigger any kind of contestation:
It was a slow development… as the magazines increased we were able to set up an editorial team for the magazines, it was one of the changes we had to do… because we were no longer allowed to photocopy the job offers, we have to type them
The first issue relates to copyright, as they were not allowed to copy the job offers anymore, as they were published in commercial newspapers and other places. Typing out the job offers themselves circumvent this legal issue, but necessitated an editorial staff dedicated to the job. The interviewee explains further:
With these job offers we collect, we have to divide them all. It has to do with intellectual property right - copyright issues – so we have to be very careful. We also had a couple of legal issues with this, so we changed the format twice during the years. This is also one of the reasons we are not online with this, because then we would be in competition with the big newspaper… Because we are then serving the market, and newspapers live from job offers, companies pay for having their job offers published in the newspapers and resell it. This was a bit difficult, we had to find our way through it, and we made agreements with publishing houses of the newspapers, at least with some of them. Some of them forced us to put dotted lines instead of the full address, so we found our way. But what we had, we started quite early typing this job offers not just for the copying of it.
The issue with copyright, and getting agreement with the publishing houses, seems to have been very important to Science Shop Bonn, as it is their financial backbone. No contestations has arisen, but that is likely because Science Shop Bonn has very careful not to overstep any legal boundaries, even though it has cost them a lot of work, in for instance re-typing all job offers manually.
The business model was not anticipated back when the science shop was founded. In a way, as can be seen from the previous CTP, they kind of stumbled upon the business idea during their previous project. However, as explained by the interviewee they quickly realized the potential and anticipated what it could mean for them:
Jens: And just like the first CTP was this anticipated and was it understood as a turning point at the time or was it just a logical decision based of the situation or?
Interviewee: Let me say it was a try when we had the first press release. With the replies on the press release, we were sure or we were well aware that we are entering into a new field. Because it was clear that, we were going to earn a lot of money with this and we did. This allowed us to hire more people; in the meaning, those who are not directly financed by any project for example, a secretary, a PR-person, or additional administrative staff. We were able to pay intermediate projects that we were able to add on with only a part of the funding. You know some of the funding is 75 or 80 %, and we were able to put in the additional money ourselves. This became clear quite early. We were sure that this was one of the opportunities with the magazines. That we can take this money and put them into activities that are written down in our statues and we will not get any money for.
Jens: So it gives you stability?
Interviewee: These are mostly scientific activities so we are still able to run an office for environmental consultancy without having people paying for it. On electromagnetic radiation, on pollution. So we were able to answer requests, we were able to do some of the work. You know forwarding requests to other organizations and researchers. Well of course, this puts us a bit into tension because… To a certain amount, we were able to do this kind of work, which was written down as the ideology of the science shop. And we were aware of that quite early, so we saw this is as a, well, running business, we tried to develop it further that’s the reason we started with the second and the third magazine of this kind. We stopped the third one because it was unprofitable. We put more money in it than we could earn with it so it was definitely a step into a professional activity, a business. Of course, all the projects are professional but this was also a business.
The interviewee here explains their anticipation and realization quite well, and what it has meant for them.
There are so many potential learnings from this CTP. The most obvious is that a sustainable funding source and a business model can be crucial for the survival and development of an initiative.
Another learning is that being outside an university can be beneficial, or less vulnerable, when the political environment changes:
maybe this was one of the benefits from being outside of the universities… we were not able to rely on any kind of structural support for our work, we were always depending on our own hands of work either in services or in projects… so the magazines are not our only service, we also had run an education centre with seminars and etc. Yes so we have these services, and we have the projects, and we haven’t got any public funding, any public support for our work as a science shop. We are not depending on any other structure than our own, and now it turns out to be beneficial. In the early years it was a disadvantages because we definitely had do struggle, it was not easy to get the money. We had to add our experiences a writing proposals and apply for money, we were a good team year, but those who were at the university, that was in the early years a bit easier because they knew they had the money, were part of the university system… and… it was easy… it was not the work to struggle for money.
So while they struggled a lot in the early years to get funding, until they established a sustainable business model, it is now an advantage. The university based science shops did not have to struggle once established [although those science shops had other kinds of struggles], they however were dependent on the continued goodwill and political situation at the university. This has, as referred to in the quote, in recent years proved fatal for many university based science shops, as many in Northern Europe has been closed, or changed into something else.
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