What is the Offers and Needs Market?
The world's most effective method for sharing your gifts and having your needs met.
Imagine a combination of speed networking, timebanking, and Craigslist…
That’s the Offers and Needs Market: a two hour, guided process in which community members meet virtually, or in person, to identify and exchange their passions, knowledge, skills, resources, opportunities, and needs.
From offering graphic design or use of an electric drill, to finding a project collaborator or place to live, anything's possible at an Offers and Needs Market.
The basic Offers and Needs Market process is easy to follow:
Step 1: Offers Exploration – Individuals are guided through a process of silently documenting what they'd like to offer others, how available they'd like to make those offers, and what they'd like to charge (if anything).
Step 2: Offers Exchange – Offers are shared in groups (or online break-out rooms) of up to 8 people, using a rapid-fire formula. Participants record offers they'd like to pursue, and network once all offers have been shared.
Step 3: Needs Exploration – Individuals are guided through a process of silently documenting what they need, how urgent their needs are, and what they're willing to pay (if anything) to have their needs met.
Step 4: Needs Exchange – Needs are shared with the same group, using the same method as offers. Throughout the process, participants record needs they may be able to help fulfill, and network once all needs have been shared.
Step 5: Rotation – Participants move to another group to repeat the process with new people.
Since 2011, the Offers and Needs Market has helped thousands of people around the world connect in meaningful ways.
Read on to learn how, specifically, the OANM has changed people's lives, and the training on offer to you if you're interested in facilitating the process yourself!
Our Facilitator Training Begins June 4
For the first time, OANM creator, Donnie Maclurcan and community organizer, Crystal Arnold, are training people in how to plan, promote, and facilitate the Market across communities worldwide.
Join them, online, in this four-part interactive training to learn the secrets that make the Market so effective in revitalizing communities from the bottom-up.
Results
%
Feel more confident expressing what they need and can offer their community
%
Met a possible collaborator
%
Feel more willing to trust others when they are exchanging goods or services
%
Met a possible friend
%
Plan to source more of their goods locally
%
Met a possible business partner
%
Met a possible employee
%
Met a possible employer
Praise for the OANM
“It is an exciting way to get people thinking about what is most important to their wellbeing… It's been an effective way to get people comfortable with interacting through the time bank, which is, at its heart, about relationships.”
“The Offers and Needs market is a wonderful tool for creating an active, mutually supportive, interdependent community from any group.”
“The Offers and Needs Market shifts our relationships in a profound way. This is empowering people to be more than just consumers; they become engaged citizens caring for one another.”
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