Working independently, enjoying entrepreneurial freedom and still having access to social security: Smart brings together things that may initially seem difficult to reconcile. Deutschlandfunk, Germany’s national public radio broadcaster, recently featured our model in its Wochenendjournal programme on social enterprises.
Freelancing means putting your own ideas into practice, developing projects and shaping your own working life. But it often also means fluctuating income, late payments and the question of how to maintain adequate social security over the long term.
At Smart, we believe that freelancing should not mean having to face these uncertainties alone.
Our cooperative combines entrepreneurial freedom with social security. Members find their own clients, negotiate their rates and decide which projects to take on. For assignments processed through Smart, the cooperative acts as the employer. This allows freelancers to work independently while gaining access to employment-based social security.
Anja Nehls explores how this works and what makes a social enterprise in the Wochenendjournal programme on Deutschlandfunk.
What Makes a Business Social?
Social enterprises aim to operate economically while also creating value for society. Alongside Smart, the radio feature looks at other examples, including Ecosia, Acker and Kaffeeform. Each demonstrates a different way of combining economic activity with social or environmental goals.
Smart is part of this social economy, too. Our cooperative addresses the gaps that many freelancers encounter in the world of work: access to social security, administrative responsibilities and the challenge of combining entrepreneurial freedom with greater security. In recognition of this approach, Smart received first prize in the “Transformation” category of the “Berlins soziale Unternehmen” competition (Berlin Social Enterprises). We see this award as recognition of a model that looks beyond individual working conditions and takes a collective approach to organising them.
A Cooperative for Freelancers
The idea for Smart grew out of the experience of how complicated it can be to work as a freelancer in Germany. So much has to be organised individually: contracts, invoicing, insurance and protection for periods when work is harder to come by.
Our cooperative offers a shared structure as an alternative. Smart members remain responsible for their own work and shape their own businesses. The cooperative provides the organisational infrastructure and employs members for assignments processed through Smart.
More than 1,300 members from over 50 countries now use this model. They work across around 30 professional fields, from education and consulting to software development, translation, project management, guided city tours and curatorial work.
What connects them is not a particular profession. It is the desire to work independently without having to give up every form of collective security.
Greater Security Without Giving Up Independence
In the Deutschlandfunk feature, Anjana Vakil talks about her work as a software consultant and programming trainer. After moving from the United States to Germany, she discovered Smart. The cooperative makes it easier for her to manage administrative requirements and gives her access to social security.
One important part of the model is how it deals with fluctuating income. Working together with its members, Smart plans a salary based on each member’s current assignments and previous earnings. This makes it easier to absorb short-term fluctuations and delays in client payments.
That does not mean the cooperative can permanently make up for a lack of work. The model depends on members bringing in their own economically viable assignments. But it can help cushion temporary downturns and distribute risks differently from a situation in which everyone has to carry the entire burden alone.
Having an employment relationship can also make a difference in other areas of life. In the programme, Smart reports that members have been able to obtain loans and find housing in Berlin thanks to their employment with the cooperative, including through permanent employment contracts. Social security is about more than insurance contributions. It can also give people greater scope to shape their own lives.
Working Together, Shaping Things Together
Smart is a cooperative, which means its members are not just users of the model but also its owners. The principle is simple: one person, one vote, regardless of how much revenue an individual generates through Smart.
A social idea also needs a sound economic foundation. Smart retains a nine per cent fee on assignments processed through the cooperative. This helps fund administration, the platform and the ongoing development of the shared infrastructure. Turns out: The financial model works for our freelancers, too.
The cooperative therefore needs to operate sustainably in economic terms to fulfill its social purpose over the long term. The Deutschlandfunk feature also makes clear that Smart is now financially independent and reached its break-even point in the previous year.
For us, these two things belong together: a structure that can sustain itself and a model that enables people to work independently without having to shoulder every risk alone.
Listen to the Programme and Find Out More About Smart
The Deutschlandfunk feature “Social Enterprises: When Profit Isn’t Everything” explores different approaches to the social economy. The segment about Smart begins at around 11:13.
The feature on Deutschlandfunk (German)
Want to find out whether the Smart model could work for you? At our online information session, we explain how the cooperative works, what the requirements are and how to get started.
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