Everyone is talking about digitization – a key driver is the Corona pandemic. It is accelerating digital transformation in all areas, including community and volunteer engagement. Smaller initiatives and companies in particular face the challenge of not losing touch. This is where the new digital platform of the “Marktplatz Gute Geschäfte RBK” can and wants to counteract. The format, which has already been successfully practiced in many cities, brings companies and nonprofit organizations together and initiates cooperation at eye level.

To great acclaim, the first physical “Marktplatz Gute Geschäfte” took place in Rösrath in summer 2019 with around 17 nonprofit organizations and 13 companies from the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis. 35 engagement agreements with a total engagement value of around 56,000 euros were made. The event should therefore go into the next round as early as 2020. But in the Corona year, the inventors of the RBK marketplace also had to take a step back from the face-to-face event and come up with something new: The initiators Tanja Siebert and Christian Gollmer saw the crisis as an opportunity and put the idea of a virtual marketplace into practice.

The digital platform now offers all stakeholders the opportunity to network with each other and make commitment agreements, regardless of location and time. “Here, completely new forms of engagement become possible, companies and non-profit organizations can increase their visibility and support each other with the help of the platform,” says Tanja Siebert and invites regional actors to get involved in a targeted way at www.gute-geschaefte-rbk.de. The Kinderschutzbund Rösrath e.V., the MiKubU initiative (migrant children get support) from Bergisch Gladbach and others are already active on the platform.

The Rösrath Dr. Jürgen Rembold Foundation, the main sponsor of the “Marktplatz Gute Geschäfte,” also welcomes the move into the digital world. “With the virtual marketplace, the initiators have built a modern, contemporary bridge between companies and civil society,” emphasizes Dr. Jürgen Rembold, who hopes that ideas like this will anchor civic engagement as a permanent fixture in corporate cultures in the long term. “Because of the potential, my foundation will accompany both marketplace formats as a main sponsor.”

In addition to the digital platform, an annual face-to-face event is also planned. The next physical “Marktplatz Gute Geschäfte” will already take place this year on June 02 at the Kreishandwerkerschaft in Bergisch Gladbach. Patron remains district administrator Stephan Santelmann. The meeting is promoted apart from the Dr. Rembold donation as main sponsors also by the circle savings bank Cologne, the circle handicraft association and the Rhine Bergische circle support the project.

Interested parties can register at https://www.gute-geschaefte-rbk.de or become active in the virtual marketplace.