The Experimental Station is a not-for-profit corporation. Like all non-profits, the Experimental Station depends on revenues generated from grants and individual donations to cover its expenses. While generating grant and donor revenues is a necessary and desirable privilege, by building our earned revenue base through long-term rental to building occupants & projects and through short-term & event rentals of our spaces, we seek to cover our operating and overhead expenses.

Mutualism

Like all corporations, whether for-profit or non-profit, the Experimental Station must create and apply budgets, follow standard accounting practices, pay its bills, bring in revenue to pay them, etc. Despite such similarities, the Experimental Station consciously embraces a business philosophy that is, in significant ways, at odds with standard business philosophies. Underlying the Experimental Station's business practice is the ecological principle of mutualism. Mutualism, like competition and parasitism, is a form of symbiosis ("living together").

Mutualism, unlike competition and parasitism, is a symbiotic relationship that works to the long-term benefit of both parties. In a mutual relationship, each party contributes to the well-being of the other, providing one another nourishment, protection, or an array of other services and resources.

Embracing mutualism as our manner of doing business, the Experimental Station seeks occupants, participants, and collaborators that recognize the benefit of creating a mutually supportive environment. As in a natural ecosystem, wherein mutualism between species produces long-term positive effects, we believe that mutualism between the Experimental Station, occupants, projects, and participants will give rise to long-term stability for all and a greater ability to support a broad variety of initiatives.

Hospitality As An Institutional Value

Underlying the Experimental Station’s undertakings is a belief in the singular importance of hospitality as an institutional value. As hosts, we aim to provide a place where people and ideas feel welcome, where individuals matter, and where encounters and conversations are fostered that cannot or are unlikely to happen elsewhere. As an institution, we seek to create a nourishing habitat that invites inventiveness, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, resource sharing, and community.