Anytime you receive a press release, a social media call-to-arms or a report on, say, how the circular economy will affect whaling, chances are it came from one of two Brussels buildings.

Some 50 nonprofit advocacy groups now congregate in what have become central hubs for non-governmental organizations lobbying the European institutions — one is a converted bank in the gritty inner-city neighborhood of Matongé known as Mundo-b, and the other is a refurbished office block in the heart of the city’s European quarter called Mundo-j.

While corporate interests tend to congregate around Square de Meeûs and Place du Luxembourg in the shadow of the European Parliament, NGO lobbyists are making the most of their less glamorous location by pooling their resources. Staff of the most prominent NGOs in town eat, work and network together, and even pitch in to buy the office dishwasher.

But these are more than just palaces of protest. It’s an arrangement that activists say has enabled them to punch above their weight, offering them not just affordable office space in a pricey rental market but also a level of expertise that allows them to go head-to-head with industry lobbyists.

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“We have a great motivation to go to work every morning: to share a building with people with the same values as us,” said Laura Degallaix, the director of environmental standards advocacy group ECOS, a Mundo-b tenant.

An NGO magnet

The unusual set-up for NGOs in Brussels did not happen by chance. The two buildings are largely the brainchild of Frédéric Ancion, the managing director of a Belgian “social” business called Ethical Property — a spin-off of a similar enterprise in the United Kingdom.

Ancion opened Mundo-b in 2009 with the aim of creating a “new concept” in office space, which would bring together Belgian and EU NGOs while offering a leg-up to groups that could not afford office space in Brussels. It was all to be underpinned by a shared environmental and social credo.

To be part of the Mundo-b project, organizations sign a charter in which they vow to respect environmental principles and to maintain a good working relationship with other tenants. Renewable energy, recycling and green spaces are prioritized; shareholders investing in the project are offered small returns in exchange for a chance to support causes they believe in.

Although Mundo-b’s location in Rue d’Edimbourg, to the west of the European Parliament, was not ideal, there was no shortage of NGOs willing to sign up and work side-by-side with like-minded activists.

“This building is the reason why [we] moved to Brussels,” said David Lundy, from Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels transparency NGO.

Other groups with similar interests, including Friends of the Earth Europe and the umbrella-group Alter-EU, also have offices in Mundo-b. “We do almost every big project with them,” Lundy said.

The atmosphere of Mundo-b is that of a well-run student union. In the restaurant you can eat from a menu of “world food” and drink “fair trade” and organic coffee, tea and sodas (don’t ask for Coca-Cola). There are meeting rooms in the basement, a garden with sun-chairs and a composting area; the walls are covered with campaign posters.

Ancion admits having so many left-leaning advocacy groups in a former bank is “a bit ironic” — he keeps a safe from the old vault in the reception. But he says the concept of groups taking advantage of the economies of scale the building offers is working just as it should.

Even the building’s location, nestled between the Algerian consulate and an African hairdresser, has its advantages, with some NGOs feeling they are at a reasonable and objective distance from the Brussels EU bubble.

No hot water

Ethical Property is now spreading the concept across Belgium. It launched another venture in the Belgian city of Namur in 2010. Mundo-n, in a leafy part of town not far from the train station, is now home to a range of NGOs working in the French-speaking province of Wallonia. Another project, Mundo-a, is scheduled to open in Antwerp in 2017.

But the decision to open a second building in Brussels, Mundo-j, took Ethical Property in a different direction. While the Mundo-b building is owned by both the company and a number of the NGOs involved with it, the Mundo-j building — located in the central Rue de l’Industrie — is privately owned. Ethical Property has a lease on the entire building and sublets it to its tenants.

The “j” comes from the French word jeunesse (youth), and the project was initially earmarked for youth-related issues. The entire first floor of the seven-story building is occupied by the European Youth Forum, which represents 99 youth organizations across Europe. There are also a number of educational and youth-related groups on other floors.

However, when the building was first identified as an Ethical Property project it soon became clear there would be room to accommodate other groups and Ancion’s team started to work on a refurbishment which would meet the requirements of a range of tenants.

Mundo-j kept much of the Mundo-b approach. The canteen has the same caterers, most of the conference rooms are shared and there is no hot water in the bathrooms, to cut the environmental impact and the cost of running the building.

Tania Berman, a policy officer at the European Association for the Education of Adults, was determined to make the most of the new space and created the “Mundo-j Academy,” an informal professional development system for those working in the building.

“We thought it was a wonderful opportunity because all organizations in this building do similar things: fund-raising, communication, EU projects management, policy,” Berman says. “We had all that expertise here in the building.”

The courses include communications workshops, how to write proposals for EU funding and information on dealing with Belgian human resources laws. There are language “tables” for people who want to improve their language skills with native speakers and position-based meetings, in which all financial officers, policy officers or directors-general meet to exchange information.

But it isn’t all “Kumbaya” and yoga classes. Mundo-j is also home to hard-nosed organizations who are in Brussels to achieve policy outcomes for their members and have chosen the building because it offers them the lobbying infrastructure they need: the conference rooms, the easy access to the institutions and the modern working environment well-paid employees expect.

“I think that Ethical Property is a wonderful project, but we don’t take full advantage of it,” said Amanda Bok, CEO of the European Haemophilia Consortium, which represents 45 national patient associations. “We don’t really have the time to participate. And they do things in the evenings, while we have families.”

“Most of them are youth-focused and we are not,” Bok said. “If they had a project for health organizations or patient organizations in the same building, I think that at that point it would make sense for us, work-wise, to take time out to do that.”

And while Mundo-j may share Mundo-b’s informality, tenants in both buildings acknowledge that Mundo-j’s more respectable façade just a few steps away from Square de Meeûs makes it a more attractive option — particularly for those who have dealings with the corporate world.

One NGO staffer at Mundo-b said that while “the building and the people are awesome,” when his organization is hosting a big meeting it checks the availability of Mundo-j’s meeting rooms first.

“We have received comments about how the [Mundo-b] street is dingy and dirty, and is too far away from the European quarter,” she said.