Re: Sustainability of community service
From: Craig Ragland (craigraglandgmail.com)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:47:16 -0700 (PDT)
As I love saying after waiting in the queue to speak at a Songaia meeting,
Rob speaks my mind...

Of course, I rarely just end there - and add a little more...

I hope that what I routinely witness in high-function cohousing is something
Coho/US grows into - an abundance of empowered volunteer and staff energy -
that just makes more good stuff happen, stuff that others get to enjoy
without knowing how it happened. To achieve this, we need more focused
energy (both people-power and financial). High function cohousing has both,
often in abundance.

A remarkable thing I've learned about Coho/US since moving from the board to
my current staff role is that, in the past, we've not done a very good job
incorporating a great many of the people who have offered to volunteer - it
has taken some persistence on the part of people who want to help. In
addition, we have almost never asked individuals for financial support.

We're going to be changing this. After the 2008 Conference, several people
offered to volunteer for the 2009 Conference - and a couple even asked about
becoming individual sponsors - something the 2008 Team never thought about.
I'm about to meet with Grace Kim, who is heading up the Core Team for the
2009 Conference... and one topic for our conversation is how to best use the
people power available to make the 2009 event better than ever.

In the past, Coho/US requests for donations/sponsorships have been almost
entirely to Cohousing Communities and Cohousing Professionals. Given
patterns of non-profit giving in the US, its remarkable that we've never
asked individuals - those who most understand the value of cohousing to
their families and our broader society. This too will change as we get more
clear about financial needs and opportunities.

Craig

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Rob Sandelin <floriferous [at] msn.com> wrote:

>
> The other day I was noticing in my community that an awful lot of things
> have gotten done without me.


--clipped--

So on a personal level, I never waste my time worrying about who is NOT
> there, but rather enjoying who is, knowing that in many cases, I am not
> there and people are not worried about my absence.
>
> Rob Sandelin
> 17 years at
> Sharingwood Cohousing
> Snohomish County, WA
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
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>
>
>


-- 
Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

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