Re: Levels of membership
From: Katherine Fugitt (kfugittpurplebear.com)
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 14:34:04 -0700 (MST)
At 08:57 AM 11/28/01 -0500, you wrote:
Our Chesapeake Cohousing Group is in the site
finding-close-to-acquiring-land phase.  It has been mentioned often to
create different levels of membership. I would like information from other
neighborhoods as to how this works or doesn't work,  if time of creating
this is important ( now or later), benefits, etc.

The "easy" answer is that at the point when the group starts needing lots of cash, you need different levels of membership for the people who have put in serious money (thousands of $) versus the people who have "merely" put in hundreds of $. The way people make decisions and the compromises they are willing to make (or not make) is often very different depending on how much money they have on the line. It can be helpful for people to put this "serious" $ into the group kitty before a site is actually acquired, but I don't know that it is necessary. Having an Associate membership level also lets people get involved gradually and find out if the whole idea works for them before they make a big financial commitment.

Our Seattle-area group has been in-and-out of this stage several times in the past two years. In our experience, people who hadn't put in equity-level $ were a lot less willing to compromise on what they thought was absolutely essential in a site.

Two cents from a lurker,
Katherine


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Katherine Fugitt
kfugitt [at] purplebear.com
Lake Washington Cohousing (at Forbes Creek Commons we hope)
It Takes A Village. We're Building one.
www.rosehillcohousing.org

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