Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: committees and their functions

[Diane Simpson (coho]

Hi Abby,
This is not a silly question. Business committee essentially runs your 
financial, legal, and professional operations. They make sure you are 
on solid financial ground when choosing among the various proposals 
that will be presented to the group; they evaluate the credentials of 
the various professionals that will work for your group; and they make 
sure you have enough money coming in to run the development process. In 
our part of the country developers typically fund the first 20-30% of 
building a housing development and then they get a construction loan to 
finance the rest of it. If you are a cohousing group you usually end up 
being your own developer. That means your group has to come up with the 
money to purchase (or put an option on) the land; apply for permits; 
hire a lawyer for the zoning process; hire architects to do the 
schematic designs (and later, the construction drawings); hire a 
surveyor to map the boundaries of the site; and other professionals as 
necessary.

The process committee is an internally-oriented committee that focuses 
on group process and group "mental health." In some cohousing groups it 
is synonymous with the facilitators committee; in other groups it is a 
subcommittee of the membership committee. This group looks at your 
internal group processes and evaluates how well they are working. Does 
your group need more time to come to a decision?  Less time? Do you 
need more meetings? How is the meeting space working for your group? 
Are the various sub-groups well-represented on your agenda? Do 
"parking-lot" items ever get addressed, or do they fall into a black 
hole? How are the "vibes" at your meetings--good,bad,or ugly? Do you 
need to devote more time to business? More time to social gatherings? 
How well are the meetings run?  How is communication going in your 
group? Are all of the members getting the information they need to come 
to informed decisions? Are new members being welcomed into the group? 
Are group members getting the training they need in order to understand 
the consensus process and to make decisions effectively? How do you 
address "burnout"?

To make a short story long, the business committee makes sure you have 
a sound financial structure upon which to build your group; the process 
committee looks after the internal health of the group.

--Diane Simpson(:^]
JP COHOUSING  617-524-6614
P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG
"The people who surround you define the quality of your life."

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From: Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
Date: Sun Jul 6, 2003  1:05:26 PM US/Eastern
To: -cohousing-L mailing list <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_committees
Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org


Abby Rutka <stampwithabby [at] yahoo.com>
is the author of the message below.
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager 
<fholson [at] cohousing.org>
because the message included HTML ;      PLEASE do not post HTML, see
   http://csf.colorado.edu/cohousing/2001/msg01672.html  and
   http://www.harley.com/turn-off-html/
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------


This may seem like a silly question, but what is the difference between 
a
business committee and a process committee?

Thanks,
Abby

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