Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How does your community handle internal communications?

[Beverly Jones Redekop (beverly.jones.redekop]

An hour away, at Groundswell Cohousing at Yarrow Ecovillage, we use a
Google group email too. In the footer of each message is a link to the
"cheat sheet" with links to everything (calendar, community dinner
schedules, guidelines for using our wastewater system, members of
committees, minutes, etc...). A lot of this will move to a new website or
strata software "soon," but we've been using the Google group for seven
years.

It is "too much" email, so people unsubscribe or drop to digest from time
to time. It feels good to take a stand against too much email, but then
people feel left out, so they resubscribe.

People sometimes complain about external communication systems when they
are actually experiencing internal adjustment.

Our common house doors are glass, and dry-erase markers work the same on
glass as on white boards, so that's a great place for "meeting tonight!"
type messages.

On Sun, Sep 18, 2016, 11:06 AM Lorne Mallin <lorne.mallin [at] gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Greetings from Vancouver Cohousing, an urban Canadian community of 53
> adults and 22 children in 31 units that completed in February. We are
> examining how best to organize our internal communications so people feel
> they know what's happening in the community. We'd appreciate learning from
> other communities. Currently we have:
>
>    - A Google group email that goes to everyone and everyone can post to.
>    Residents often comment that there's too much email. We use SLO (Subject
>    Line Only) messages in the subject line when possible to ease the
> burden.
>    - A private Facebook group that most members belong to, but some members
>    just don't want to deal with Facebook.
>    - A sheet of announcements from our committees and teams prepared before
>    our monthly community meetings.
>
>
> I did a monthly digital newsletter while we were under development, and am
> thinking now of a weekly one. We've talked about installing a bulletin
> board in the common house that we intend to curate so it's effective. There
> are of course the everyday interactions in our homes, the courtyard and
> common meals.
>
> Your thoughts would be much appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Lorne Mallin
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