Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Membership Requirements

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] crd.lotus.com
is the author of the message below but due
to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop (Fred).
****************  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS *********************

Summary of New View (Acton MA) Membership process:

(This describes our membership process during the site search & development 
phase: after we move in it's much simpler: If you find a willing seller, and 
New View doesn't use its right of first refusal to match your price, you are 
in.)

Corporate papers describe two types of membership: Full membership & 
Provisional membership.  Rights & responsibilities are the same, except that 
Provisional members can get their money back within 90 days of leaving for any 
reason and Full members get their money back if they leave only some period of 
time after the whole development is completed. Also, provisional members don't 
get to participate in decisions about who will be a full member.

Our membership committee, with the consent of the group, created a third 
category not legally defined in the corporate docs called supporting members. 
This is our waiting list. They used to pay nothing & not participate in much. 
Now they pay only dues ($40/quarter), and can participate in committees and 
group meetings like other members. 

To become a supporting member:

1. Attend an intro meeting run by the membership committee. This is usually 
about 2 hours. We used to do them once/month, now as needed. Sometimes we do 
intro meetings for one person. Std agenda = Intros & Agenda review. What is 
Cohousing? What is New View? Where is the development process at now? Where is 
the membership process at now?  Open Questions & hangout time). They get 
assigned a buddy from the committee at this time so they have a contact person 
for questions, etc.

2. Organize or attend three potluck type events with any set of New View 
members that includes at least one membership committee member.

3. Attend 2 business meetings of the whole group. (Some of our meetings start 
with potlucks, so that can count against req. 2)

4. Answer a short questionnaire, something like: What do you like about 
Cohousing? What have you done in your past that's similar to this? What are 
your concerns / excitements about joining New View?

5. Call up our local bank officer, have a conversation with them about their 
assets, liabilities, expense & income, and get a note generated saying they can 
probably afford the kind of house they are looking for.

6. The committee brings them in to supporting membership (Or not. Usually yes: 
the process is pretty self-selecting).

If the group is in an expansion phase, they go from the waiting list to 
provisional membership. The only additional requirement  is a $5000 loan to our 
land fund due in two parts over 60 days of accepting provisional membership 
($1000 up front). They get a promissory note for this money.  If they have been 
supporting members for a while, the committee has to consense to the transition.

The transition from provisional to full membership happens after a minimum of 6 
months. It requires the consent of the whole group. 

It looks a bit onerous spelling it out like this, but the good thing is, we 
have never had a big falloff in membership at any of the difficult phases.  In 
fact, we've lost only three full members over the years: one lost their job & 
moved out of town; another got engaged and decided that Cohousing couldn't 
accommodate what they both wanted, and the most recent dropped when we did the 
site assignment musical chairs, and they were left with no site they could live 
with. (we had a seniority tie-breaker in that process, and they were relatively 
new.). 


-Jim

Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] crd.lotus.com