Cohousing-L Mailing List: Size of Board Of Directors/Trustees

[Joani Blank (jeblank]

>Egads, Am I embarrassed!. I sent the whole digest back to the list
yesterday. That should teach me not to do this responding late at night. A
thousand apologies!
>
>Joani
>
>On the question of size of Board of Directors:
>
>I believe that typically in cohousing every household (represented by at
least one adult member) is on the Board of Directors. And your Board
meetings are your community meetings. You will find that not every
household will attend every meeting, and if you are worried about not being
able to do anything official at a meeting, you can set a low-ish number for
a quorum. Even more than when you are building, you will find that you
choose to have a lot of committees (standing and ad hoc), do stuff that it
now seems needs input from everyone. 
>
>If your committee structure is strong, you will find that the committees
can bring well-worked out and well-researched proposals  to the full group.
 The people who care the most about the issue can prepare propsals so that
usually even a very large group can come to consensus quite easily. If not,
you may have to postpone a response until the entire group has a chance to
think it over, talk it over with family and others, get more information
for themselves, propose an alternative or do whatever they have to  to
particiapte in a decision which will be best for the community as a whole.  
>
>Even though these big meetings can sometimes be difficult, they are a
crucial element in continuing to build the sense of community we all hope
for in cohousing. And after you know each other better, you will have many
opportunitie during the meeting for fun and laughter, sometimes at the most
unexpected moment. I think it is especially important to have regular whole
group meetings when your group is large. You will find that some folks come
to common dinners infrequently, and/or tend to stick to a few others with
whom they share interests. So the larger meetings are a chance to stay in
touch with those in the group who you know less well, even those you don't
like very much. C'mon, it's good practice for the outside world if nothing
else. 
>
>You can have an executive committee made up of the officers and perhaps a
member or few at large, who are authorized to act when that is required
between regularly scheduled large group meetings. You can also give input
to to a committee (or an indivdual), and then authourize them--and trust
them--to make a final decision on a matter. 
>
>The Old Oakland Group had a day-long workshop a couple of weeks ago on
consensus (that's "s" as in consent) decision-making and group process that
was invaluable. It was presented by Ellen Hertzman, who unlike most other
group process teachers is steeped in cohousing lore. (Ellen is a co-author
with Katie and Chuck of the second edition of CoHousing, and worked for the
CoHousing Company for several years.) She is terrific, and I recommend her
most highly. Her rates are reasonable as well. I predict that working with
her for a weekend--one day was too short--will save you endless heartache
later. Rob Sandelin from Sharingwood teaches group process as well, and is
also steeped in cohousing as most of you know..  Ellen's email address is
ellenhertz [at] aol.com.
>
>I hope that someone who lives at Nyland  Colorado) will respond to your
query on this subject. As I'm sure you know--but maybe not everyone reading
this does--they are just your size at 42 units. 
>
>Joani Blank
>Doyle St CoHousing (tiny by comparison at 12 households) and Old Oakland
CoHousing. That's California, in case y'all didn't know. 
>
>