Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: membership building

[Marci Malinowycz (SoDance]

In my group, Puget Ridge Cohousing in Seattle, before we finished and moved 
in, we had stages of membership:

Prospective members attended their first five or more meetings without 
participating. (Folks "graduating" from that level reported their relief at 
finally being able to speak! Although, we did call on them in meeting to add 
comments on certain topics where appropriate.)

Associate members, having decided to stay with us, paid a small amount to help 
with administrative costs (a couple hundred $ or so, I've forgotten exactly 
how much), and could speak in meetings and participate in most decisions. 
(Some of the time in our history, we had a time limit of a few months on 
staying at this level; that was controversial, as you might imagine.) We had a 
new member session with the household that was choosing to go to this level, a 
time to get to know them in detail, a time for both parties to ask and answer 
questions (and in theory the point at which we could say that we didn't think 
they were a good fit, though we never exercised that option); I look back 
fondly on those sessions, as they were often warm and fuzzy.

Full members paid 10% of the estimated price of their chosen size of unit (1 
thru 4 BR). They could participate in all decisions. They got a priority 
number for their unit-size category, which was employed when unit picking 
finally took place; this served as a reward roughly proportional to how early 
they risked their money. They could go to this level at any time, even during 
their new member session.

Associate and full members were expected to participate on one committee, but 
there was no counting of hours. Everyone paid for child care, at each meeting.

It's been too long for me to recall turning points, times when membership 
surged or flagged, and so on. Someday maybe I'll research it.

One point in time I recall, roughly a year prior to groundbreaking, was when 
we realized that in order to make it we needed new members at a rate of a new 
paid-in-full household per month. That meant even more associate members 
(because not all become full members), which meant even many more prospective 
members, which meant a great many more attendees to our public slide shows and 
information sessions... whew! We stepped up our Membership Committee work 
quite a bit then, but we made it, being full plus a waitlist at 
groundbreaking.

-- Marci Malinowycz
   Puget Ridge Cohousing
   sodance [at] msn.com
   206-763-2623

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From:  cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org on behalf of 
champe_salmon [at] montana.campus.mci.net
Sent:  Sunday, October 19, 1997 8:34 PM
Subject:  membership building

A question from Karen Olson of Gallatin Valley Cohousing:

We are in the process of defining what it means to be a member of our
cohousing non-profit.  What were some of the critical issues that defined
membership for other groups?  Financial commitment? Time? Participation in
meetings? What was the turning point?