Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: recruitment help sought

[Jan Gordon (jrg14]

At 11:34 AM -0600 1/6/98, Linda Felch wrote:
>Jan Gordon <jrg14 [at] cornell.edu> wrote:
>
>>  We of the second neighborhood at Ecovillage at Ithaca are wanting to
>move
>>  things along and have made a big committment to recruitment.  I have
>read
>>  an article in an old issue of co-housing mag, good ideas.
snip.
>
>We of Heathcote Community in Freeland, MD are also interested in improving
>recruitment. Jan, would you be willing to summarize some of the good ideas
>you read about in Co-housing Magazine?
>
snip
>What strategies did the first residential group at EVI find effective?
>
>Linda Felch
>lfelch [at] jhu.edu
>http://www.welch.jhu.edu/~lfelch/heathcote.html
>Baltimore, MD

Linda, thanks for the ideas!  Let's see, the article mentioned a few things
here are the ones I can recall:
*  events - didn't expand on that
*  logo, use a consistent logo on all flyers, letterhead, etc.

What we are doing--
We will give personal invitations to local interested folks, a few at a
time, to join a community meal in the Common House of the first
neighborhood, followed by tea and desert and Q & A.  This sort of event was
actually my first contact.
We hold monthly orientation/tours on the site of the first neighborhood and
take a walk on the site for the second neighborhood.  There are flyers
around town for these events.
We are beginning to put together a slide show and will find appropriate
speakers and offer this to local clubs and organizations.
We are making generic flyers which will be distributed to all branches of
the bank that wrote the mortgages for the first neighborhood, this bank
will also include a paragraph about us in their quarterly newsletter.
I post announcements about our monthly orientations on this list and
anywhere else I find that is semi-appropriate.
Our web site brings in a fair amount of interest.
WE are putting together a tri-fold display board and will use it wherever
anyone will let us:  the bank, farmer's market, festivals, etc.
And, we are going to begin calling folks who have expressed interest in the
past and have fallen away, to ask what it was that they were looking for
and what we were lacking from their point of view.  Just to gather info.
And, I have sent an email message to all in the first 'hood and all on our
email lists asking about that the first 'hood did that worked and for other
ideas, got very little response so far.  I think they are busy getting on
with life and don't necessarily want to spend time looking back.

Thanks for your input!


Regards,   Jan  (jrg14 [at] cornell.edu)

*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_*^_
EcoVillage Ithaca, NY looking for people to help plan,
and live in, the second neighborhood group. for info:
http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/ecovillage/ or jrg14 [at] cornell.edu