Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: When to bring others in

[Jim Snyder-Grant (jimsg]

L Shapiro asked "At what point in our process should we recruit other people
to join the core group?"

Here's what worked for New View (Acton MA). After the basic vision work was
done, there was another round with the smaller core group (before I joined)
over the next couple of months on primary & secondary goals. 'Primary' was
defined as "I would have to leave the group if we didn't have that - that's
key for me". Secondary was "That's very important for me".  I think the list
was finished at a retreat.

That list included some concrete stuff such as commuting distance to Boston,
access to public transportation, quality of local schools, the kinds of
folks in the community, and some less tangible stuff (beautiful
surroundings, less burdensome lifestyle) When they had that list, then they
recruited for more households (that's when I came in). The idea (and it
worked) was that folks coming in would know what specific direction the
group was going in, so that group cohesion could be maintained through the
site selection process.

The next & last round of  growth, roughly, was when a specific site was
chosen, for folks that needed to experience a particular site to know if
they wanted in. We were also keeping the group smaller until then, to allow
the contingency of finding a smaller site.

-Jim

Jim Snyder-Grant
New View (Acton MA).
http://www.newview.org
Digging out from a lot of snow - the tractor & snow blowers appear to all be
working at the same time.
We started a 'salon' a couple of months ago that meets every 2 weeks or so,
on rotating nights to allow different folks to attend. It has turned in to
New View's equivalent of the 'sharing circles' in other groups. Very
close-making.


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