Cohousing-L Mailing List: question about bylaws/members for cohousing umbrella groups

[The Arnolds (thearnolds]

Hi,
I have been lurking for a few months now, and I want to thank everyone 
for their generous sharing of information, expertise and experiences. I 
am currently working with a group of about 30 families in the Waukesha 
County, Wisconsin, area (which is about 25 minutes west of Madison) to 
establish a cohousing group. The information that has been shared by 
this group has been invaluable, motivating and eye-opening. My 
heartfelt gratitude. (Hopefully, we'll soon be able to begin reporting 
exciting posts such as "we've bought land" or "we've broken ground", 
too.)

In addition (and the reason for my post), there has also been contact 
made among several other "groups" and interested people around the 
topic of community living (some are co-housers, others are into co-ops, 
a few are looking to house-share). We have formed an umbrella group 
called CLOSE-W (Community Living of Southeastern Wisconsin) with the 
purpose of increasing public awareness and serving as a resource on 
community living in this area. (You can learn more about us at 
http://www.closew.org.)

Now that CLOSE-W has a few meetings under our belt we are trying the 
somewhat painful task of establishing bylaws for the group -- including 
how decisions are made and delegated, who gets to be a member of the 
"steering" or "administrative" committee and who gets to vote on that, 
etc. I was wondering whether there were any other regional/area 
community housing/co-housing coalitions who might be willing to share 
their bylaws/administrative structure with us. Any help or insight 
would be greatly appreciately.

Sincerely,
Shannon Jackson Arnold
Waukesha County CoHousing
and CLOSE-W Member
Delafield, WI
thearnolds [at] wi.rr.com