Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What are optimal numbers for beginning group?

[Tree Bressen (tree]

Hi,

Nikki wrote:
> Hi, We are just forming our group and are wondering how many people are too
> much for a process workshop and a design workshop?  What have been other
> groups experiences as you form in terms of numbers of members?  Is it better
> to have a smaller early group or not.  Our project hopes to have 30
> households when complete.  Would that be too many people to design a common
> house?

Jenny wrote:
> We plan to have an all-day group formation workshop, facilitated by a 
> talented trainer (Eris Weaver).  We have limited the workshop to 25 
> participants, with the idea that too many people can't get to know each 
> other.  We thought that at the end of the workshop, we'd see how may 
> people wanted to become members.  One of our next steps is to have a 
> design workshop with Chuck Durrett.  Now that we have a real project, 
> we've got a lot of interest, and a waiting list.
>
> On the one hand, we don't want to keep people out of the design workshop 
> if they're qualified to buy, pay the initial money, etc. There is some 
> feeling that the design workshop will bring the community together and 
> therefore, the greater the number of future members participating, the 
> better the cohesion of the group will be.
>
> On the other hand, there's concern that too many people (could be as many 
> as 40 adults, since there will be 26 - 30 homes) would be too many for a 
> good design workshop.  There's also some thought that, in order for the 
> group to gel, it should grow more slowly, and not go from 3 to 30 
> households in one month.  If we invited more people to the design 
> workshop, we would have a second group formation/process/facilitation 
> workshop first, so that everyone at the design workshop would have been to 
> one or both of those.

I don't have a firm answer on what rate to grow your group at, but i will 
say that i think you can have a good community-building workshop with 40 
adults, if it's designed well (including small group break-outs and so 
on).  And even moreso with process skills training; the trainings i do for 
40 people aren't that different in substance from the trainings i do for 
25, though they might feel a little less homey.  As for the design 
workshop, i recommend asking Chuck what his take is on how many 
participants he can handle.

There are some things that are really important that can get hard to get 
agreement on once the group grows large.  On that i will repeat something i 
recommended on this list a few months ago:

(1) Decide within your first few meetings that EVERYONE will be expected to 
help cook common meals, and make sure every new person that joins your 
forming group is aware of this expectation.

(2) Expect and invite people to contribute to the work of the group as 
early as possible.  Make it clear that once someone has attended three 
meetings or whatever, it's time to get involved on a committee, or helping 
organize social outings, or something else that clearly adds to the life of 
the group.

Good luck!  And congratulations on moving forward.  Cheers,

--Tree



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Tree Bressen
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