Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: a nice marketing tool....

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 12, 2008, at 9:24 PM, Joani Blank wrote:

> *Our Community Process:
> *
> We do not "choose" new members. We ask rather that members choose us
> thoughtfully by taking the time to get to know us and by reviewing our
> community agreements to be certain that you wish to commit to them.

Thanks to Joanie for posting this. It's a very nice way to both  
emphasize the community and give all the information people need when  
considering plopping down the ton of money required to buy a house.

I wanted to comment on the importance of emphasizing "do not choose"  
new members. Once "community" and "process" are mentioned, people  
often assume they will have to be approved. They may not say this,  
just assume it, and avoid following up.

I remember sitting in an orientation for new members. The leader was  
missing the point of the question "When is a decision made"?

The leader said, "We are all doing this together. We all participate  
in decisions."

And the question was repeated again, "When will we know if this will  
work for us?"

"We won't know about location or home design until we find land."

"Do we want that long before we know?"

The questions and answers went around and around for a long time. I  
knew quite a lot about new communities but not about this one. It  
finally came out that she wasn't telling anyone because she didn't  
know either -- and they had so few members they hadn't thought about  
it yet. It was still come one, come all.

But out there in the general public, once the word "member" is said,  
people expect there to be a decision made on them. And this was a  
meeting for new members so they assumed it was the meeting where they  
could start the membership process and wanted to know when it would be  
finished before they got very invested in caring about the potential  
community.

So this or a similar description would be very helpful to people "out  
there."

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org