Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: When did members join your group?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jan 22, 2009, at 9:19 AM, Kristen Simmons wrote:

> I'm trying to research WHEN members join groups. I've heard  
> anecdotally that
> there are big bumps in membership after major milestones such as land
> acquisition, permitting, and start of construction. Doe anyone have  
> any hard
> data for their community?

One of the problems with this data and the questions that you ask is  
that you would have to measure at each juncture who left as well as  
who joined.

Site control means people leave as well as join. One group that failed  
split completely in half with site choice -- they never got control  
because they had to start over again.

Although there were regular increases, we had people leaving right up  
to final contracts -- as well as people joining.

So collecting this data would be hard, and you would have to have data  
from a lot of communities to be sure it was representative.

It would be easier to get and more accurate if you set up a monkey  
survey where you asked forming communities to record each month (send  
reminders) how many people joined and how many left and what were the  
significant milestones. But by time you had enough data, you would be  
built.

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