Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Best ways to seek collaborators?

[Emilie Parker (emilie.v.parker]

Our group in Boulder County Colorado has lots of interest and it has from
the beginning.  The reason we have not moved forward very fast is that with
the first group of people (51) there were quite a few people who could not
afford to buy a home.  We are on our second go-around now with a wonderful
committed group of 9 but we've been unable to find a property we can both
settle on and get.  The property we all love -- we can't get.

Attracting members has been through Meetup.com.  We started the Meetup with
0 members -- only myself and my husband.  Meetup.com announced it and we
immediately within days had 23 people interested.  We had the idea, built
the Meetup web site, which took a few days and cost a few dollars (not much
really) and then scheduled a first meeting.  We had 19 people at the first
Meeting.  Since then we have a new person orientation once every month and
we promote and announce it and get sign ups on Meetup.com.  Our Meetup has
almost 450 members now.  We have 9 families committed -- paid $475 for
first workshop.

I agree with all of the above.  We do all the other stuff people have
already recommended plus we place classified ads in magazines that target
our interest group - artists.

We started at 0 members not counting Douglass and myself.  We had a draft
mission and vision already created.  When we launched our Meetup we posted
the vision and mission as a "draft" and described it in the introduction.
We've had the vision and mission on the agenda at least a dozen times since
then and tweaked it as a result almost each time but it's still pretty much
the same but better.  As of today we have a lovely group of 9 households.
We've talked about the vision/mission a few times but it's still a draft.

Stay tuned.  Wish us luck.  Our consultant is Jim Leach and his advice is
"you need property."

Emilie Parker
Denver/Boulder Artists Cohousing, Louisville, CO
www.artcoho.com

P.S.  For those of you who remember everything this Denver/Boulder artists
cohousing used to be Louisville Artists Cohousing but we changed our name.






-----------------
Emilie Parker
emilie.v.parker [at] gmail.com
303-317-4558 main
240-350-8533 cell
My website: www.emilieparker.com
Artists Cohousing website: www.artistscohousing.com
Art Cohousing Meetup:  www.meetup.com/artists-housing-community



On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 3:43 PM, David Heimann <heimann [at] theworld.com> 
wrote:

>
>
>
> Hello Tiffany,
>
>            A number of people have responded to you about procedures to
> connect with interested people.  For a different pace, Diane Simpson, one
> of the co-founders of Jamaica Plain Cohousing (JPC), has written up her
> experiences on her attempts to get cohousing going before it finally
> clicked with the formation of JPC.  She mentioned similar procedures as
> others (presentations at local venues, mentions in local media with
> follow-ups thereafter, formation of local networks meeting regularly at
> local locations -- which nowadays could also be done via Meetup and
> Facebook, etc.).  However, she also mentioned how such groups would *not*
> flourish, a couple of which I copy here, so you can do the reverse.  Don't
> worry if it feels discouraging, she and Dave eventually got something to
> click on the third try, and JPC is here to prove it!
>
> Regards,
> David Heimann
> Jamaica Plain Cohousing
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________
> Some time in late July this initial group fell apart. The initial
> cohousing "core group" consisted of three households, but it never
> really did jell as a core group. The members were never able to put
> together a mission statement because the members were not on the same
> wavelength. One of the households wanted to buy a house within 6
> months, another household was thinking maybe five years down the
> road, and Dave & Diane were hoping for something to come together
> within 2 years.
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> Dave & Diane went out on their own after that and tried to start
> another group. They attracted a group of seven or eight regulars at
> meetings, but it never got past the discussion-group stage. As Diane
> looked back on it, she saw that the group members had too many
> disparate philosophies pulling them apart, and there wasn't one
> strong leader who could stand up and say "Look, this is what we're
> going to do, and if you share this philosophy, you should become a
> member of the core group, and if you don't you should form another
> group." One person wanted us to build cohousing in an extremely
> expensive area of Jamaica Plain. Another member of the group was a
> realtor who lived in a neighboring town but wanted to move back to
> Jamaica Plain. He was a friend of the person who wanted to do
> cohousing in an extremely expensive section of JP, and he knew it
> would never fly, but didn't want to say so openly for fear of hurting
> his friend's feelings. There was an extremely low-income person in
> the group who would have to get some a government subsidy in order to
> buy any kind of housing, even a1-bedroom condominium. There were a
> couple of people who wanted to buy a big old Victorian (there's lots
> of those in JP) and renovate it. There was a person from another area
> of Boston who was very keen on living in cohousing, but who was
> always traveling around the country and who could hardly ever attend
> meetings.
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> That was in May of 1997. That group didn't go anywhere, partly
> because the people who joined weren't really committed, and partly
> because it was an extremely fast -track proposal. What it was, was a
> set of three apartment buildings in Roslindale center that were being
> put up for sale by the owner, because he was tired of doing property
> management. It was PERFECT for cohousing -- the houses were clustered
> around a little green, it was right near Roslindale center, it was
> right near the commuter railâ-- but the owner wanted the whole deal
> completed within 6 months. This was too fast for a cohousing group.
> They couldn't get enough people together quickly enough to raise the
> cash that the owner wanted.
>
>
>
>
> Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2015 12:42:29 -0700
> From: Tiffany Lee Brown <magdalen23 [at] gmail.com>
> To: "cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Best ways to seek collaborators?
> Message-ID: <1A43C296-3089-45AA-AAB9-56D98D800AC1 [at] gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=us-ascii
>
>
> What would you experienced co-housers recommend as a way to connect with
> people who might be interested in starting a community?
>
> Thanks...
>
> Tiffany
> In Oregon
>
>
> Sent from outer space
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>
>