Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Need "Work Group" how-to guidance - help homeless veterans

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

That reminds me of a couple tips from running a church that was mostly people 
without homes….

1) For leadership meetings everyone was welcome. We made decisions, always 
asking “does this item serve our mission”. The mission statement was short and 
on the printed agenda. At the end of each meeting we asked for new agenda items 
for the next meeting. 
That guaranteed that new folk could bring up ideas, but that there wouldn’t be 
wildly changing decisions from month to month. Since an item was always 
proposed one month and decided the next, it meant that we were privileging the 
opinions of the regular participants.

(After a fight broke out over a decision we had a discussion about *how* we 
were making decisions…probably want to do that *before* the fight. People were 
excited to hear that there are choices other than majority rules, but in the 
end that was decision—majority rules.)

Each meeting started with a discussion of some aspect of our mission statement. 
(for example Who is “all” when we say “we welcome all”?)

2) For the budget of teams, we set up an account at local businesses—a copy 
place, a hardware store, and a drugstore in our case. They were told the budget 
and who was authorized to spend the budget. They sent us a monthly bill. 

-Liz
(The Rev.) Elizabeth M. Magill
www.ecclesiaministriesmission.org
www.mosaic-commons.org
508-450-0431




> On Dec 19, 2016, at 3:18 PM, Katie Henry <katie-henry [at] att.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sharon has a lot of good suggestions. I would add one thing: Make it 
> reasonably easy for workers to get cash for purchases, or else reimburse 
> quickly without excess paperwork. It's really easy to lose interest in a 
> project if you have to wait three months for the community to come to 
> consensus on spending a few bucks for cleaning supplies or a can of touch-up 
> paint, then another two months for reimbursement.
> Katie Henry
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