Cohousing-L Mailing List: Deciding on Committee Members

[Melanie Mindlin (sassetta]

I believe that committees with a lot of decision-making power, don’t always 
fare well when populated by volunteers. Once someone has volunteered, it’s hard 
to tell them that they’re not a good fit if they don’t decide this for 
themselves. Not a good fit might mean, for example, lacking in experience, 
biased, or divergent.

When our community created a committee to decide how to spend monies in a fund 
designated for fixing post-construction problems, we decided to use a process 
we had learned from Sociocracy. We asked everyone at the meeting to nominate 
someone for the positions. We considered the number of nominations for 
different individuals and used a consensus process to propose and agree on the 
final members. There was a “popularity” or “voting” element to this, as it did 
hold significance if someone was nominated numerous times, but that is not how 
we decided.

The committee ended up with great credibility and support for their 
decision-making. I know some people will wince at using a part of Sociocracy 
without the rest, but this was quite successful for us, and easy for everyone 
to understand.

Hope this helps,
Melanie

> On Feb 8, 2024, at 3:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
> 
> Deciding on Committee Members