Agreements and Policies #6

by Raven

6:  Membership

I’m convinced that every community needs a membership process.  I’ve seen several communities that didn’t have one (including the one I’m in now) and it’s usually led to some unfortunate results.

A membership process is important to develop but I include it this far along because I am also convinced that a community needs to have a clear vision in place (and also have its financial systems developed) before creating a membership process, because the membership process is built on the community’s vision.  I strongly recommend the chapter in Yana Ludwig’s Building Belonging on ‘Membership and Recruitment’.  She clearly states, “The more radical and mission-driven your vision is, and/or the more intimate the community is, the more careful you need to be about your membership and decision-making.”

Again, she begins the chapter on membership by saying, “One of the most important tools your community has for keeping our intentional community intentional (and avoiding the dreaded mission drift) is having a clear, caring and robust membership process.  You can either have clear boundaries at the beginning, or you can navigate really messy dynamics later on.”

So, start with your vision.  What are you looking to accomplish?  How can you convey this to people who might be interested? There are folks that might be great community members but if they are not aligned with the vision, there are likely to be problems.  (Among them, the “mission drift” Yana Ludwig refers to.)  On the other hand, some folks might believe strongly in your vision but might not be good at or even capable of community living.  A good membership process screens for both issues, ie, you want folks who are aligned with your vision and who can live communally and contribute something.

Membership begins with some type of recruitment, maybe just talking with your friends or some type of word of mouth, but usually there’s some type of outreach.  Most outreach that you might want to do involves what I would call ‘narrowcasting’.  If broadcasting involves getting the word out as widely as possible, ‘narrowcasting’ involves targeting your outreach.  Why advertise in places where very few people understand what you are trying to do, let alone be interested in being part of it?  I talked a lot about the process of how to find people in my first “Starting from Scratch” post, including a list of useful places to advertise.

A good next step is to have people visit.  Someone can sound great on paper or on a brief phone or video call and turn out to not be good at all at community living.  Many communities require a three week visit with the idea that this will give folks a better idea of what this person is like to live with.  After the person leaves, the current community members can gather together and try to figure out if it’s worth pursuing the process with the person further.

If so, the next step for many communities is some kind of provisional membership (or trial membership–different communities may have different names for this phase of the process).  Here someone begins living in the community and has certain rights and responsibilities but not as many as a full member.  Usually the person’s membership is evaluated after a certain period and the full members decide if they would like the person to continue on to full membership.

These decisions are not always easy and are one of the most important reasons to use consensus decision making.  While I don’t usually advocate blocking as part of decision making, it’s important that everyone feels happy about living with someone.  If a lot of people like someone and one person just doesn’t, it’s worth more discussion, since this will tell you a lot more about your current membership and the needs of those involved.  Also, maybe that one person is sensing something no one else has picked up on yet.  Hopefully, with a lot more discussion, a decision can be made that everyone feels good about.  (The only time I ever remember blocking a decision was, ironically, about the co-op house membership of someone that I actually liked and would have liked to live with.  There was one person in the group who wasn’t willing to block but wouldn’t let the process go forward because they were uncomfortable with the idea of living with the person.  After a couple of weeks meetings where we weren’t able to come to a decision, I realized they were unlikely to change their mind, and it was better for the person requesting membership–and the co-op which was trying to fill a house–for any decision to be made, so I blocked the person, which allowed us all to move forward.)

Once a person is a full member, it doesn’t mean that they are there forever.  As Yana Ludwig points out, everyone leaves the community eventually, and it is usually one of three ways:  by choice, by request of the community, and by death.    I will explore all these possibilities in future posts, starting with Exit Agreements, which occur when someone chooses to leave, which is by far the most common way that full members leave.