| Keeping Prospective Members |
| Written by Jessie Handforth Kome | |
| Saturday, 18 November 2006 | |
|
When Eno Commons was forming (before we had any buildings), we started
having pancake breakfasts on most Saturdays and later, on community
dinners on
Tuesday nights and after meetings. Locations varied from the homes of
members
to restaurants to meeting spaces. Our outreach group, Eno Commons Central
(aka Robert and Neal), tried very hard to get every prospective member
to at
least one meal during their visits to us.
The meetings helped us to bond with and retain the members we had, and they showed our neighborhood spirit and sense of community to prospective members in a fun way. On ... following up with people who leave the group for other than financial reasons after joining, I tend to believe the only reason that is true is that they came to feel that the group was coming together in a way that didn't match with what they wanted or needed or expected. They may tell you other things, and some of those things may be "fixable", but the real reason is a fundamental social mismatch of some sort. After two rounds of this cohousing start-up thing, I have come to believe in honoring most folks judgment. Just my two cents.
Jessie Handforth Kome |