Point A DC Membership Process 2015

Shared by Compersia
Tags: Membership, Process, Visits and Visitors

Point A DC Membership Process

passed March 18th, 2015

 

The Process

1) Write a letter/email to the commune applying for applicant status.

a) The Intake Team schedules an in­person, video, or phone interview (in that order of preference) with you.

b) The Intake Team approves your application (or not).

c) You are assigned a buddy .

(Applicant correspondence will be managed by an open group of members anchored by a single manager (the “Intake Team”). Members are encouraged to exit and enter the correspondence group as they feel called. This is the group that communicates with potential applicants, receives their application, interviews them, decides whether to invite them, and introduces arriving applicants to the full group.)

(All applicants are assigned at least one buddy from the Full Membership to shepherd them through the process. The membership will develop a checklist to make sure that the buddy gets a well rounded experience of the commune.)

 

2) Spend a total of 30 days within 6 months living with us.

a) Can’t do 30 days? We’re flexible! Tell us what’s up and work something out.

 

3) Write an application for trial membership:

a) See summary below.

b) Write a Call to Greater Awesomeness (trial version) ­ see summary below.

 

4) Complete a clearness with all current members.

a) The membership approves your trial membership (or not).

 

5) Celebrate! (or cry)

 

6) After a minimum of six months of trial membership and before a maximum of one year, request full membership. Trial membership is automatically terminated after one year unless a special exception is made by the membership.

a) Write an application for Full Membership.

b) Review your success at meeting your last Call to Greater Awesomeness according to your metric.

c) Write a new Call to Greater Awesomeness (full version) ­ see summary below.

 

7) Complete another clearness with all current members. (we think that regular clearnesses will be happening throughout your trial membership, as a part of living together, separate from the membership process ­ whatever our eventual policy or practice we should make sure that the trial member has another clearness roughly halfway through their trial membership)

a) The full members approve your full membership (or not). If they don’t, your trial membership can be extended (if the blocking concerns are considered resolvable by a longer trial membership) or terminated (if the blocking concerns are not considered resolvable by a longer trial membership).

 

8) Celebrate! (or cry)

 

9) Full members complete a clearness, review their success at meeting their last Call to Greater Awesomeness according to their metric, and write a new Call to Greater Awesomeness once a year on their communiversary.

 

Quick summary of statuses:

● Applicant: 30 days of residency, can attend meetings as an observer

● Trial Member: 6+ months, can attend meetings as a member (but cannot block). no healthcare, no debt payments,

● Full Member: tenure, full benefits, can block in meetings

 

Application for Membership

In your application be sure to answer the following questions:

1. Why do you want to become a member?

2. What do you think your life as a member will be like?

3. How does my relationship with this commune improve me and improve us ­what can I offer and what am I asking in order to make myself more awesome?

4. What resources or support do you need from the community to do your awesome projects?

5. What aspect(s) of our vision or mission are you most excited about working on?

 

The Call to Greater Awesomeness

The Call to Greater Awesomeness (trial version): How do you want to challenge yourself to be a more awesome person and force for awesomeness in the world? Suggest a metric for determining success at meeting your challenge.

The Call to Greater Awesomeness (full version): How do you want to challenge yourself to be a more awesome person and force for awesomeness in the world? Request something of the current members to support you in this quest (something challenging, something we don’t already provide as a matter of course). Suggest a metric for determining success at meeting your challenge.

Notes: What is most important in this process is the challenge (to yourself and eventually yourself and the commune) and the metric you propose. Part of our project is one of supporting each other and becoming stronger and more empowered by our cooperation and solidarity. The Call to Greater Awesomeness is one way that we intentionally apply this aim. The challenge that you mount can be a specific project, new or ongoing, a personal habit, a place for personal growth, or anything along those lines that you can convincingly argue for. The metric allows us to define and critique what success looks like and allows us to hold ourselves and each other to account.

 

Non­Member Resident (gNoMeR)

The commune will also accept people who rent. Renters go through step one only.

Renters are given a month to month lease which can be terminated with one month’s notice if a member can occupy the room. Renters are capped at a maximum of 1 renter per 3 members. Renters can apply for membership picking up the process at step 2 or 3 (depending whether they’ve been renting for 30 days or not).

 

Asset Sharing

[ Asset sharing tabled for 2 years or until we have a stable population. ]

 

Questions to Consider Regularly About All Our Processes:

1. Does this process adequately balance our desire to be accessible to the people that we want to attract (consider various life circumstances and what it would take to engage in this process) with our need to filter and enculturate new members?

2. How would we modify this process to call each other to excellence? We are identifying as ambitious, engaged, high achieving. How does this process serve this mission? As supplementary reading, check out this short post from a SF co­living activist whose house has a similar mission  (2 minutes).

3. Are we creating a model society/community of ideology (as the Kat Kincade communes are) or a community of affinity (as Las Indias is)? How does our membership process reflect that and how might we modify it to get what we want?