Thanks for your note, MC. Here are some ideas from the Advocates:
How to invite new members? Be specific about what your community is aiming to become, and be very clear on your values.
This includes your being a sociocratic organization. New members ought to be trained in sociocracy as soon as possible so the community has a shared language: have your governance method be clear and established.
Agreed. Get a stable picture of who you are: write and share your community’s Vision, Mission, and Aim. And beware the Tyranny of Structurelessness. Being general instead of specific doesn’t lend itself to growth.
We get interest by advertising on Facebook, holding information meetings with sign-ups so people can commit to the next step or request more information.
We hold “super weekends” for people to visit us and get a sense of the community.
*Our community has specific trainings for potential members. SoFA’s ELC Sociocracy Basics brings people together and shows their commitment. That then leads to more engagement, like people joining our circles.
Anything you’d like to add? Please share it, and click HERE for more information about the Advocates Community of Practice.
Are you a member of an intentional community and want to join the Advocates? Sign up HERE . Our next meeting is Monday, August 14th.Hoping to see you there!
As usual, your circle brings up concrete topics that are useful for those interested. I always enjoy watching the questions you receive and the answers provided by the Advocates Circle. Images are great, always making posts more reader friendly.
Thinking about the question asked and carefully reading the answers that have already been given, I would add some personal reflections:
Each person is on a journey and from time to time he needs a map. Every person who turns to a map is looking for some level of specificity between the general and the very local.
If you’re on one continent and want to get to another, you’re probably interested in an overview of what’s next on your journey.
As you get closer to your desired destination, you become interested in more and more details and possibly different options.
At some point someone might be interested in where they can shop, what accommodation is available or where they can get their coffee. This information is much more specific than the previous ones, of course.
Maybe you are interested in reaching more towards the sea or more towards the mountains, in an open or more forested place, in a crowded city or in a place with fewer inhabitants, in an area with tax facilities or with recreational areas or you simply like adventure and want to experience different things, “living to discover”.
It seems to me that all of these things come across in your answers, and I appreciate how you collect your individual intelligence and synthesize a collective intelligence that you then share to those interested.
I look forward to your next post and can’t wait to see you, at least once in a while.
Best wishes.
p.s. I would like to learn more about Intentional Communities and organize one in a few years. I’m also interested how Cooperation could be the foundation for an Intentional Community. I’m exploring and try to discover new insights, especially what I don’t know that I don’t know.
I am in a continuous process of learning and practicing sociocracy. My personal goal is (but not limited to) to be able to spread sociocracy more effectively in my native language and to be useful in implementing sociocracy wherever it is needed.
Dear Adrian–as usual your posts are both practical and beautifully expressed.
You mention an interest in intentional communities. I have lived in a cohousing community for many years. Our shared grounds embrace a lovely garden and our buildings are well-maintained. Many people will say they feel a sense of community–and—our self-governance tends to be carried out in small, self-selected groups lead by the same people year after year. Finding “more people to help” is always a problem.
I think establishing a culture of cooperation is fundamental to implementing true “power-with” self-governance systems. Even sociocracy can be distorted and misused without a commitment to whole community cooperation as a core value.
My interest in the underpining of cooperation led me to an emerging group governance design concept that can foster cooperation and trust and provide an adjunct perspective on sociocracy and other governance systems: The ProSocial Worldview. The PW toolkit helps unpack patterns in the use of sociocracy that can either grow or diminish cooperation and trust.
I have contributed to a couple of SoFA conference presentations that discuss this and another ProSocial practitioner–Pip Atkins–gave a presentation on how the ProSocial Worldview and sociocracy interface during the last SoFA global sociocracy conference.
You can find a recording of the presentation Pip Atkins and her Australian ecovillage colleague and neighbor, Silla Sayer, gave on the “prosocially” of sociocracy by going to the section of the web site on “conferences”, bringing up the link to the 2023 global sociocracy conference and scrolling down to find the recording.
And here’s a link to the presentation I gave with Keala Young during the 2022 IC conference:
You might find other recording on topics of interest by poking around in the prior conference recordings. Thank you for your thought-provoking posts!
I am certainly interested in learning more about “ProSocial Worldview”, its principles and real life implementation of any methods that could help us reshape the world to become more inclusive and more participatory.
Thanks for the links provided. I invite anyone interested to explore these as well. I will revisit these recordings to recall the content and integrate it into my current focus. What a wonderful experience is for me to cooperate with other people that have the same type of interests.
