Looking Forward

Greetings Cohousers and Cohousing Professionals,

I'm pleased to transition off the Coho/US Board of Directors, but only because I am taking on the newly created position as Executive Director of the Cohousing Association of the United States. Since "retiring" from management at Microsoft in 2005, I have devoted considerable energy to the cohousing movement, joining the Coho/US Board in early 2006. I have greatly valued serving on the board and am very excited by the opportunity to put more energy behind the cohousing movement and industry.

To describe my own cohousing journey, in 1992, I joined Songaia Community, near Seattle, where I was a part of its formation to construct private homes in 2000 (we already had our common house for many years). I am now co-creating New Earth Song Cohousing, a sister community that plans to partner with a professional developer to grow community housing on adjacent land. New Earth Song is benefiting from the best information available – developed by cohousing professionals and cohousers over the past two decades of cohousing experience in the United States.

As I assume this new role as a paid leader of the Coho/US organization, I want to share some thoughts around my high level goals: about leadership, the Coho/US team, our website/database and revenue for Coho/US.

Leadership

Real group success can only be realized through co-creation - where we find ways to align our various personal interests, share leadership roles, and really pull together, toward common goals. Think about cohousing groups that have failed. Unfortunately, leaders of some of these forming groups have proven unable to adequately share their power, to act as co-creators rather than leaders.

Unlike forming cohousing communities, which so benefit from day-to-day, face-to-face relationships, Coho/US is highly distributed, with contributors all over the United States (and beyond). This causes us to rely heavily on technology to help us communicate and organize. But this communications technology also brings us serious leverage - because creating for many has often become just as easy as creating for one.

Some of my leadership goals are to:

• network effectively within the movement and industry,
• actively communicate using various means,
• work closely with the board and other aligned organizations,
• create metrics that help us objectively track our progress, and
• share more bold, attractive ideas about how we might co-create the future of cohousing...

In fact, some bold ideas are coming next month!

Coho/US team

Coho/US has benefited greatly from many people who have joined our volunteer working board, served as volunteers for the many and varied activities of the organization (from national conferences to webinars, and served as paid staff members. As I join the small team of part-time staff members, I bring considerable first-hand experience as a Coho/US volunteer. I want to improve and make volunteering even more attractive. Website and emagazine editor Donna Freiermuth and I have some intriguing ideas that we are eager to apply soon to Donna's volunteer editorial team.

Donna and I also plan to grow the Coho/US staff – increasing both the time and efficiency of our existing staff, and the number of staff positions. We want to help more people contribute to Coho/US – using some compensation beyond the organization's gratitude to help focus attention. In these times of new business models and collaborative technologies, there are more ways than ever before to share in an organization's success. For some, a little pay goes a long way to focus their energy. For others, knowing that they are contributing toward something they believe in – cohousing and community – is enough. This is a very good thing because this organization would not exist if not for the many who have given so generously of their time and money.

Our website and database

We will soon be launching a new version of the Cohousing website. (It will be our eighth.) The previous seven versions span many years and have resulted from a great many people's hard work. Version 8.0 builds on this and is the first to be based on an Open Source content management system called Drupal. This new underlying platform is already making it easier than ever for us to support deep collaboration with more people. We anticipate the addition of many more contributors, who will share, similar to what we see day-to-day on the very active Cohousing-L listserv - but tightly organized, like any well-crafted website.

Behind the scenes, we are also moving to a new Open Source database to let us effectively manage the records of thousands of people who subscribe to Cohousing Magazine, our donors, those who register for our events and those contacting us for information. This tool will help us do a better job as we attempt to help people connect within the cohousing movement and industry. Today, there are so many great people and resources available to help forming and existing cohousing communities. And now is the time for Coho/US to more actively help you find each other and the appropriate resources. Exactly how this will work is being defined, but you will soon be able to easily receive more communication from us, or not, depending on your personal preferences – which you will be able to readily change, at any time, from any online computer.

On Coho/US revenue

The history of Coho/US is complicated. Way back in 2003, we made a transition in our approach, abandoning the membership model – it has now been almost five years since you could actually sign up to be a "member" with specific member benefits. Now, we raise money to support our mission with donations and fee-for-services programs.

Tax-deductible donations (we are a non-profit organization) from individuals, forming and existing communities, and professionals provide a modest financial base that, along with lots of volunteer labor, allows Coho/US to provide a wide variety of services at no charge. It is free to use the cohousing.org website, free to receive Cohousing Magazine, free to hear about Cohousing in the News, free to list or discover forming groups or established communities in the Cohousing Directory, and free to use the Cohousing-L listserv. Yet most of these items have significant out-of-pocket and staffing costs. So, we ask forward-thinking people who believe in cohousing and its growth to help support the work to create this free content and offer these services. This is similar to the model that PBS or NPR uses: we provide free information and services to everyone and ask those who are willing to help support their costs. You will hear me ask more often and more clearly for your tax-deductible financial support. While Coho/US has been fearful of bothering folks in the past, I respectfully request your tolerance as I work to help strengthen our donor base.

Coho/US also offers value-added, premium services – with a price tag. These premium offerings include bus tours, regional gatherings, conferences, advertising placements, workshops and, most recently, webinars. Some of us are frustrated by the pricing model that Coho/US has used and would like to see lower prices. Others are pleased that Coho/US offers such high quality work and that we are able to draw paid support because of the high value that forming and established communities and professionals place on our work. I must admit that I do find it curious for people investing of themselves in multi-million dollar land development projects to begrudge tens or hundreds of dollars for access to resources that dramatically reduce risk of failure, but I suppose this is my background in high tech speaking, where we are not shy about making investments to achieve high returns.

Generally, Coho/US charges fees for services and content with high external costs, e.g. it is not cheap to rent Bentley College for the 2008 National Cohousing Conference (June 12-15). As a result, the registration price is also not cheap (but you can save some money with an Early Bird Discount by Pre-Registering before February 15, 2008)! Even when we charge for services, considerable volunteer effort is sometimes required to make the offering possible. Our national conferences, for example, are only successes because of the tremendous volunteer energy that each event's leadership team (more volunteers!) is able to inspire.

As I look ahead, I'm intrigued by what is known as the Freemium Business Model becoming so prevalent on the web. This model describes giving away basic services and charging fees for enhanced offerings. Coho/US will expand our use of this model to include other value-added services and content. I look forward to engaging with many more as we collaboratively explore how to harness the power of money to focus and align various interests. Cohousing communitarians do not run from using money as a tool as we create our wonderful "community platforms" in the form of private housing with common spaces. Many of us are intent on causing more cohousing-goodness to spread around the United States and are willing to put our money and our lives on the line to "make it so."

Appreciations

I close by thanking a couple of folks who have shared themselves with Coho/US. It is the contributions of these folks and their many colleagues that are the core reason I am confident of our continued success. Now, as many of us know, a problem with thanking anybody is failing to thank others who are also so deserving of appreciation. I hope some of these many unmentioned folks will just accept a blanket "thank you."

There are, however, a couple of transitions that need to be recognized and honored. John Parsons stepped down from his role as Publisher at the end of December – John's contributions in steering Coho/US toward future success have been critical – we are ripe for continued growth. And Carol Braford is also leaving the Coho/US board after several years of generous contribution. Carol has been particularly valuable in her role as treasurer and her leadership will be missed by the Coho/US leadership.

Thank you for your time and attention,
Craig Ragland
Executive Director
Coho/US