Policy clarification - new members with preferences for specific communes

The Reef
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Hi everyone !

We’ve recently had a few households become Exploring Members after a public presentation, who have specific preferences for which part of Brussels they would like to be part of a cohousing project. And although there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it has led us to adopt the following policy: households in this situation should wait for us to find a location before requesting to become Associate Members.

The reason for this is that our voting process to buy a site will not work if some of those involved are only voting for certain communes and not others. It is almost certainly the case that the current members each have their own preferences for certain communes of Brussels over others, and it is for exactly that reason that we are committed to being open to all of them. As with any sociocratic organisation, it is understood that getting a result where a large number of people all have their preferences met is next to impossible. That is why we decide by consent, aiming to arrive at decisions that everybody ‘can live with’, and which move us all towards achieving our shared vision.

This policy has been adopted within the autonomy of @reef-recruitment because: (a) it could be considered to have a 2ish level of importance; and (b) there’s really no other way around it without having to rethink the whole site-buying process. If anyone disagrees and thinks this policy warrants a formal proposal, feel free to say so below.

As a result of this policy, it is therefore important that all @reef-full members bring this up during the first one-on-one meeting with Exploring Members. The buddy manual (https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/f/77904) now has this included as one of the key points regarding these first meetings.

As this is something that we haven’t formally discussed before, it is worth current @reef-associate members keeping it in mind when considering whether to take the next step and become a Full Member.

Finally, although I don’t think this is the case, tagging @reef-governance just in case there is anywhere someone can think of where this policy should be noted document-wise…

:slight_smile:

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Probably the governance document? Can you take care of that as part of your helping circle?

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In my view the governance document is for processes, not for individual policies.
If we want to keep track of policies, the decision log is the first go-to. I have in the meanwhile also explicitly added it to the Powerpoint, in the “what are we looking for in new members” slide. If you like we could also add it to the checklist. How does that sound?

Personally, when I do the one-on-ones, I sometimes wish I had some sort of “buddies cheat sheet”. Maybe nothing more than a couple of lines that fit on less than half a page, but having a reminder of all the essential points that I need to raise (location, deadline, checklist and whatnot) would really help me. Would that be something that could be easily derived from the buddies manual and put in a post on the platform?

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Do you mean the checklist that links from the Onboarding Manual. I’m not sure how this would fit on that checklist from the perspective of an Exploring Member, as the onus is more on us to clarify it with them. And now that it’s on the presentation Powerpoint (which is perfect, by the way), this should all be clearer right from the start…

I finally finished the Buddy Manual the other day, so it’s not a big thing to turn the main points from the one-on-ones section into an easily digestible list of things to remember. I’ll make a post on that soon… :slight_smile:

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I think I could have made that work, but I would only have done so to respond to the request to put it somewhere.

And then you haven’t seen the fly-in effect yet :sunglasses:

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I think in the presentation, Buddy Manual and one-on-one checklist should be enough :slight_smile:

Gosh, I hope this means what I think this means, which is that the information will ‘fly in’ to the presentation! What exciting times we live in :star_struck:

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