Growing Up A Community

Lessons Learned from

Developing Legal Entities;

Systems, Processes, and Policies;

and Reaching Critical Mass

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BY Cicada of Glomus Commune and East Brook Community Farm

Questions for You:

Glomus is an income-sharing commune, horizontally managed with consensus to support our members in living enjoyable and nourishing lives, developing our better selves, and connecting to each other, the land we live on, and all we care for. We collectively hold our money and shared assets and interface with other legal institutions including, but not limited to, the state of NY, US government, and the Regeneration at East Brook LLC.

How Long Have You Lived in Community?

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How Many People are in Your Group?

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Are You Looking to Grow?

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What are Tension Points or Concerns You Have About Growth?

History of Membership

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Community Member

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Founding

Gathering

and Growth Pains

2016

Processes and Infrastructure

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DOL

Monica

Kim

Kevin

LOR

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DOL

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Growth? Stagnancy? Dissolution?

Rachael

Theresa

Grant

Cicada

2017

2018

And Beyond!

Shua

Taliesin

Ryn

Anande

Delta

Telos

Andie

Raven

Sarah

2019

2020

2021

2022

Pandemic and Legal Structure

What is Possible?

“Critical mass is the amount of fissile material needed to sustain nuclear fission.”

“The conditions under which reciprocal behavior is started within collective groups, and how it becomes self-sustaining.”

-from Wikipedia

Critical Mass is when we have ENOUGH to do what we aim to do!

Different for different activities and goals.

• Policy Decisions
• Income Sharing
• Animal Care
• Gardening Crew
• Perennial Care
• Cleaning Crew
• Infrastructure Decisions

How Do We Reach Critical Mass?

• Luck/Privilege
• Charismatic Founder(s)
• Openness to Visitors: volunteers, WWOOFers, Workaway, Helpx, family etc.
• Active Recruitment: Twin Oaks Communities Conference, Visitor/membership committee for recruitment, network with communities, talk to college classes
• Sexual and Romantic Relationships
• Income-Generating Business/Network
• Existing Infrastructure Upkeep, and early emphasis on strengthening this resource (not just bedrooms!)
• A Shared Value/Vision for a culture of growth
• Individuals who care about growth and acknowledgement of personal reactions to change.

Our Holistic Goal/Vision Statements Pertaining to Growth:

• We monitor our growth and impact on the land.
• We actively welcome all sorts of folks who are interested in joining our community.
• We strive to create new spaces for people who wish to live in community.

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What Makes a Good Founder?

• Open-Minded
• Belief in Abundance
• Personal Focus and Goals �with Transparency
• Take a Vacation Right When New �People Join, Autonomy Encouragement
• Draw people in but don’t constrain!
• The Self-Awareness to Leave when it �becomes apparent that �is what needs to happen

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Founder-esque influence expands outward…

Developing Policy and Processes -

You Don’t Have To Do It All At Once!

• Meeting Process - Agendas in flux
• Becoming Income-Sharing – modular and personalized
• Membership - Timeline, Roles and Goals, Clearnesses, Disclosures
• Exit Agreements - What do you need to leave comfortably? Ideally? Equity building
• Holistic Goal/Shared Vision - a LIVING DOCUMENT, created in 2015, rewritten in 2019, to be revised again 2022
• Emergency Meeting Declaration - 2 non-kin group members, in writing, required
• Decision Making - how do we know when we’ve reached a decision-making gate? Who decides? What does consensus look like to us?

Policies and Processes Schedule:

Brainstorming Meeting:

What do we care about?

Go-arounds/popcorn

Details Meeting:

Go Arounds/Popcorns about minute changes in language, developing points, adding concerns.

Drafting Stage:

Individual or Small Committee works on a concise document incorporating important points.

Approval:

A whole meeting or agenda in our house meeting involving consensus of the document as it is currently

REFLECT AND REVISE!!!

Lessons Learned:

Never too early to write down agreements of the individual with the community

Accept current status of written policies. �Not having a policy is not the end of the world. Have tolerance for cognitive dissonance.

People make policies.

• Living in community while forming policy and processes is very hard work.
• Requires labor to make, labor to follow, labor to buy in, labor to follow-up.
• Sometimes you don’t ever finish the process. Often actually. All our policies are living documents AND they’re only living if we refer to them and follow them.
• Ask yourself: Will this be Enforced?

Power Dynamics and Kin Groups

• Some people get their opinion heard more than others. Some people can make change towards their goals with more ease and speed.
• More than just family and sexual/romantic partners.
• Peer groups retain power: age, education, experience, seniority.

What have we done to Address Power Differential?

• Awareness and Education
• Transparency, (example)
• Calling an Emergency Meeting requires allies outside of kin group
• Membership meetings
• Facilitation addressing who speaks when, go-arounds, keeping stack
• Multiple Forums for Getting Voice Heard including Discord

Our Legal Entities:

Regeneration at East Brook Farm LLC

A land-holding entity, partnership

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Friends and Family of Founders came together to buy the land.

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Glomus Commune LLC is now the managing member and owns shares in land.

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Glomus Commune LLC

Member of the

Federation of Egalitarian Communes

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8 Members of Fully Income Sharing Group

1 Member is Residential

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Its a Pot of Money that we all

have access to and budget yearly.

East Brook Community Farm LLC

Worker-Owned Cooperative Business

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6 Members of Glomus are also Worker-Owners of East Brook

We Split the Net Profits Equally According to

Consensed-Upon Labor Contribution.

Communal Studios LLC

Similar to East Brook in Structure

Designed to be a place for money to flow in

and MAKE JOBS FOR OUR FRIENDS

Entrepreneurial Goals

4 Members,

3 are Glommunards

1 is Community-Movement Associated

Room for More!

How Long Does it Take? - 3+ years

LLCs: Finding a lawyer, working with the lawyer, reading documents, meetings to write operating agreements, filing paperwork

How Many Labor Hours/People?

• 1 Communard as Bottomliner per LLC
• 2-3 Communards skillful with bureaucracy to backup and double check and ask the hard questions
• A handful of hours a month or so for bottomliner.
• Total Full Group Meeting Hours per LLC:
• 1st LLC: 12ish, Operating Agreement/Dissolution Process
• 2nd LLC: 6ish
• 3rd LLC: 2ish

How Much Money? $3600 ISH

2020: $2400 Lawyer Fee �2021: $360 Lawyer Fee�2022: ??? Something around $500�Filing LLCs: $25 each per filing, $100 for newspaper advertisements, $200 mystery New York State Thing

$3790 IRS Penalty for Not Filing our Land-Holding Entity’s taxes (Appeal in Process)

What’s Left? -�Lease Agreement between LLCs (IN PROGRESS): Finding a second lawyer, working with the lawyer, reading the documents, meetings to discuss the documents, landholders to sign off.�Tightening our Accounting to be Resilient against Tax Audit (IN PROGRESS): Finding an accountant… working with our lawyer as an accountant… what’s next?

Transparency

Trust

Awareness

Compromise

“Enough”

Patience

What’s Next?

We haven’t finished developing.

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We’ll always be growing and changing.

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Solidifying our social structures, engagement with conflict, differences in values.

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Reviewing our Holistic Goal/Vision

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Infrastructure improvement

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Lease agreement

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Continuing to build our local relationships

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Solidifying relationships within the FEC and other communities movement associations.

Acceptance

Questions?