Guidelines: Membership Selection Process

photo by Xavier Lorenzo

Tasks for Potential Members

To create your task list for member qualifications, you could delete those that don’t apply to your group, and add any requirements that make sense for your group. Notice that tasks are different from milestones, the next section.

    • Read the founding documents, guidelines, and bylaws (clarify exactly which are required reading)

    • Present evidence of meeting the characteristics described as requirements for membership

    • Visit the founders’ group and/or site

    • Sign a statement that you understand the founding documents and agree with the IC mission

    • Verify that you can meet the financial requirements (see Finances section and Required Disclosures)

    • Invited to stay for 3 months as a trial period

    • Decision about the next step will be made by whom and in what amount of time?

    • Invited to stay for x time period

    • Decision about the next step will be made by whom and in what amount of time?

    • Invited to sign legal partnership or buy-in agreements or contract

Milestones for Potential Members

Note that unlike tasks, milestones don’t depend on the potential member’s effort.

    • Membership committee agrees potential member meets requirements for membership
    • Invited to stay for 3 months as a trial period

    • Decision about the next step will be made by whom and in what amount of time?

    • Invited to stay for x time period

    • Decision about the next step will be made by whom and in what amount of time?

    • Invited to sign legal partnership or buy-in agreements or contracts

Required Disclosures

Note any issues you would insist applicants should reveal and discuss before applying to join the IC. Note also if there is leniency for any of the following issues, especially related to treatments or assistance for certain populations.

    • Past felony conviction

    • On sex offender registry

    • Current addictions even if under treatment

Age Ranges

If you are looking for a certain age range, it would be helpful to state why, or that may be misunderstood. People may exclude themselves based on wrong assumptions about your intent. For example, you might state “Open to college age, but also seeking one adult couple long term to help manage as students come and go.” Fortunately, as a forming community that is not offering property for rent or sale, you can limit age range in ways that make sense for your group. Fair housing laws do not apply to your group at this point, because you are forming a community group.

    • Children are not a good fit (e.g., college dorm, remote work-based community, or retirement community).

    • Children are welcome.

    • We are interested most in families with school-age children as we are planning an on-site school (for which ages?).

Spirituality and Religion

Ecological preservation ethics:

    • Local food commitment for low carbon footprint

    • Eating vegan, vegetarian, or certified humane meat

    • Use of alternative power such as solar or wind

    • Commitment to reduce, re-use, recycle

    • Gray water recycling where permitted

    • Composting toilet

Religious or spiritual practice-based IC:

Will your community have a mandate of strict adherence to shared religious beliefs and practices? Whether or not there is a mandate, what would be your ideal for type, frequency, and time duration of practices around shared spiritual, religious, or ethical beliefs?

Practices welcome in IC:

  • This category is not meant to prompt you to state that only certain beliefs or practices are acceptable. For the most part, people’s private practices are their own business and not intrusive to a group. This is meant as an opportunity to state if there is a shared set of beliefs that your group expects and hopes will become a frequent and open topic in the IC such that the values can guide decision-making. Shared beliefs can give people a sense of security that others are attempting to live according to a set of values and not purely for self-interest. If your intentional community is defined as a religious community, you are likely exempt from the fair housing law mandate to not discriminate based on religion. You might simply choose to note which ones are favored and which are not favored, while leaving room for discussion of the individual’s interpretation and practice, which may be in line with the community’s values. The following list of religious beliefs matches the list in the profile questions:

    Atheist, Agnostic, Spiritual but not religious, Christian (universalist), Christian (evangelical), Christian (Catholic), Christian (fundamentalist), Muslim/Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish practice, Astrology, Spiritualist, Pagan, Wiccan, Taoist, Jainist, New Age (mix), Pantheist, Native American / First Nations, Shamanic or indigenous animist, Zoroastrian, Kabbalah, Tarot, Mediumship, Near-death experience or out-of-body, Theosophical Society, New Thought (law of attraction)

  • Wisdom-sharing practices (including secular):

    What understanding about building community have you come to through life experience? Are there beliefs or practices related to wisdom cultivation that your group shares or has agreed to explore? What practices, philosophies, texts, historical teachers, or modern teachers do you look to for wisdom?

  • There are many living teachers that can assist your group with workshops. Some you may find in the ICmatch consultants listed as mentors. Even if they seem overly popularized as “influencers,” modern teachers can provide an important glue of shared values in your forming community. Their continued dissemination of teachings forms an obvious point of shared interest and community meeting opportunities that can promote bonding. If you plan to have regular meetings and rituals, will you bring in external teachers? Will you allow the surrounding community to participate? 

Couple Relationships

People may make wrong assumptions based on what they have heard about or experienced in IC settings, so as awkward as it may feel to some, it can be helpful for prospective members to know a few basics. Members who are not partnered may be especially interested to know what behaviors will be okay. There is a separate section that covers gender and sexual identity. 

Sex & intimacy norms in IC:

    • We are a celibate community (for one gender only or for more than one?)

    • Our relationship norms are based on proscribed religious doctrine, with community accountability

    • Sex and intimacy are primarily left to individuals to negotiate, with the understanding that personal choices can impact community culture

    • Our community generally prefers privacy about topics of sex and intimacy

    • Sex and intimacy is a topic discussed with curiosity and respect, allowing for experimentation around what works for the community

Couple situations welcome in IC:

Is any couple situation welcome? That could be important for some to know. Alternatively, if founders have stable partnerships and are intent on having the least possible disruptions of those partnerships, they might feel guarded about inviting in singles, or couples in an open relationship. Which are welcome?

    • Committed closed partnership(s) (e.g., married monogamous couples)

    • Single (not in a committed closed partnership)

      • Non-monogamous (e.g., in open relationship)
      • Polyamorous (group prefers or accepts committed open relationships or non-committed non-monogamous relationships)
      • Polygamous (married to more than one, but in committed closed partnerships)

Socially Conservative Norms for Sex and Intimacy

Here are suggestions for wording that might be relatable to help you describe your own or your group’s intentions and preferences about socially conservative norms around sex and intimacy.

·   I am most comfortable living in a community where norms around sex and intimacy relate to traditional religious values of monogamy. 

·   It’s important for community members to have shared expectations around sex and intimacy, so they can trust each other.

·   I want my home environment to have private spaces that others will need to get permission to use. 

·   It’s important for a group to respect other members’ privacy.

·   I would not want to see or hear other people’s sexual behavior.

·   We want to keep positive relations, so let’s make sure we come up with some norms about what is friendly versus what is flirtatious.

·   I am comfortable with others being friends with my committed partner, as long as they are also friends of mine who don’t try to undermine our relationship.

Sex-positive Culture

Here are suggestions for wording that might be relatable to help you describe your own or your group’s intentions and preferences about socially liberal norms around sex and intimacy.

·   I am most comfortable living in a community where norms around sex and intimacy are discussed openly in a respectful way. 

·   My preferences around intimacy change, depending on the situation.

·   I don’t want to be boxed in by having to state my preferences. [or] It’s important to me to have clarity about everyone’s preferences, even tho these can change.

·   I would like to be comfortable engaging with sex and intimacy in my home environment, which includes having private spaces. 

·   It’s important for a group to discuss how comfortable members are with other people’s PDA in community spaces.

·   I would want to be able to have sex in shared spaces that the group agrees are available for that.

·   I’m comfortable hearing or seeing other people engage with sex, intimacy, or affection.

·   Sex between consenting adults is celebrated, and we all share space, so let’s make sure we come up with some norms that factor in people’s preferences for quiet time.

·   I am comfortable with a polyamorous culture that has respectful, honest, and frequent communication about norms and agreements

Politics

ICmatch encourages collaboration across political lines. We’re not suggesting that you screen your members based on political ideology. Yet if you are planning to do that anyway, we believe it’s better to be up front about what issues your group feels united about versus what type of convictions would not be a good fit. Few groups will have the luxury of ignoring this topic completely. People increasingly want to be with others of similar political ideologies. Moreover, an activist commune is likely to seek alignment especially on issues of most importance to their cause. If you have good group cohesion but have some political differences that are sticking points, try talking it out with the help of role-playing games at fractioNation.US (with Canadian versions included). One of our ICmatch consultants can help. See also this more nuanced way of framing differences based on the Pew Research Center typology.

    • Are there favorite authors or other influencers that your group agrees should help shape your IC mission and decision-making?

    • Are there civic, political, or activist groups or movements that strongly shape your IC mission and group culture

Language suggestions
An individual’s understanding of institutional power and their perspectives on how people should (or shouldn’t) be ruled can vary greatly. ICMatch believes that people with different political perspectives can reconcile most differences, provided there is agreement around how power is managed within the community and policies reflecting shared values. Here’s a suggestion that may help you discuss political compatibility:

Scholar and Consultant Dr. A.C. Fowlkes offers the following definitions:

Institutional power: the ability or official authority to decide what’s best for others
Politics: how to harness the flow of power
Policy: how to freeze or perpetuate a particular flow of power