Newsletter March 2025
Building a community that enjoys a rich quality of life for all ages, brings a more equitable society, and a harmonious and responsible relationship with the natural world.
Exciting news: we are under contract to buy a property! Read more about that in our property update.
Upcoming Events
In an attempt to not fill your inbox with unwanted emails, we don’t send out reminders throughout the month. If you would like to receive email reminders before each event, email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com and say “sign me up for reminders.” You can specify if you only want reminders about online events and not in-person events.
Online Info Session and New Property Update - Come hear more about our new property and what the process is to join our community and live with us.
Thursday, March 6th 8:00-9:00pm (use this link)
Saturday, March 8th 11:00am-noon (use this link)
Online Gatherings - This month, our discussions will focus on Security is Social and Membership. Use the links below to join the discussion. You can email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com to let us know you will be attending or with any questions. Letting us know who will be attending is helpful for us in preparing. Thanks!
Thursday March 13th 8:00-9:00pm - Cooperative Culture (use this link)
Tuesday March 18th 8:00-9:00pm - Community Life (use this link)
Monthly Potluck (Maple Syrup Making!) - Sunday, March 23rd* 10:00-2:00pm
This is a potluck you won’t want to miss! Join us in the back yard where we’ll be making maple syrup and enjoying a brunch potluck with homemade maple syrup. We’ll provide pancakes (and maple syrup, of course), warm drinks, and dishes. Bring your favorite brunch dish to share. This is a very family friendly event, however there will be an open fire so close supervision is needed for younger children. We have some outdoor seating but if you have a chair or two to bring, that would be good. If it ends up being too chilly, we can head inside. Please email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com to let us know if you plan to attend so we know how many pancakes to make and can let you know of any changes. Also, please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions. *We will send out updates if we need to make changes depending on how long maple syrup season lasts this year.
Check our website or facebook page for events in the coming months. If you can't make it to these events and you want to connect, email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com. We’d be happy to connect in person or online.
Property Update
We have finalized a Purchase Agreement on 421 6th Av SE, a 7-unit property in SE Minneapolis (Marcy-Holmes neighborhood) and expect to close and move in in early May. We will host the monthly potluck there on May 18th 3:30-5pm. Come and see our “phase 1 property.”
We see this property as a first step, due to our limited start up finances and our short timeframe. It is a property that will house several families and be good enough to start with. We plan to continue looking for a more ideal property where we can build our larger community of around 15 households. There are many ways this could happen including finding a property that is already built and suits our needs, finding a property to renovate, or buying property (with buildings that we demolish or with no buildings) where we build our own building.
There has been a lot of interest from people who would like to live in community and are interested in joining us now that we will have a property. Exploratory Members will be given priority in requesting one of the units at 421 6th St. SE. Exploratory Members can indicate their preferred unit and move-in timeframe. A range of income levels will be considered. We are neither a market rate, nor an affordable housing community. Our estimated monthly budget, including operating expenses, capital projects, and improvements will be $12,000-$15,000. This will need to be covered collectively by the 7 households. Please talk with us if you have questions about this.
Membership
Exploring membership in our community is a process of learning about each other. Together, we explore what it would mean to be in community together. The first step is to become an Exploratory Member.
Becoming an Exploratory Member
The Exploratory Membership Application includes the following list.
Connecting with a member of the Membership Team and be paired with a Membership Guide who will help navigate the membership process, check in with periodically, and be there to answer questions
Completing the Community Member Questionnaire
Participating in 2-3 meals or events focused on exploring membership
Reading and discussing the community’s vision, mission, past decisions, Bylaws, and Community Agreements and determine alignment
Completing a background study
Requesting approval of the Exploratory Membership Application
Once each of these steps has been completed and the Membership Guide has received someone’s request for approval of their application, the Community Members will meet to decide whether to approve the application in a closed meeting of the current Community Members.
Pay Exploratory Membership Fees (approved Exploratory Member status is active once the fees have been paid)
Join one of our Online Info Sessions or read next month’s newsletter to learn what happens once someone becomes an Exploratory Member.
Learning from the Experts
Nancie’s gleanings from Membership class by Yana Ludwig. Many facets of the membership process and experience are discussed. Here is a summary of the benefits of having a membership process and some key components.
Yana talks about the benefits of a Membership process to ensure deep alignment among members, protection of the community’s mission, creating welcoming & authentic relating, including an onboarding process to ease new members into the community, and to connect the present to the future.
Four elements that are recommended for membership criteria include: values match, social skills, contribution capacity (labor, time, money), and an intuitive sense by community members about the “rightness” for this individual as a member.
To assess for social skills, she offers 5 Key questions:
Can they accurately hear what others are saying, or do things get garbled?
Can they communicate well enough what they think and feel?
Are they able to take in and respond proactively to feedback?
Are they comfortable talking about oppression dynamics as someone in a dominant group?
Do they have some personal process that seems to help them in times of tension & conflict, or are they actively seeking that out?
Upcoming class - Foundation for Intentional Community is a great resource for workshops, webinars, and courses. Yana Ludwig and Karen Gimnig have a course starting this Wednesday on Aligning Values and Creating Agreements in Community. For more information and/or to register if you too would like to take the class, go to https://ic.org and look under the section on Communiversity.
Cooperative Culture
Security is Social. Continuing our conversation about Cooperative Culture - What Is It? Based on Yana Ludwig’s and Karen Gimnig’s book “The Cooperative Culture Handbook,” this month we will think about where our sense of security comes from.
Mainstream culture in the U.S., especially capitalist culture, grounds security in financial wealth with the assumption that the more money/property/etc. that one can amass and meet one’s needs, the more secure one is. And in an attempt to reject that belief, counterculture either rejects the idea of having security and may even embrace the idea of intentional poverty, rejecting the need for material security.
Intentional community Members, on the other hand, are able to find security in our relationships. We can share resources, rather than having to meet all material needs oneself. As trust builds among community members, so a real sense of security emerges, not just for material things, but also for emotional needs, for a deeper sense of connection.
Think about where your sense of security lies, where that came from (e.g. childhood messages), and whether in fact that does meet your need to feel secure in the world. Join us to discuss these ideas and how they might play out in our cohousing group.
Our Vision
We are an intergenerational community of individuals, couples, and families. We are queer-affirming, gender-inclusive, and multicultural. We value the spectrums of the human experience and each individual’s diverse abilities. We support each other in raising children and throughout all stages of life. We strive to live out of a place of abundance.
We are committed to nonviolence and environmental sustainability. We believe in the potential for radical transformation of society and see communal living as an element of that change. We strive to make meaningful contributions to society, engaged in dismantling the systems of racism and oppression in our society, including ways that capitalism supports those systems.
If you would like to learn more about Twin Cities Family Cooperative, please visit our website and facebook page, attend our events (online and in-person), or fill out our Interest Form to connect. If you would like to be removed from our email list, please email us and let us know.
