Newsletter August 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.
Summer at Twin Cities Family Cooperative has been very FULL! Full of activities with children home for the summer, full of visitors (trying out our new guest room!), full of work on our new property, full of building community (and welcoming a new member).
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.
Free Sale Fundraiser - August 15-17
See below for details!
August Potluck - Friday, August 15 4:30-7:30pm
Let’s kick-off our Free Sale Fundraiser with a Potluck! Come get the first look at what we’re giving away. We’ll provide a vegetarian main dish, drinks, and dishes. Bring your kids, bring your friends, we can’t wait to see you! Please email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com to let us know if you plan to attend. Also let us know if you have any dietary restrictions.
Community Work Day - Sunday, August 19 2:00-6:00pm
After our Free Sale is over, we'll still have plenty to do. We'd love volunteers to help us take things down, sort what is left over, and drive to different places to donate what we can. Please email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com to let us know if you can help out and what tasks you can help with. Thanks!
Online Discussion on Limited Equity - Tuesday, August 26 8:00-9:00pm
Join us online to get a better understanding of the values that inform our financial model, what it looks like for members, and to ask any questions you may have. Register here to join us.
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.
Life at Twin Cities Family Cooperative - Visitors
We have been enjoying visits from family and new friends. We now have a guest room with a queen-size murphy bed, right next to our community spaces. Our community spaces now include a common kitchen and dining area, a game room (filled from top to bottom with games and puzzles!), a music parlor (with a baby grand piano, a harp, a hammered dulcimer, and more), a library - a peaceful place to read or converse with another community member, and an enclosed front porch.
We enjoy spending time with friends new and old so reach out if you’d like to schedule a visit. Come for a meal, a walk to the park, or join one of our upcoming events.
New Members Openings!
Are you ready to join our community, cook together, share meals, play games, change the way we live in this world, and help each other do our part to make the world a little bit better?
We have openings for new members of all kinds (individuals, couples, families with children).
Folks who would be a good fit:
See children as valuable members of the community
Celebrate queerness
Aim to dismantle systems of racism
Believe in community over capitalism
If this sounds good to you, reach out to us by email to set up a time to talk with our Membership Guide. Our community may be small right now but it's already amazing and we can't wait for it to grow! We appreciate any help spreading the word.
Limited Equity at Twin Cities Family Cooperative
Balancing Individual Financial Security with Affordability and Community Growth
One of the biggest questions people have about joining our community is: What are the financial obligations? Twin Cities Family Cooperative is committed to being a limited equity and partial income sharing community. We want membership in this community to be defined by sharing of resources and mutual support, rather than simply sharing physical space and leaving everyone to be responsible for all of their own resources.
Our financial agreements rest on two foundations:
bring what you have, and leave with what you brought
the importance of collectively meeting all of our basic needs; valuing people and relationships above commodities
To read more about this, check out this document, where we go into more depth about what that looks like in our community and compare it to buying a single family home. Join us for a discussion online on August 26th to get a better understanding and ask any questions you may have.
Free Sale Fundraiser
August 15-17 Twin Cities Family Cooperative will be hosting an event to:
Pass things on to people who can use them
Meet folks from the neighborhood
Raise money for our community
There will be a few large items for sale but most things will be free. People are invited to donate what they can for the free items. Do you need a bike, a set of dishes, clothes, furniture? You can find this and more when you come to shop our sale! Do you have things that need a new home? Email us if you want us to include them in our Free Sale Fundraiser!
Cooperative Culture Study Group - Hierarchy Lite
Getting back to our conversation about Cooperative Culture - What Is It? Based on Yana Ludwig’s and Karen Gimnig’s book “The Cooperative Culture Handbook.” This month Nancie reflects on hierarchy.
I was excited today by the discussion led by Yana Ludwig on the topic of “Hierarchy Lite” in the “Cooperative Culture Handbook” book group in which I participate.
I was excited today by the discussion led by Yana Ludwig on the topic of “Hierarchy Lite” in the “Cooperative Culture Handbook” book group in which I participate.
An all-too familiar scenario of majority culture’s pattern is of organizing around hierarchy. We advance in our job, moving up the hierarchy. One’s wealth often defines where one is on the social status hierarchy. Hierarchy is often modeled in school, so we learn it very young.
In contrast, counterculture values everyone having a voice and each person having the same amount of power. This most often results in leadership being seen as a negative way of managing the organization. And so expertise may not influence decisions and can be lost.
Cooperative culture values both everyone having a voice while also recognizing that in any given situation all voices may not be equal. Someone may have more experience and expertise with the topic or project. It is useful to weigh that voice more heavily than those without such knowledge. This only works if the same person is not primarily the one assumed to have more knowledge than others, which would lead to an imbalance of power in the group. Power is shared when each person’s expertise is recognized and allowed to influence that project.
I remarked to our community members following the Zoom group, that we seem to have fallen into doing this rather naturally. One person leads in financial matters, but is open to input by the rest. One person focuses on marketing and membership, drawing on the rest of us as needed. Organizing the kitchen comes natural to one person, but all give input into what we need. And so it goes with various aspects of our community life together.
If you are interested, you can join Yana’s weekly Cooperative Culture Handbook Book Club Series on Sunday mornings. Here is the link with more information and registration. You can find other really great courses and resources on the FIC website. Remember, Exploratory Members can use up to $200 of their $500 member fee to take classes and get reimbursed for them.
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 develop internal economic policies that actively push back against capitalist expectations, while also making compromises to allow members to maintain their financial autonomy.
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.
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. All past newsletters can be found here. If you would like to be removed from our email list, please email us and let us know.
