Community GovernanceCommunity Mission and Vision Statement Some History of Decision Making by the LVC Community OverviewThe intentional community at Lost Valley exists as a subset of the overall Lost Valley Center Inc. not-for-profit organization (LVC). The Issues that fall into the community's sphere of decision making are residential and domestic issues that are not financial and do not have legal implications. With those issues, the community can use whatever process it decides. Currently the community uses a concenus process, with a proposal first being pre-screened by a facilitation committee. This process is described in more detail in the concensus section below. Lost Valley Intentional Community Vision Statement * Mission Statement * Community GoalsVision Statement Community Goals With each other
With the land
With the world
Concensus TrainingAll residents who wish to take part in the community concensus process are required to go through a concensus training with a qualified teacher. This is to ensure that the group is capable of practicing actual concensus. Concensus process is a formal decision making process. There is quite a bit of literature on the subject. It is not simply a vague sense of "getting everybody to agree", but is a system and requires knowledge and skills within that system to operate effectively. Without proper concensus training for all participants, a group will likely slide into "psuedo-concensus", a conglomeration of people's guesses about what concensus process is without truly understanding it. Many people mistakenly develop very bad associations with concensus because they have been part of groups that claimed to practice concensus, but were in fact practicing pseudo-concensus because not enough people were trained. In our current process, residents submits proposal to a facilitaiton committee, which pre-screens the proposal, and sends it on the the whole group meeting when it is ready. Some History of Decision Making with the LVC Community:For many years, the LV community used a governance model that was primarily a structure with no ackowledged hierarchy that involved a whole community concensus for all significant decisions. Many community members found that while they were first attracted to this One shift that has happened in the community is that for many years, participation in the decision making process around running the business aspect of LVC was seen as one of the main aspects of what community is about. This attitude has shifted over the years, as more residents began to voice that they preferred connecting as a community through ways other than business meetings, such as through music, recreational activities, hikes, and working on the land. The residents decided that they were willing and, in many cases, glad, to let go of some amount of their ability to weigh in on every issue in exchange for more free time to enjoy each other's company in other ways than large group meetings. For the past couple of years, residents have been researching and learning about different governance models that aim to provide a "best of both worlds" of the participatory nature of concensus with the effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability of hierarchies. The processes that we have been developing follow the principle of "growth hierachies" rather than "dominator hierarchies". In dominator hierarchies, the hierachy is used to keep people from growing in their ability to have a voice. Growth hierarchies support individuals growing into their ability to make complex decisions, while unlike concensus, acknowledging that people come to the organization with very different levels of competance in complex decision making. In the growth hierarchy, the goal is to delegate every decision that can be made effectively at the "lowest" or most grassroots level, to that level. Thus, the community residents in general are supported in making decisions as a group about residential matters that affect the whole group, which are largely opinion based and only require common sense to contribute, and which don't require legal or financial expertise that the group does not possess equally. More specialized decisions are sent to the specialized committee that consists of people who have the most direct knowledge about the issue. For example, the maintenance team makes decisions about details of how to perform maintenance, rather than the whole community or the board of directors. However, if that team overlooks something that impacts the organization's health, the managment team, executive director, and ultimately the board of directors have the ability to intervene on behalf of the organization's health. Rather than just being "affected by a decision", people in these various oversight roles need to demonstrate a competance at making decisions on that level. The growth hierarchy approach provides support and training in helping people to grow in this way, while being realistic that not everyone will grow at the same rate or have the interest or stamina to participate in that level. Thus the growth hierarchy also frees up time for community residents who want to enjoy living in community and entrusting other people who are interested and skilled in their areas, to manage those areas without them needed to weigh in or attend numerous meetings.
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LVC umbrella also includes the educational center and its related programs, the conference and retreat hosting services, and the Camassia Institute for Sustainable Communities. The board of directors uses concensus with a 2/3 majority fallback. Some of the departments uses concensus as well, while others operate with a more hierachical management style. Community members have the opportunity to be nominated, and if approved, serve on the board of directors, which provides "checks and balances" within the system. See
model ideologically, in practice, it led to many residents feeling frustrated and wanting to change this structure. Reasons for frustration included: residents spending too much time in meetings to support their happiness and well-being, decisions that in many instances did not support the overall health of the organization (financially, legally, or otherwise), and that without any formal hierachy, informal, unackowledged hierarchies of influence occured anyway. Additionally, this form of decision making was incompatible with the basic requirements of non-profit organizations, which the community is under. Non-hierarchical whole group concensus processes may work well for certain communities, especially communities that are smaller, less complex, residential only (not trying to run a business), and that do not attempt to simultaneously use a legal structure that requires using a different decision making process.