How to Develop Your Community Onboarding Process

Part One of the Onboarding/Offboarding Process

In case you didn’t know, I have a chat where I take requests from paid readers to write articles answering their burning community questions.

Max

, a paid reader, asked for an article on how to vote in new members and how to get rid of problematic members.

Let’s rub the lamp and ask the genie.

Community events like Enchanted are amazing, but what happens when you start to live together past the initial honeymoon phase?

In ecovillages and intentional communities, the process of onboarding and offboarding members is easy to do disastrously.

Usually this is because people don’t develop the processes ahead of time, or are making it up as they go.

It can be immediate conflict with a misaligned member or the more insidious, long-term, itchy-sweater-effect that keeps telling you they’re “just not a good fit”. So, invest in developing your procedures, and you’ll be glad you did.

How to Develop Your Community Onboarding Process

These processes ensure that new members are integrated smoothly.

Equally important, your process will review candidates thoroughly before granting rights of access to the community spaces.

I break down the community onboarding process into 4 parts:

1. Screening Process

2. Welcoming Process

3. Vetting Process

4. Integration Process