How We Onboard New Members at My Community

The essential process of integrating new members

I often see community builders focus on the more dazzled part of the journey of recruiting new members, selling the dream, filling the rooms.

But what happens after someone says “yes”?

There’s a critical window before someone arrives and shortly after where smooth integration is make or break.

Here’s how we onboard new members at my own community, Wild Seeds Ranch in Southern California, and what I’ve learned from studying patterns across coliving and intentional communities around the world.

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I break onboarding into 3 stages:

1. Before Arrival

2. Arrival (1-3 Weeks)

3. First 3-6 Months

Before Arrival

Onboarding start before the person even gets to our community, and for good reason. We try to make clear it as clear as possible what is expected of residents—financially, socially, and ecologically—before they join.

We Start Weaving Early

Our onboarding begins with the community interview. We use it to decide as a community if the new person feels like they will thrive here. We confirm their consent for things like the 12-hour community contribution and ability to withstand certain challenges of the property.

In that conversation, I’m already imagining who they’ll bond with, what they might bring, and how they’ll shift the whole.

We Send a Welcome Guide.
Most of our in-depth community information is stored in our Wild Seeds wiki. But that’s a lot for a new member to read.

So I distilled down the most important information that new community members need to know into a shorter welcome packet. This includes items like:

• Community Agreements

• Compost Rules

• Quiet Hours

• How to Use Communal Spaces

• Conflict Mediation Processes

I also add “unwritten norms” so they’re not guessing what’s taboo.

We Share a Resident Directory.
In larger communities, it can be hard to meet everyone at once, so I created a resident directory with shorts bios for new members to browse. This helps them put names to faces and learn about who’s living there. At Wild Seeds, we have a cute little directory on our website that also shows off our community pets.

What we don’t do at this stage, but I want to try:

Orientation Materials — Pre-arrival videos, readings, or podcasts on the community’s founding story, land, and ecosystem. This seems interesting to me, especially as the community gets older and more established.

But, I haven’t found it essential or made time to make orientation videos. Although I suspect that making funny videos would encourage more people to actually read the wiki 🙊

Arrival: The First 1–3 Weeks Matter Most

Generally new members are timid to step on anyone’s toes when they first arrive. And it’s true that I see existing members get disgruntled when a new person disrupts the way of doing things (even if it’s for the better).

As a community manager, I make it my mission to help new members feel comfortable, so they aren’t afraid of offending anyone and can integrate smoothly.

Here are some essentials I always cover:

We Give a Tour & Run Through an Onboarding Checklist

A thorough walkthrough of the community should be given the very first day, even if they’ve already visited or stayed as a guest before. We show them all areas and how to use them. Basic, but sometimes overlooked by communities.

We cover practical stuff (laundry, food, showers, tool library) and social (community meetings, shared meals, coworking spaces).

We Link to Information Documents

We have a community wiki. In other communities, I’ve seen a simple 3-page Google doc as the welcome packet, which can work, too. Whatever you use, you need a source of truth they can return to (you know, in case they forget half the things you tell them in the tour).

We Plug Them Into Communication Channels.

We zealously use Telegram for our comms. We have a main community channel that everyone is in and some side channels they can opt into to reduce overall notifications. Wherever your community communicates—Slack, WhatsApp, bulletin board, group email—make sure a new member is connected right away. This is how they’ll ask questions and learn how to navigate their new home.

Integrate into Chores

We have a list of recurring tasks and responsibilities that we assign to people. Everyone has a physical zone to care for and tasks like feeding the koi fish or getting the mail. We still kind of suck at doing this in a prompt manner, but working on getting this done sooner when a new member moves in.

What we don’t do at this stage, but I want to try:

Welcome Rituals & Orientation - A community dinner or ritual, simple or sacred, to welcome them would be nice. We’re so busy that for now, so just a celebratory announcement of their arrival at the next community meeting suffices.

Physical Welcome Packets - I’m going to work on having 1 physical welcome packet that people can read and return when they are moving in. Having a physical packet will guilt them into reading it, I think ;)

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First 3–6 Months: Integration & Belonging

Guide Belonging
After letting new members settle in for a couple of weeks, I invite them to do a check-in with me, which is a casual “How are you doing?” session. It’s often a fruitful conversation.

This is where I:

• Answer lingering questions they may have felt too reserved to ask before

• Explore what they want to create or contribute

• Ask what they need to feel supported

• Help them start identifying their niche or role in the community ecosystem, and talk about their dreams for their community life.

Encourage Contribution & Co-Creation

From our session, I’ll invite them to lead a small event, offer a skill, or take on a small role that’s aligned with the dreams they share with me in that session.

I just want to give them the green light to find a meaningful “niche” within the ecosystem of the village.

What we don’t do at this stage, but I want to try:

Reflection & Feedback Circles - If I were better about this, I’d hold 1-on-1 or group check-ins at 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. I’d have routine sessions to ask both “How are you doing?” and “How is the community doing by you?”. For now, we do that with anonymous resident surveys.

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Issues We’ve Faced Because of Improper Onboarding

• Inappropriate Expectations — By far the most problematic issue we’ve had is a mismatch of what people think the community management is obligated to do for them vs. how we actually run. Everything from thinking we buy their groceries for them to being upset that they have to unclog their own toilet have been discouraging. It’s difficult for people’s brains to not see the community as a traditional landlord-tenant dynamic. We now have a “what to know before moving here” myth-busting document so that people can know what to expect.

• Chore Assignment Procrastination — New people with less initiative to help out sometimes get to skate by without any responsibilities for awhile because we’re so busy running the community. This is something I’m going to weave into the check-in we do shortly after moving in.

• Improper Fit — The lines between vetting/screening a new tenant and onboarding them kind of blur. We have had people who aren’t a good fit

And that’s how we welcome new community members at Wild Seeds. There are a few processes I wish we could iron out or be more intentional about, but this is all you need to get the job done.

Onboarding Materials

Here are links to examples and templates of everything I recommend for onboarding.