Report on December 12 Meeting

The December 12 meeting featured Andrea Cohen and John Smeath principals of Homeworks, a home care company based in Boston, which will be opening an office in Bethesda in March. They have done significant consulting to groups like ours and they presented their perspectives on the enthusiasm around the country for intentional communities and the variety of organizational options.

The consensus is that we need more specifics about what various groups like ours are doing by networking and gathering information. To start us out, Doug Colton volunteered to purchase the Beacon Hill Village manual. While we likely don’t want to be as structured as that organization, the meeting raised a lot of issues, among which were:

- What are the advantages of incorporating as a 501C3?
- What strategic partnerships do we want to form?
- Do we want any paid staff or do we want to maintain this as a strictly volunteer organization?

To address these and other issues, I would like to form an executive committee that could then bring back recommendations to the larger group.

Please let me know if you would like to be on the committee and I will try to set up a meeting in January.

Barbara and Nelson