The Waiting List is back

For a hot minute, there was no waiting list at Twin Oaks.  And it looked for a while like it might persist.  In the visitor group before the last one, 75% of the people who applied were not accepted and it seemed like the community had moved into a place of being structurally more picky.  When we are at our population capacity (oft called “pop cap” for short) we do tend to become more selective in our membership process.

But the last visitor of 2013 was nearly a perfect storm as far as the growth is concerned.  The group was large for a winter group at 9 people.  All of them were interested in membership and applied, most of them wanted to come back immediately or very soon.  AND we accepted 8 of the 9.  Bang! The waiting list is on again in a big way.  The three empty slots we had are filled, several people are waiting to join, but most important from a waiting list growth perspective, there are only two people who are known or rumored to be leaving in the next few months.  This means more visitor groups will come, more people will apply, more will be accepted and there will continue to be no space for them and a growing waiting list.

how long is the wait?

So what happens when we are at our population capacity?  Well, there are fewer empty rooms to place guests in.  It is somewhat easier to get all the work shifts covered.  And when we go recruiting at college campuses or sustainability events, we shift our focus from Twin Oaks and Acorn to the communities movement as a whole.  Even though we don’t need to be recruiting for ourselves, as some of the better off and better known communities, we have an obligation (i believe) to the communities movement in general to continue to spread the word and try to encourage people to look at other places which are not yet full.

[Edited by Judy Youngquest]