McCamant & Durrett Architects

GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING – 1/22/09

McCamant & Durrett Architects
The Cohousing Company
241-B Commercial St.
Nevada City, CA 95959

Anyone can organize a grassroots campaign. However, not every grassroots campaign results in a measurable success. Paul Revere rode northwest of Boston and effectively rallied a consequential resistance to the next day’s British advances.  William Dawes rode just as far west, carried a similar message, went through just as many towns but turned out almost no resistance.  Paul was a natural community organizer, and William needed a manual.

I’m not a professional grassroots organizer. I’m just an architect. But I have successfully organized several grassroots campaigns to get  cohousing communities built. People showed up to informational meetings, the local community’s resistance waned, eventually transforming foes into allies, and the project got built.

How did we do it? Let me introduce you to a method I call “The Full Court Press.” But before I get into the details of The Full Court Press, I need to get one important bit of business out of the way.

PR Firms and Other Distractions
Information can be disseminated in a lot of ways. If you need help, you can hire a PR firm and flood the airwaves with your message. However, I know of few cohousing groups that have successfully implemented this strategy. PR firms rarely get the cohousing message right and, most importantly, sound-bite publicity (the method utilized by most PR firms) doesn’t work very well for publicizing cohousing in our culture.

Cohousing to some extent defies the sound bite. Cohousing is Community; and this community is complex, because it is privacy balanced with community that enhances a person’s quality of life. This explanation of cohousing already goes beyond the scope of a sound bite. What to do? Build a bigger stage.

In this case, the bigger stage takes the form of an elongated presentation/discussion—a public forum. A public forum requires more than a public space. It requires a public—a public who is ready to hear the cohousing message. Enter The Full Court Press.

The Full Court Press
I used The Full Court Press to organize and recruit enough people to build a new 34-unit cohousing project in Nevada City, California, a town of 3,000 people. People showed up to informational meetings. We transformed resistant citizens into allies. We built the cohousing community. Our efforts resulted in a measurable success.

For the Nevada City project (which I will use here as a case study), I had to walk before I dared to run. But before I even thought about walking I needed to find out how much, if any, local interest there was in a cohousing project in Nevada City. This is what I did. Step-by-step.

1.    On a sunny day, July 20th  to be exact, I moved to the area—with the intent of finding enough public interested in cohousing.

2.    In keeping with the “cohousing is not a sound bite” sensibility, I went to the four local book stores to make sure that they each had at least a couple of copies of our book: Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. I mentioned to the book store staff that I’ll be giving a slide show on August 22nd, and that I would be telling folks where they could go to buy the book—locally.  I also carried with me a couple of national press articles about cohousing.  Bookstores only care about two things — are people calling to ask for the book and/or is there press on the topic.  Three of the bookstores ordered a copy from the book’s publisher, Ten Speed Press, or took it on consignment from me. *

3.    I went to the local library and informed the staff that their one copy of our cohousing book was checked out continuously and that some readers were probably missing the opportunity to read it. The library ordered two new copies.  I also took press there, but they didn’t care as much.

4.    I located all of the 27 “billboards” around town—grocery stores, community centers, etc.—and put up a flyer on each one that announced the August 22nd presentation.  I left flyers anywhere that folks would let me — coffee shops, and at the local hospital.

5.    I wrote a news release and sent it to the (liberal) radio station in town and one to the (conservative) station in the neighboring town of Grass Valley (population 11,000).

6.    I wrote a news release to the newspaper that serves both towns.

7.    I sent a letter to the 35 people in the area who, over the previous years, had expressed interest in forming a cohousing community. The letter was an invitation for them to join me in creating the Nevada City cohousing community, or at least come to help to organize the public presentation on August 22nd.

8.    Eight people who received this letter, and a couple of their friends, showed up at the afore-mentioned meeting. We discussed where and how to publicize the August 22nd presentation. I handed each of them 50 flyers to distribute around town (workplaces, childcare centers, churches, etc.), or to hand to friends at parties. I asked them to help me patrol the town’s 27 bulletin boards to ensure our fliers stayed up.

9.    I walked around town to make sure that our fliers were prominent at the 27 bulletin boards. All of them were gone. (Apparently, a couple of vocal neighbors were afraid that our cohousing community might bring traffic or lower their home values). It turns out that these vocal neighbors were in the habit of stopping projects. I assumed that they (mostly she) was walking around behind us, taking down our flyers. I stepped up my vigilance.

10.    I went to the book stores to make sure our cohousing books were in-stock. Since they were in-stock, I prominently displayed our book on the shelf and placed a flyer for the August 22nd presentation between the covers of each book.

11.    I went to the library and put the flyer between the covers of each cohousing book — and prominently displayed one or two.

12.    I was called into the radio station in Grass Valley for a radio interview. They were very, very supportive of the project, and the interview was great fun.

13.    I called up the Nevada City radio station to remind them of the press release.

14.    I reinstalled the 27 flyers on the 27 bulletin boards, mostly by foot — and through out the local hospital (a little surreptitiously), at flyer layout tables, etc.

15.    I was interviewed at length by the local Grass Valley/Nevada City newspaper about the cohousing project. The gist of my message was simple: I described what cohousing is and what makes it different from a typical condo project.

16.    I called the Nevada City radio station to remind them of the news release.

17.    I replenished any missing flyers in the cohousing books in the bookstores and the library.

18.    I walked into the Nevada City radio station to introduce myself and to ask them if they saw the news release.

19.    I called up the now 10-strong force of volunteers to make sure they had enough flyers.

20.    I delivered flyers to some of the volunteers.

21.    I walked into the Nevada City radio station and was interviewed on the spot. I was interviewed by Steve, on his show. Steve was the head producer for the Nevada City radio station. Steve informed me that a new community right in the middle of town wasn’t something that citizens of Nevada City had considered to be sustainable. They thought that the only location for a sustainable community was way out of town, and off the grid. They had never considered the cost of fuel (children, for example, need to go to school, they need other forms of socialization and nurturing, not to mention piano lessons and soccer practice). Nor had they considered the isolation of lonely housewives, or elderly people, or teenagers who are too young yet to drive. But by the end of the interview Steve understood the possibilities of cohousing — especially right in the middle of town.

22.    I went to replenish the 27 billboards, except most of the flyers were still there. It seemed to me that the only ones taking the flyers now were those taking them to show friends. I had outlasted the vocal neighbors.

23.    I replenished the fliers in the bookstores and the library. I should mention that I did all this while I talked to everyone I met along the way. And though I’m just an architect, I can talk about cohousing and put up flyers about cohousing, just like any professional grassroots organizer might.

24.    I went over the details of my presentation. Then went over them again. Not only was I the project’s manager and wanted to design it, but I was personally motivated to move into it with my family. The latter, personally, was all the motivation I needed. But how many people would attend? How well had I publicized the event? I saw the August 22nd presentation as a litmus test. If you hold a public presentation and 50 or more people show up, you probably have a project. Forty nine or less, you don’t have a project—you have a lot more work to do.

25.     In the course of the previous 4 weeks, I gave away 14 copies of the book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves.  One to the head of planning (with 3 flyers in it); one to the city manager; several to city councilors and planning commissioners; several to the more concerned neighbors; one to each radio station and to the newspaper; two more to the library that hosted our event several to interested community officials and politicians; one to the head of the Sierra Club; one to the superintendent of schools (to interest teachers that were new to town and in case we needed his political support — we ended up with eleven teachers); one to the head of the contractors association; and one to the hospital (in order to interest nurses — we ended up with three); all with flyers in them.  The books were essential because cohousing as a housing option, and as stated before, is so much more than a sound bite.  Not to bribe politicians — you’re not going to bribe them with a book — but give them a lot of thorough information so they can judge it fairly.

26.     On August 22nd, 2002, 150 people came to the slide show in the Madelyn Helling Library. Success!

Of course, the reward for working hard is more work. During our presentation we outlined the next step in building this cohousing community: a two-day “Getting It Built” workshop, which was scheduled for the following month. We outlined what the workshop would cover: costs, design process, development process, group process, entitlement process (how the project works through the political process) and much more. Twenty five households put down a $200 check for that up-coming workshop. Following this Getting It Built workshop, twenty-one households proceeded with the site design workshop. We were on our way.

The Full Court Press: Overtime
How you organize your grassroots campaign depends on a lot of factors: your location, your resources, your personality, your timeframes, your volunteer help, and so on. What worked for me may not work for you exactly, and I’ll be the first to admit I could have done more. I could have:

•    Written articles for newsletters. This type of publicity work, for me, is too time-consuming. The lead times are long and they require a lot of effort to produce. But if you have someone who can devote their efforts to newsletters and you have more than ten weeks of lead time to work with, then it’s to your advantage to explore this method. Church bulletins are a great avenue to introduce cohousing.
•    Reached a broader audience. I could have sent news releases to beyond Nevada City’s very small local paper and radio stations. But, in this case, I wanted the first effort to be very local. If I had not received good coverage from these local sources I would have gone for a broader audience—regional papers, the Internet, etc. However, in the local newspapers, we even received front page coverage, above the fold with photographs. Likewise, we eventually received excellent local radio coverage.
•    Spent money on advertising. Had the grassroots efforts I outlined not been successful after the second or third tries, I would have started to advertise.

During the “Getting It Built” workshop, we asked the twenty-five households how they found out about the August 22nd presentation. The results were interesting:

•    Word of mouth: 6
•    Posted flyers or book flyers: 5
•    Newspaper: 4
•    Radio: 4
•    Directly from me: 6

In the context of cohousing it sounds odd to describe a project in terms of one person’s experience, and there were others, but of course almost all existing cohousing communities were started by one motivated person.  In other words, if you want to organize a grassroots campaign to help organize cohousing communities you have to believe that every method contributes to the best results—and you have to follow through with as many as you can. You can’t be shy nor mess around when you organize cohousing communities.  Half measures will get you half an audience and then, unfortunately, you don’t know if you have half a project or a whole project. But if you go all the way, if you go all-in, the Full Court Press may be all you need.

This effort took about 6 hours a day for 4 1/2 weeks (with another 6 hours each day devoted to the political approval process).  And while others were involved, I wrote this article, I hope, in a way that would encourage any individual to feel that their passion, their creativity, and their hard work can accomplish a lot and will become catchy and encourage other to help.  As Thomas Edison put it so well, “All things good come to those who wait, as long as they work like hell while they’re waiting” — or something to this effect.

* Bookstores say that they only order the book if it has received national press, or local press if it’s a new topic, or people are calling to ask for the book, or it is a topic people are talking about.  Although you may have press regarding an upcoming public presentation, or an upcoming project, national press always helps.  If you show the manager broad media support, and show them a copy of the book, then most times they’ll accept the book — if only on consignment.  If you are interested in getting a press package from us and are serious about getting the book into local bookstores in order to assist a new project, then please send a self-addressed, pre-paid (8oz., first class postage) to our office in Nevada City, California.  We will send you a pre-prepared press package that has articles about Intergenerational Cohousing, Senior Cohousing, and articles about cohousing as a sustainable and green development approach.  We find that these articles go a long way to no only moving the bookstores along, but also bureaucrats, neighbors and so on.  Mix and match them for the various audiences.

Charles Durrett, Architect
McCamant & Durrett Architects
The Cohousing Company