This practice aims to create a welcoming environment where new members feel valued, respected, and honored, helping them find their place and contribute their skills meaningfully. It promotes sustained, balanced involvement by ensuring a fair exchange of giving and receiving within the group. When members decide to transition out, best practices can support to facilitate positive closure, celebrating their contributions and preserving good relationships.
Through becoming aware of best practices for each of these stages, you can start to weave together a contextualized flow of involvement for members in your group or organization, that is nurturing and connecting.
Some ideas to practise Effective Collaboration for Social Change
Here is one example of a best practice. In Transition Glastonbury, when it was still running, new members were welcomed through a “matchmaker” approach, where a designated member connected newcomers with others in the group and introduced them to specific opportunities aligned with their interests and skills. This personalized introduction helps new members find meaningful ways to engage, making them feel supported and valued from the start. By connecting people with shared interests and roles, the matchmaker approach fosters quick integration, enabling new members to contribute effectively and build lasting connections within the community.
Through experiences and observations in groups like Transition Glastonbury, we’ve found that when new members feel welcomed and valued, they quickly contribute meaningfully to the community. Practices of reciprocity foster sustained involvement, preventing burnout by encouraging balanced exchanges of giving and receiving. Clear, positive closures for departing members maintain good relationships and mutual respect, even as members transition out. This set of best practices allows groups to adapt their approaches to the unique needs of their community, enhancing the experience and connection of all members at every stage of their journey.
Join the webinar · February 4th 2025
Diving deeper
You can use the below resources to become more skilled at this. Explore them at your own leisure:
- Evolving Organisation - an innovative, flexible and, well… evolving entity! It was founded in 2012 and is led by Nick Osborne, who partners with Associates and Apprentices on projects as needed, and is also connected into a diverse ecosystem of peers with emerging collaborations.
- Team Clarity & Faster Decision-Making - 3 Steps to Team Clarity & Faster Decision-Making in 3 months (online course).
- The Meetings Revolution! - Make painful meetings more productive and motivational in 6 steps in 3 months (online course).
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