[What follows is the text from an article in the Findhorn Foundation's Network News, Summer 1999, p. 6]
[From the Editor, Michael Hawkins:] In the vanguard of the exciting and structural changes currently taking place is the newly elected, newly formed New Findhorn Association. Historically formed through the ballot box it is welcomed as a uniting force for good. Findhorn expects! I asked "architect" of the NFA Robert Gilman to reveal chapter one.
In the first three months of this year I had the privilege of working at Findhorn to help develop an organisational structure for the community as a whole. I'd like to share the process we went through, but before I do, I need to fill in some background.
As you may know, the community's structure has been gradually evolving over the decades. In the beginning years of the 60s it was informal with no explicit organisational structure. In the 70s it grew to a scale where it needed some structure and starting in 1972 that was provided by the newly formed Findhorn Foundation. I think of the 70s as the "manor house" era during which the Foundation was the community and the community was the Foundation.
The overall community, however, kept growing and diversifying and proved to be too complex to contain in any one organisation. Part of this diversification came through spinning off activities that once were in the Foundation, beginning with the formation of New Findhorn Directions in 1979 as a for-profit arm of the community. Another part came through the development of sister organisations, like Minton House, which were never part of the Foundation but were clearly part of the community. My image for this process is the gradual adding of various "buildings" around the "manor house" until, on the ground, a metaphorical village existed. In this "village" the "manor house" is still the largest single building but it is nevertheless just one building in the steadily growing "village".
In 1995 I spent four months living in the community while my late wife Diane worked on preparing the October conference on Eco-villages and Sustainable Communities. That time gave me the chance to get to know the "village", see the ways it was happy with its informality and anarchy, and also feel the places where that anarchy was starting to chafe.
When I returned this past October to be part of the 1998 conference on Sustainable Communities I got the clear message from many in the community that the old anarchy was no longer serving the needs of the time. The community as a whole had grown to the point where the Foundation was only about a quarter of the overall population and less than a quarter of the overall annual financial turnover. And with the major land purchases by Ecovillage Ltd and Dunelands Ltd, most of the community's land was now owned outside of the Foundation. Yet because of its history, the overall community still often looked to the Foundation for a kind of leadership and services which the Foundation could no longer provide. Energies were blocked, tensions grew, and opportunities were missed.
A number of attempts were underway to find a fresh start, but there was also a clear sense that more was needed. The Findhorn Bay Community Association had started in 1996 as an attempt to provide a structure for the overall community, but its membership was less than 20% of the full community, so it didn't have the critical mass it needed. The Foundation had spent two years in a "reinvention" process which, while it had accomplished some change, had not done as much as had been hoped to relieve people's growing sense of frustration.
As I discussed all this with friends in the community it seemed clear that the Foundation could not take its next steps in isolation - the community of which it was a part also had to shift - and the community couldn't take its next steps unless it dealt with all of its parts. Out of these conversations a plan emerged for me to come in January (with financial support from the Foundation, the Findhorn Bay Community Association, Phoenix Stores, various friends of the community, and later also from Minton House, Eco-village Ltd, New Findhorn Directions, and Posthouse Printing) and we would see what we all could do to enable those next steps.
The basic goal was to formalise the overall community, including creating a "village council" or some such democratic forum through which it would be possible to deal consciously and openly with those issues that concerned the community as a whole. To develop this community-wide structure we adopted a process that used three parallel tracks:
1. An "open forum" in which anyone was welcome to contribute their ideas, lead activities, or otherwise contribute their inspiration to the process. This track was analogous to the "civil sector" or "NGO sector" in mainstream society.
2. A "council of organisations" in which the leadership of the community's more than 30 organisations were invited to help shape the new community structure (analogous to the "business sector").
3. An elected "constitutional committee" whose task was to blend the input from the other two tracks with their own work and produce a proposed community constitution which would then go back to the community in the form of a referendum (analogous to the "government sector").
At the first community meeting on 7 January, we set ourselves the goal of electing the Constitutional Committee by the end of the month and then completing the constitution in six weeks in time for a referendum in the middle of March.
Electing the Constitutional Committee proved to be no simple task since there was, up to that time, no clear definition of who was part of the whole community, there had never been a community-wide election before, and there was no list of eligible voters. We found our way through this maze of "can't be done's" by saying that, for this one election, anyone who had resided in the Findhorn/Forres area for at least a year and who currently was or had been significantly involved with one of the community's organisations was eligible to vote. A voter list of almost 400 names was quickly assembled and by the time we had the "candidates forum" in the Universal Hall on 22 January the ballots were all prepared with the names of the 21 candidates who were running for the 12 seats on the committee. The election ran until noon on 30 January, and that afternoon Lambert Munro, a councillor with the Findhorn/Kinloss Council, oversaw the counting of 231 valid ballot papers in our first election.
Meanwhile, on 29 January, we had our first meeting of the Council of Organisations at Minton House. This was the first of a series of meetings which brought the organisations into closer communications with each other and provided valuable input to the Constitutional Committee. The Open Forum track proved to be informal except for a Community Forum organised by Debbie Raymont and Jane Hera which also provided good input for the committee.
Those who were elected to the Constitutional Committee were Fabien Barouch, Rowan Duczek, Bill Grant, Elizabeth Hill, Malcolm Hollick, Katherine Inglis, Durten Lau, Richard Mark-Coates, Rory O'Connell, Jeremy Slocombe, Bram van den Berg, and Julia Zalazar. We got down to work on 1 February and met three times a week, over two hours for each meeting, for the next six weeks. It was intensive, but it was not as dry and formal as the name, Constitutional Committee, might suggest.
We began, in our first meeting, by asking "what planetary purpose does the Angel of Findhorn want the community to serve in the next few years?" and we stayed attuned to the angelic kingdom throughout our process. The responses to this question were eventually synthesised into the constitution's statement of purpose: "to be a diversity of people showing by example a way of living in the world in alignment with Spirit, in co-operation with each other, and in service to the Earth."
We developed clear ground rules for our process which included using coloured cards for voting - green = I support, blue = I'm neutral, yellow = I have questions, and red = I oppose. We would often attune before using the cards, and if anyone held up a yellow or red card, we would encourage them to share either their unresolved questions or the reasons for their opposition. The ensuing discussion would often lead to modifications in the current proposal so that all could support it. In addition, on the back of the red cards were the words "off track" and everyone was empowered to hold up this sign whenever they felt the discussion had gone astray. This proved to be an effective tool in enabling the whole group to stay focused.
We also took time for ritual. One that I would like to mention was our yin/yang ceremony. Each member of the committee brought two objects, one that symbolised for them the positive aspects of yin and another that symbolised the positive aspects of yang, and each spoke movingly about their objects and the qualities they represented. At the meeting after this ritual we had a wonderful discussion about leadership which in turn powerfully influenced the structures that eventually went into the constitution.
And so it was that we gradually covered all the fundamental questions that needed to be addressed such as: how is membership defined; what are the powers of members; what are the governing structures for the community; how are decisions to be made; how are elections to be held; etc. A small group of us took the committee's decisions and drafted them into the formality of a constitution. The committee as a whole then refined this draft and by 15 March we had a finished "Constitution of the New Findhorn Association" to present to the community. (The constitution can be seen on the web at http://www.findhorn.org/constn/index.htm)
The new constitution calls for two categories of elected positions. There is a 12 person Council (a part-time, voluntary position) and the more unusual role of the Listener-Convenors that I would like to describe in more detail. These two elected, paid, full-time people-a man and a woman not in a primary relationship with each other - serve the community by listening to the members, sensing the pulse of the community, being spiritually attuned to its purpose, identifying key issues, and focusing appropriate community attention on these. They have the power to convene meetings, initiate games, catalyse new groups, and in other ways help the community take its next steps in areas as diverse as economic development and connection to Spirit. Their function is to accelerate the evolution of the community and its members toward their highest potential. They are also the non-voting co-chairs of the Council, focusing the Council's attention on the issues that truly concern the community.
The Council also appoints groups with advisory or special roles that serve the community. Chief among these are Peacemakers, who mediate disputes which are not completely within a single organisation; Neighbourly Relations, a group that includes local non-members and establishes and maintains good relationships with others nearby, in the immediate Findhorn-Kinloss-Forres vicinity; and Global Elders, three to five individuals living further afield who are respected, willing and available to bring a global perspective to community affairs.
While the constitution was being finalised, people were stepping forward to stand for the elected positions. I was pleased that the first person to stand for the new Council was Eileen Caddy. She was eventually joined by sixteen other candidates for the Council plus we had six candidates for the two Listener-Convenor positions. All these threads came together on the evening of 15 March in a community meeting in the Hall that combined a presentation of the proposed constitution to the community, a candidate's forum, and a distribution of ballot papers for the referendum on the constitution and election to the new positions. Over the following days more ballots were distributed (again about 400 in total) until the election closed on the Spring Equinox, 21 March. When the again 231 valid ballot papers had been counted the constitution had been approved by 95% and Listener-Convenors (Fabien Barouch and Hannah Albrecht) and the new Councillors had been all duly elected.
The new Council, Richard Brockbank, Eileen Caddy, Irene Dittrich, Rowan Duczek, Lucia Gallicchio, Elizabeth Hill, Malcolm Hollick, David Hoyle, Durten Lau, Richard Mark-Coates, Judith Marten-Meynell, Mo Willett, got right to work. The process we had been through had given them a good start but there were many challenges ahead. If this new start is to make it through the year it will need a lot of help from those of us around the world who would love to see the Findhorn Community really thrive. They certainly need our prayers and, for this first year, they will also need our financial help.
The Constitutional Committee decided to delay imposing any membership fee until the Annual General Meeting in early 2000 so that such a fee could be developed carefully by the new Council and ratified by the membership. Instead the first year will be funded on a donation basis. The estimated budget for the year is L30,000. At the time of writing L6,000 has been raised and another L5,000 is available as a matching grant. Some of the rest of this will be raised within the community, but it would be an enormous blessing to those who are pioneering this next step for the community to have whatever support we all can provide. Please contact David Hoyle (The Park or dhoyle@findhorn.org) if you would like to help.
Robert Gilman