What's a coliving community manager or facilitator…?
In listings on this site, occasional events or regular events means there's no dedicated community role responsible for coordinating activities and events.
A community manager 🕴️
Is usually a staff member with fixed working hours responsible for onboarding, resolving issues including disagreements between members themselves, organising and perhaps even leading some events — but due to other responsibilities may not participate.
They often coordinate back of house operations such as cleaning staff, ensuring quality of service, so are likely less focussed on socials…
A community facilitator 🧚
Is an embeded member of the community, responsible for connecting everyone, making sure there's things to do, frequently participating themselves. Usually residing on site, so can unfortunately be pestered at any hour (but by golly, that's not very polite!) yet members are more likely to become friends and tag along with this person who facilitates some of their social life and activities — as one of us.
May additionally look after some management if no one else is responsible, and often the case in smaller properties.
Key events 🎪
A manager is more likely to organise skill shares, tours and meals at restaurants, whereas a facilitator is usually more hands-on doing things like karaoke, hikes and potluck dinners. (Yoga and movies are arguably a bit banal as can be found anywhere, and be organised by anyone.)
The following are best practices in coliving, less likely with a manager, more with a facilitator due to availability, every week at a fixed day and time.
- Family meal
- A relaxed social get-together, as a sit-down meal at the dining table. Sometimes provided by the space as a brunch, usually a combination of potluck contributions from everybody. The facilitator or manager must chase everyone to encourage attendance, ensuring there's contributions. This is also a key moment to get to know new arrivals, so there may be a round of introductions.
- Activity planning
- A gathering to listen to each other's ideas and solidify organisation should anyone want to participate. The facilitator or manager should make suggestions based on their local knowledge, and of what has or hasn't yet been done amongst the group. The results of this will usually be written up on a notice board and/or posted to the group chat.
In smaller properties these will be combined, whilst in larger they'll be independent on different days to increase the liklihood more members can attend at least one.
Who does this?
Often in smaller spaces the founder is community facilitator but may only be part-time with assistance from helpers doing work-exchange as volunteers. In larger spaces, there are usually dedicated staff as community manager.
It's worth checking to see if the space is a member of industry associations or follows best practices, how volunteers are supported, or even ideally if who's leading community at any time is advertised. Member experiences will be highly dependant upon the support that the founder has access to or volunteers receive, else their own experience.
If you'd like to try out in a community role, we heartily recommend doing work-exchange at a coliving! Explore the directory of volunteering opportunities…
Comparing usual differences
| manager | facilitator | |
|---|---|---|
| residence | off-site | on-site |
| availability | working hours | frequently but part-time |
| participation | occasional | often |
| social cues | is management | is one of the gang |
| ideation | by management | by members |
| problems | solves | refers |
| engagement | employed | work-exchange or founder |
| primary | management | community |
| secondary | community | some management |
Sometimes a manager may reside on-site, especially if the owner, yet may not participate as much as a volunteer facilitator would. They may therefore be described as either.
For operators
We strongly encourage having adequate support for anybody assisting with operations and community, through training, access to best practices and knowledge exchange. Connect into the wider ecosystem by joining the Coliving Hub operator association whom share some best practices, or the free Coliving Community Builders group where you can post opportunities and find some resources. For a higher level of support and defining operating processes you may wish to hire the services of a coliving consultant.
Combined roles
Can be problematic because it's difficult to be friends and socialise with the person handling (or heaven forbid, ignoring!) issues that members may have. When well managed or small this is no worry, yet inevitably there will always be issues of some kind, and in the worst cases without clear responsibility, members may split into groups on conflicting sides.
John Ho (Alt_) advises that management and facilitation roles should not be combined, however they have larger spaces with staff, whereas at lower capacity it does not matter much as everyone gets to know each other better.
Either role could be responsible for complaints and their resolution however it is better for these to be handled separately by upper management, depending upon signficance.
Upper management are often not on site, which can result in issues appearing to not have a timely resolution, affecting member experiences, therefore either role should ideally be empowered for resolution. In the case of facilitator this can be more difficult being embeded thus they are more likely to need to refer to upper management.
Notes
- These roles are used in many sectors, this page only considers as coliving. The most closely related is coworking spaces, however in this case it is almost never as a facilitator unless very large. In these situations the proximity and embedding of the roles is reversed, i.e. a community manager is the centre of a group directly around them, whilst a facilitator is within a looser and wider network group.
- The roles may be used in online communities, where it often significantly comprises moderation, also a component in large coliving spaces having a chatgroup.
- Member, guest and resident are used interchangably, guests are short-term implying hospitality orientation, residents stay longer as tenants, members is the more inclusive and can refer to any though implies a joining process.