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 responsible for onboarding, day-to-day interactions, plus resolving issues including disagreements between members themselves. They organise and perhaps even lead some of the events but due to other responsibilities may not participate.
In smaller properties, this role also coordinates back of house operations such as cleaning staff, ensuring quality of service, thus less focussed on socials than a facilitator…
A community facilitator 🧚
Is an embeded member of the community, responsible for connecting everyone, making sure there's things to do, and frequently participating themselves. May look after some management if no one else is responsible, frequently the case in smaller properties.
They reside on site, so can unfortunately be pestered at any hour (gosh, that'd be a bit rude!) yet members are more likely to become friends and tag along with the person facilitating some of their social life and activities as one of us.
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 even in spaces with neither of these roles.) The following are best practices in coliving, less likely with a manager, more with a facilitator due to availability, almost always 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.
Comparing the usual differences
| manager | facilitator | |
|---|---|---|
| residence | offsite | onsite |
| availability | working hours | frequently |
| participation | drop-in | embedded |
| social cues | is management | is one of the gang |
| ideation | by management | by members |
| resolutions | often | sometimes |
| engagement | employed | volunteer or founder |
| primary | management | community |
| secondary | community | some management |
Sometimes a manager may reside on-site, especially if the owner, but may not participate as much as a volunteer facilitator would. They may therefore describe themselves as either however they perceive it.
Volunteers
Often a founder or owner is assisted by, or delegates responsibilities to volunteers. If they themselves are not active providing support and training to their volunteers, member experiences will be highly variable between one period and the next.
When booking, it is worth asking who'll be looking after the community. We encourage operators to adequately train those assisting them, and to join industry associations sharing best practices.
If you'd like to try out in a community role, then do work-exchange at a coliving! Explore the directory of volunteering opportunities…
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've larger spaces, at lower capacity it does not matter much as everyone gets to know each other better.
Either may be responsible for complaints and their resolution however it is better for these to be handled separately by upper management, though this depends upon the 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 are also 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, perhaps even as tenants, members is the more inclusive and can refer to both.