Help Share Laird Schaub's Teachings on Cooperative Community

Note: if you would like to donate to our campaign in alternative ways or have other questions, please contact Brinton via the contact button below. Please give him several days to respond.

Update: we are sad to announce that Laird died on December 17th at age 75. He was in the company of his daughter Jo and his partner Susan and passed peacefully.

For the past four decades, Laird Schaub has been recognized as one of the leading thinkers, consultants, and guides for collaborative meeting culture in the world of intentional community.

He has worked with scores of groups, both forming and well established, to navigate the thorny issues that inevitably arise as they attempt to create and nurture islands of cooperative culture in a competitive sea. His work has been vital to those groups’ success and, in many cases, to their ongoing existence. Through an intensive and extensive course developed and refined over the past 25 years, he has trained a large cadre to continue this essential work.

While doing this live work with groups and individuals, he has also written extensively: over 1200 blog entries, more than 130 articles in Communities magazine, and a wealth of handouts and monographs about various aspects of cooperative group dynamics. However, he has not had the time to compile this material into book form. A small team has now stepped forward to help organize and edit these writings, spurred by the fact that after more than nine years of managing multiple myeloma, Laird and his doctors have run out of treatment options.

Several friends and appreciative students have offered seed money to help fund the creation of books to preserve Laird’s teachings and legacy into the indefinite future. That money, combined with the money raised in this campaign, will pay for editing, publishing, and distribution of materials.

The team plans to cover the following subjects as separate publications: Secular Consensus, Inclusive Facilitation, Navigating Conflict in Cooperative Groups, and Dynamics in Intentional Communities (key challenges and how to address them). The timelines and format details will become more clear as money is raised and the volumes of material are assembled and edited. Our goal is to complete the first volume by the end of 2025.

Those contributing $25 or more to this campaign will receive (at the very least) complimentary digital versions of all volumes produced. We expect the publications to be available in eBook and print formats.